MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Conor Newman has visited the site of the ancient find. He's professor of archeology at the National University of Ireland, and joins us from Galway. Professor Newman, can you describe what was found at the site? What does it look like?
CONOR NEWMAN: Well, what was found were the remains of a series of concentric timber circles. And so, obviously, the wood is long gone and what we see on the ground are the remains of the post holes themselves. The circles covering the area in the order of 18 meters in diameter, and in the middle of that area is a 16-meter diameter enclosure, and it's entranced by a funnel-shaped avenue.
BLOCK: And do you know what it might have been used for?
NEWMAN: So they have uncovered, I would guess, in the order of, maybe, four-fifths of the monument. Then you'd finish off emptying out the fills of the posts and the various pits that are found in the area. One of the pits is quite interesting. It's just to the south of the enclosure, and it contains the remains of a very large hunting dog. There's a very interesting pattern emerging in Irish archeology, where these really big hunting dogs, they'd be on the scale of a large Alsatian or a small wolf, and that they're very much a symbol of authority and power. And we're finding consistently that they are buried or sacrificed at these great royal sites.
BLOCK: And the bones of that dog were found here at this site?
NEWMAN: Yeah.
BLOCK: Wow.
NEWMAN: So that's actually, from our point of view, it's one of the things that helps to convince us without obviously clear, independent, scientific dating that we're talking about a monument here that is Celtic, ultimately.
BLOCK: Why don't you explain for us what the significance is of Tara, of this historic and ancient region of the country?
NEWMAN: And this convergence gives us a very clear resolution on the shape and size and makeup of the ritual landscape that is Tara. We've known this for many years, and yet, in spite of all that, and in spite of our warnings and those of all of the cultural institutions in Ireland, they persisted with their plan to drive a motorway right through the middle of this landscape. And thus, they will be cleaving in two permanently a landscape that has survived as a result of its history and the careful custodianship of Irish generations. They will cleave it in two, permanently.
BLOCK: Well, will there be any way to reroute this road? Or is this whole area so rich with potential sites like this that it really is unthinkable.
NEWMAN: I mean, the ideal, from my perspective, I supposed, and from the perspective of the economy will be to go to the west of the hill of Tara. Because by so doing, they would be cutting in the order of one and a half or two kilometers off the length of the motorway, anyway. They have found so many monuments in the course of their test trenching. They were finding them every 400 meters. That, at that point in time, they really should have said okay enough is enough. It's time not to go into this valley because we're never going to get back out of it.
BLOCK: Do you think that preservationists, such as yourself, have public opinion on your side or would most Irish people say: We need a faster road. We're stuck in traffic trying to get to Dublin every day and let's just build this thing?
NEWMAN: Yeah. Well, it's interesting you should ask that because the Irish Times are running a poll over the course of today. And I've been getting reports in over the course of the afternoon that 70 percent of people want the motorway rerouted. What the politicians are keen to do is to make it a local issue. But the fact is we're dealing with a site that really should be a World Heritage site here. So it's not a local issue at all. It's something that's dear to the hearts of many Irish people.
BLOCK: Well, Professor Newman, thanks for talking with us.
NEWMAN: Thank you.
BLOCK: Conor Newman is a professor of archeology at the National University of Ireland. He spoke to us from Galway.
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