The Iron Age of ‘Loughey’ and Meare: Some Inferences from Glass Analysis

Abstract

The archaeology of two Iron Age sites, ‘Loughey’ in County Down, Northern Ireland, and Meare Lake Village, Somerset, is discussed. Changes in the archaeological interpretation of the sites are considered in the light of recent research into Iron Age sites in Britain and Ireland. Consideration of the chemical composition of the glass from ‘Loughey’ and Meare helps to add weight to the existence of suspected links between Ireland and the Continent in the first century B.C., and not, as has regularly been assumed, specific links with south England. The compositional characteristics of the glass from Meare are found to be totally different from those of the ‘Loughey’ glass and it is suggested that glass raw materials were imported to Ireland for the manufacture of Iron Age glass beads there. We can not now be as confident that the person buried at ‘Loughey’ was of ‘foreign’ origin.