Talk to reveal stone age secrets of airport site
The next lecture at the Manx Museum held by the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society (IoMNHAS) will focus on the mystery of why, in the late Stone Age, people living on what is today the site of the island’s airport developed a unique culture quite distinct from the traditions found in either Britain or Ireland.
It is strange to say that so unique are the Stone Age remains found on the site that the mysterious people who lived there are now referred to by experts as the ‘Ronaldsway Culture’!
But then the evidence shows that, in the Bronze Age, the people of Mannreverted to the standard patterns found in the adjacent islands.
Today Ronaldsway can be viewed as the place in the island connected most closely to the outside world, and when we consider its history while waiting for a flight we are most likely to contemplate how many airlines and their services have come and gone in recent times, or the replacement of the World War Two era control tower by the new and shiny state-of-the-art structure looming over the surrounding southern plain.
Roy Cottage is a Self Catering Manx holiday cottage, situated on the sea front, in Castletown, the ancient capital of the Isle of Man. Bringing news to the visitor of the Isle of Man.
Ronaldsway has had an important place in the annals of history, however. Its name is thought to be derived from a ship porterage route over the neck of the Langness peninsula used by a Viking called Ragnald, Ronald or, in the Manx Gaelic version of the placename, Roony.
In 1275 the Battle of Ronaldsway saw King Alexander III of Scotland defeating a Manx rebellion headed by Godred Magnusson, illegitimate son of the last Norse King of Mann, and the fleeing into exile in Wales and Norway of the remaining members of the Manx-Norse royal family.
Centuries later, Ronaldsway Farm developed into the mansion of William Christian, ‘Illiam Dhone’, whose action of surrendering the island to the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War – perhaps to spare it from a massacre like that of Drogheda in Ireland – led to him being shot by firing squad at Hango Hill, within sight of his former home, in January 1663.
His crumbling mansion, surrounded by fields, was still standing in the 1920s and 30s when the first airfield was developed at Ronaldsway for passenger flights operated to the UK and Ireland by West Coast Air Services, Aer Lingus and Railway Air Services (RAS).
In a 1936 expansion of the embryonic airport led to workers discovering a mass grave believed to hold the remains of soldiers who died in that 1275 battle with the Scots.
But it was further expansion as a military airbase in the dark days of World War Two that led to both the demolition of Illiam Dhone’s old home and the discovery of the archaeological remains of a Neolithic settlement belonging to the Ronaldsway Culture, named in honour of this site.
Also sometimes also referred to as ‘Manx Ronaldsway’, these finds are believed to date from between 2,200 and 1,900 BC, in the era known as the later Neolithic period.
The culture is characterised by deep jars called Ronaldsway-style pots, stone axes with butts which have been roughened, and unusual flint tools. Where the Ronaldsway Culture does meet other cultures, there have been finds of shared monuments, including stone circles, passage and entrance graves, and henges. But it also has structures entirely of its own – in particular, the culture’s typical polished axe has been met with nowhere else, hence the belief of some experts that during at least part of the late Neolithic age the people of the Isle of Man developed independently from those in Britain and Ireland.
For the IoMNHAS event, Manx-born Rachel Crellin, who is researching the Ronaldsway Culture for her PhD project at Newcastle University, will present a lecture called ‘Changing times: Tracing Change from the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age on the Isle of Man.’
Rachel obtained a first class honours degree – and the highest marks in her year – in archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and went on to obtain an MA in material and visual culture studies with the anthropology department at University College London. She was awarded a distinction for her MA thesis using ethnographic research to explore the anthropology of the seascape as experienced by small boat-users on the Isle of Man.
Her Newcastle University PhD project is entitled ‘Scales of time, scales of change: the emergence of a Bronze Age on the Isle of Man’ and she also works for the Centre of Manx Studies helping to deliver their field schools in archaeological excavation techniques on the island, as well as acting as the project administrator for the AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) funded project The Tyne-Forth Prehistory Forum on prehistoric archaeology in north-east England and south-east Scotland.
For her lecture In the Manx Museum lecture theatre at 2pm on Saturday, February 8, she will discuss the changing archaeology of the Isle of Man from 3000-1500 BC and will draw together her doctoral research to present her interpretation of how life was lived in the island in the the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age, as well as evidence-led analysis of material culture, mortuary practices and transformation of island landscape.
She will focus on axes of both stone and bronze and use them as a way of exploring the effects of changing technology. Her analysis of the Early Bronze Age in the Isle of Man will show the impact of bronze as a new material and she will also consider burial practices supported by 12 new radiocarbon dates (work funded by the Manx Heritage Foundation).
She will then address the question of how ancient Manx people’s relationship with earth and landscape changed over time, drawing together diverse evidence including Earthfast Jar practices, the construction of burial monuments and the settlement evidence from the period.
As well as Rachel’s lecture, the society’s activities will continue with further Traditional Buildings of Mann fieldwork sessions on Saturdays, February 15 (details to be finalised) and March 16 (meet 10.30am at Round Table crossroads, destination Ballavel).
Future lectures include former society president and current senior marine biodiversity officer of the Fisheries Directorate at the Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture Dr Fiona Gell giving her president’s lecture on ‘A Glimpse into the History of the Manx Marine Environment’ on Saturday, March 1. Also, on Saturday, April 12, expert on the social and cultural history of tourism Professor John Walton will give a lecture entitled ‘Tourism, the Isle of Man and the Irish Sea Economy in the 19th and 20th Centuries’.
For further details of the society, visit www.manxantiquarians.com and facebook.com/IsleofManNaturalHistoryandAntiquarianSociety