lona: a view from Ireland

The archaeology of islands exercises a particular fascination, and when the island is a 'cradle of Christianity', like lona, the fascination is irresistible. The Royal Commission's decision to devote a whole Inventory volume to an island measuring only 5-5 by 2-5 km is amply justified by the wealth of material remains as well as lona's historical importance. Though remote to modern eyes, it is a mistake to see the island as 'peripheral'. In the Early Christian period it was a meeting-place of many traditions, easy of access by sea, very close to Pictland and Ireland and not far from Northumbria. In the middle ages the abbey was patronized by the Lords of the Isles, who were buried in Reilig Odhrain. It was a focus for pilgrims to the 16th century, and from the 18th century acted as a magnet for travellers including Dr Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, John Keats, William Wordsworth and Felix Mendelssohn. lona's long and complicated history has produced a rich archaeological heritage, but also some of the problems which emerge from the inventory volume and two recent excavation reports. The monastic occupation must have left an enormously complicated buried record over a large area. Liam de Paor's extensive excavations on the island monastery of Iniscealtra in Lough Derg (Co Clare) have uncovered evidence for centuries of pilgrimage as well as a complicated sequence of medieval and Early Christian period features. The buried remains of lona have attracted several excavators over the past 30 years: Charles Thomas from 1956 onwards, Richard Reece from 1964 to 1974 and John Barber in 1979. Reece found an 18th-century ha-ha, built to exclude cattle from the abbey, running across the old guest-house, and Barber encountered the infilled trenches of earlier excavators. lona has had its own pressures from 'development', through the extensive restoration of ruins and the provision of facilities. A reminder of this continuing pressure is a reference to a fire-door inserted since the Commission plan was drawn! It is clear that earlier work was not always well recorded, or that records have not survived. Some restoration has obscured evidence and earlier attempts to repair St John's Cross have damaged it. At the end of the 19th century distinguished scholars, like Baldwin Brown and Romilly Alien, argued against plans for restoration, and it is interesting to note that considerable acrimony has been aroused recently over the 'restoration' of Holycross Abbey in Co Tipperary (eg Stalley 1987, 246). It is time to turn from the problems, however, and look at the archaeological and architectural riches of lona. The emphasis of the inventory volume is properly on the monastic area, but the prehistoric and post-medieval features and buildings are also described. John Barber's 1979 excavation allowed him to make a confident statement about prehistoric activity: 'the raised beach has almost certainly been cultivated, if not continuously, then at least frequently throughout the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages' (Barber 1981, 355). One question which remains for further investigation is the state of the area which became the monastery when St Columba arrived in