Irish yoke finds

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Irish yoke finds ( English Irish yokes ) come mostly from moors.

16 largely intact yokes are known from Ireland , six of which come from the Republic of Ireland . One find was assigned to the Iron Age for morphological reasons , but most are early medieval .

There are different types of yokes:

  • the head yoke with the variants forehead and neck yoke, which is attached to the horns
  • the yoke at the withers, which rests on the chest.

Early medieval sources suggest that the use of the head yoke was viewed as the earlier and more primitive of the two methods. The collar curvature of Toberdaly's yoke suggests that it is an early withers yoke. Withers yokes generally have vertical perforations on the sides of the collar to hold the pins and tenons that encircle the neck. Since the Toberdalyjoch has vertical and horizontal perforations, this indicates that early yokes have the character of both types.

Harness

The literature on the normal size of the teams is inconclusive. It could consist of two to six oxen , usually four. When plowing with four oxen, the animals were harnessed side by side, using two yokes of different lengths. There was a short yoke for the two central animals and a long one for the outer pair, which was positioned slightly in front of the inner one. An early medieval long yoke fragment from Erriff in County Mayo seems to provide evidence of this practice. Since the Toberdalyjoch is incomplete, it cannot be determined whether it corresponds to the short or long form and whether it is a prehistoric forerunner of this tension. Its reconstruction is based on the short form with assumed symmetry; however, the cross member section is unsafe and based on simple shapes.

Most Irish yokes appear to be roughly hewn, but there are two finely carved examples that parallels Toberdaly. A short yoke from Northern Ireland, comparable to continental European yokes of the Latène period , is perhaps the closest parallel in form and date.

See also

literature

  • Stanley, Michael; Mcdermott, Conor; Moore, Cathy; Murray, Cara, Throwing off the yoke. Archeology Ireland 17/2, 2003, pp. 6-8. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20562663
  • A. Fenton: Early Yoke types in Britain In: Proceedings of the Hungarian Agricultur Museum 1971 pp. 69-75
  • Stuart Pigott: An Iron Age yoke from Northern Ireland In: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 15, 1949, pp. 192-193.