Dowris Hoard

Dowris Hoard
Image of the hoard in the National Museum of Ireland
Material	Bronze
Created	900–600 BC
Present location	British Museum, London; National Museum of Ireland, Dublin

The Dowris Hoard is the name of an important Bronze Age hoard of over 200 objects found in Dowris, County Offaly, Ireland. Items from the deposit are currently split between two institutions: the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin and the British Museum in London.^[1][2]

The hoard mostly of objects in bronze, was probably a ritual deposit, perhaps for religious purposes, though the records of the discovery, by farm labourers in the 1820s, do not allow to be sure if it was one deposit, or a series.^[3] Current thinking tends to see it as a series, possibly over a very long period, of ritual deposits into a lake.^[4]

The importance of the hoard in Irish prehistory has led to the naming of the final phase of the Irish Late Bronze Age (900–600 BC) as the Dowris Phase or period. Over time Irish prehistoric bronzesmiths had become highly adept at casting and working with sheet metal and the Dowris Phase reflects the culmination of this as well as an industrial growth in metalworking. During this period ironworking was already found on the European Continent, in Hallstatt culture "C", and arrived in Britain, but did not reach Ireland. Until the culture was apparently disrupted around 600 BC, gold jewellery of superb quality was produced, as well as weapons, tools, trumpets and other kinds of objects in bronze, of which the Dowris Hoard has an exceptional selection.^[5]