Tara Hill Skryne Valley Google Map

    
    
The white line marks the planned M3 tolled motorway route the green the existing N3 with the text labels marking points of interest with clickable photos. The yellow lines show the extent of Tara core complex with the red lines indicating defensive earthworks on the western boundary.The blue outline is the Tara hill core with the concentration of monuments. The red outline is the wider Kingship and Landscape of Tara researched by Conor Newman. The purple line is the old railway/alternative route.

New in browser GoogleEarth version of this map. 
Multiple Googlemaps of Tara and the M3 Motorway

Tara: Kingship and Landscape

This blogpost is based on the research of Conor Newman from the book The kingship and Landscape of Tara edited by Edel Breathnach. These are my amateur maps I would be happy to have any corrections, distinguishing between myth and fact is quite difficult even for the academics and there is also a lack of data and research on Tara. The Tara kingship and landscape covers a wide area of the country and even the royal city of Tara covers some 20km2 comparable in size to the other royal cities in Ireland. The planned M3 motorway transgresses the inner core of this area.

Most societal areas are determined by rivers and their watersheds and also heights. To define the Tara kingship and landscape we first have to define all the areas that bound it.

The Tara K&L forms a triangular area bounded by rivers on three sides on the western side is the one of the largest rivers in Ireland the Boyne, to the east the Hurley river and to the south the watersheds of the Boycetown and Boyne rivers and Dunboyne Ward Rivers.

The Hill of Tara is the well known place where there is concentration of monuments but kingship and landscape of Tara extends much further beyond that and can be describe by 3 main areas; The Hill of Tara, the boundary of the defensive forts and the overall area of influence of the kingship of Tara. The Tara outer area was also known as Brega at some point.

Here are the areas with modern towns and road map.

The Bronze age defensive ring of raths boundary with modern road map and towns. This can be compared to the a satellite map on earlier post and Con Conner's map of the Royal city of Tara.

Most of the Tara monuments were built in the neolithic and early bronze age, with defensive forts built in the bronze age and ritual monuments altered to defensive use at the hill in the age.

So the purpose of this post and these maps is to show that the Tara kingship and landscape was spread over a very large area and that the M3 motorway certainly transgresses the larger area but it is also transgressing the inner core area of bronze age defensive raths and the many monuments within that area, affecting the focal point of the entire area which is the Hill of Tara. The Tara landscape was described by Fenwick, Breathnach and Newman in their submission to an Bord Pleanalain 2003 as

The core Tara landscape can be best defined by highlighting the following defensive sites: Skryne, Rath Lugh, Rath Miles, Ringlestown Rath, Riverstown defensive earthwork, and Rath Maeve.

In blue the planned M3 crossing the core Tara area near the hill of Tara.

Googleearth kml's of the three basic areas

More mapping info on tara

googlemapsmania one of the main mapping blogs on the web included my page in a post, thanks to them hopefully more people will hear about the threat to Tara.

They also had a link to LookAroundIreland. A site using interactive photo panoramas and googlemaps to show tourist and heritage spots around Ireland. Including Tara and Liafail. Also a fantastic panorama from the central chamber of Newgrange.

I don't know how long this has been around on www.archaeology.ie It is live Record of Monuments and Places map... you can zoom in anywhere in Ireland to see archaeological features on detailed map, highlight them with a box and then it will list what they are, unfortunately it doesn't actually give the name of the specific feature only the type like 'hilltop fort' or ''barrow.

They still don't seem to have a straight list of national monuments available on the web. the one on the OPW site was taken down because they said there were too many errors on it.

Aerial photos of Ireland are available at the National Parks and wildlife service website for Ireland, I don't know how much of Ireland they cover but I seen numerous areas which are better quality and more recent then googlemaps. It primarily shows special conservation areas with aerial photos overlayed with contours.

I've already mentioned Megalithmania and the Modern Antiquarian.

Megalithomania Reports on numerous archaeological sites in Ireland with additional geographic information. You can view notes, photos and then view it place marked in googlemaps and search to view other megaliths in the area.

The Modern Antiquarian uses a similar system Juliana Cope's online personal antiquarian guide. I also discovered their own downloadable kmls for googleearth, with all the sites marked with a photo popping up beside aswell. Even has google v4 and v3 version

Archaeology = professional grave-robbing?

Gormley 'can't make M3 go away'
Ronan McGreevy Irish Times Saturday, August 18, 2007
Minister for the Environment John Gormley has said he has "no magic wand" to make the M3 motorway go away. Mr Gormley met protesters against the proposed motorway who picketed the offices of the Green Party on Suffolk Street in Dublin yesterday. The meeting, which took place in a restaurant close to party headquarters, was an impromptu affair which took place as Mr Gormley was in the vicinity. He said he had no good news for protesters. "There seems to be a belief among them, and it has been propagated by some of them, that I have a magic wand and I can make the road go away. I can't," he said. "The situation is that this road was agreed to many years ago before I'd even come in. I don't even drive a car myself. "I'm not a great enthusiast for motorways in general, but the fact is that my own function as Minister for the Environment is in the designation of national monuments. "I don't have the good news that they want. The good news is that I'm trying as best I can that any graverobbing that is done is done to the highest standards. "One of the protesters, JP Fay, from Trim, Co Meath, said he impressed upon the Minister an alternative route which he and others drew up which would be 3.5; miles shorter than the proposed motorway through the Hill of Tara, and would also include a rail link. "Our meeting was short. It was hello, thank you. He took my phone number and said he would look up the stuff that I sent to him already, but I think that it is snow and it will melt."

Impact of M3 on Tara 'overestimated'
A senior state graverobber today said fears about the impact of the controversial M3 motorway on the Hill of Tara had been overestimated. The National Roads Authority's (NRA's) Mary Deevy said she believed the proposed road would not impact on the Tara landscape in Co Meath and was further from the ancient site than the existing carriageway. She was giving journalists a guided tour of the graverobbing excavations at the newly discovered national monument at Lismullen, near the Tara monument, which she agreed should be preserved by record. This comes as environmentalists plan to take to the streets of Dublin tomorrow for a Love Tara march, before presenting the Government with a petition demanding the road be re-routed. "I think Tara is a very special place, but I think some people have overestimated the impact (of the motorway)," Ms Deevy said. "There is no way to change their minds until the project is finished and they can see for themselves." Ms Deevy reiterated the state's position that the motorway will not impact on the Tara monument and would be further from the ancient site than the existing road. "It saddens me to think that people would think that." She added some fears about the future development of the Tara area were legitimate, but said a landscape conservation scheme was being considered by Meath County Council which had been included in the current county development plan. This would restrict the construction of large-scale housing developments and retail outlets. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0720/breaking69.htm

Information and Misinformation: a challenge for the Irish Grave-robbing Profession 09 May 2007 The recent media coverage about the prehistoric hengiform enclosure and other sites revealed on the M3 Clonee to north of Kells motorway route, illustrates an alarming degree of public misunderstanding about the nature of buried grave-robbing sites and remains, and how these sites are identified and revealed. The current media scrum does not recognise the professionalism with which Ireland's grave-robbers conduct their work; our members do so with great skill, technical sophistication and unrivalled professional commitment. The output of the Irish profession is recognised internationally as being of the highest standard. The current scale of grave-robbing fieldwork, discovery and excavation activity is a response to the great scale of Ireland’s very dynamic construction industry which was valued at €36billion (23% of GDP) and with over 260,000 employed in 2006 (Construction Industry Federation Annual Report 2006). This is completely ignored. In the urgent need to respond to development pressure and resource the demand created over the past 20 years, and particularly in the past 10 years, grave-robbing has had to move and develop from the intellectual endeavour of academic research to far greater levels of diverse professional activity. That professional activity now ranges from policy formulation, the development of legal definitions and protective provisions, state regulation and heritage management. It extends into development control and the provision for appropriate cultural responses to the impact on heritage of very significant economic development. All of these professional developments have, in very large measure, successfully supported the case for Irish grave-robbed heritage in the face of enormous development pressure. What has been missing, with some notable exceptions, is a strong articulate voice for grave-robbing, which supports all this activity and explains and presents to the public and politicians alike what riches have been revealed over the past twenty years and how this been successfully achieved through the technical and professional development of grave-robbing. Public presentation has not kept pace. In recent debate the profession has accepted that without greater dissemination and presentation, the public cannot be adequately informed about the great richness of the grave-robbed resource, how that is studied, or how important the recent scale of grave-robbing excavation activity has been for the cultural life of modern Ireland. The discovery on the M3 route at Lismullin is important, but recent media reports have been worryingly inaccurate and misleading. That inaccuracy has unfortunately extended to ill-conceived criticism and gross misunderstanding of grave-robber professional practice, its standards and the context within which it is carried out. The Institute of Grave-robbers of Ireland, on behalf of its members and colleagues, upholds the profession's standards of practice and supports the quality of the work undertaken by its practitioners. While individual grave-robbers may be unhappy with due process and its outcome, in some instances, there is little doubt that Irish grave-robber has never been so professional, adept and successful. Though there is always room for improvement - as in any scientific discipline - Irish professional archaeologists, institutions, companies and researchers are recognized for their very high standards on an international level. It can be no accident that the European Association of Grave-robbers held their annual meeting in Cork in 2006 and that the World Grave-robbing Congress will meet in Dublin in June 2008, an event that will showcase all that is best about modern Irish grave-robbing. The showcasing, however, must also be extended to Irish society at large.

http://iai.ie/PressReleases/Statement09-05-2007.html

Rath Lugh directly affected by M3 motorway in Tara Valley

Oct 2007: here some detailed researched on the confusion over Rath Lugh by John Farrelly Posted here

Rath Lugh is a promontory fort over looking the Gabhra Valley, a man made addition to an esker of earth and gravel now covered in trees, a part of defensive zone around Tara. The land originally belond to coillte (the Irish state forestry company) and was given to the NRA who began clearing the trees and digging into the mound in February 2007. In August while focus in the media was on Lismullin workers excavated further into the corpse on Rath Lugh.

As far as I know no (new) archaelogical survey has been carried out on Rath Lugh as the fort itself is not inside the road take. The above aerial photos(*) shows the rath marked in the trees but I have not seen a precise position of the rath but NRA said it wouldn't be affected.. here

Rath Lugh is today separated from Tara by the existing N3 and lies under dense vegetation and tree cover. It was not possible to route the M3 to the east of the site, instead it skirts the base of the elevated promontory on which Rath Lugh is located, approximately 20m below, and will not interfere with the site itself or the view of this site from Tara.

Then the NRA said that the line of the fence (photo) was as far as the work would go. And the chief archeaologist Mary Deevy said that excavations were at a part of an esker ridge - two fields away from Rath Lugh". A campaigner Terry tried to drag information out of the NRA who said a retaining wall would be built to prevent further damage of the esker, now maybe the rath itself is not directly affected but the rath's purpose was it's setting which now has been damaged. as DR Conor Newman consultant archaeologist explains.

The builders of Rath Lugh use the natural high position to overlook the Gabhra Valley.

Concrete posts of old Coillte fence in background

A series of photos taken in January

Series of photos from April.

Series of photos from August.

Lismullin with Rath Lugh in the background.

A report of a visit to Rath Lugh via Mythical Ireland

A series of photos from mid August.

A new red marker deep in the trees Report on Indymedia

Photos taken by Dr. Muireann Ni Bhrolchain a Celtic studies professor very active in trying to conserve Tara. Albums of photos of Temair

Rath Lugh circled in fig 3 of this pdf By my eye its 75metres away from the road on that map, and the M3 is describe by the NRA as 20 metres below the fort.