:: N25 Waterford Bypass

Elevated post-excavation view of the sweathouse and associated features at Rathpatrick, Co. Kilkenny. (Headland Archaeology Ltd)

A photograph (c. 1890) of a Native American sweatlodge in Montana, it is constructed from a framework of pliable branches and appears to be covered with blankets. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (N13775 detail). Photo by Fred E Miller.

Reconstruction of the sweathouse in use. (Jonathan Millar, Headland Archaeology Ltd)

Archaelogy & History:

Cleansing Body & Soul?

James Eogan, NRA senior archaeologist with the Southern Team, reports on the excavation of a prehistoric sweathouse on the N25 Waterford City Bypass..

Saunas are popping up all over the country as an integral part of ‘day spas’ attached to hotels and leisure centres. It is unlikely that any of the 21st-century sybarites who indulge in these luxurious facilities consider that they are doing something that at one time is likely to have had a deep spiritual meaning and that connects them to their ancestors in the later Bronze Age, 2,600 years ago—as a discovery during archaeological excavations in advance of the N25 Waterford City Bypass has shown..

Test-trenching in Rathpatrick townland, near Slieveroe, Co. Kilkenny, revealed a large mound of heat-shattered stone and charcoal in a poorly drained area close to a small stream. The team of archaeologists from Headland Archaeology Ltd, under the direction of Catríona Gleeson, initially presumed that they were dealing with a run-of-the-mill burnt mound, or fulacht fiadh site. As excavation progressed, however, it became clear that as well as ‘normal’ cookingsized troughs, on its western side the mound of burnt stone and charcoal covered evidence for much more interesting activity.

The main feature was a 5m diameter circular structure, the floor of which was about 0.4 m below the surrounding ground-level. Thirtysix stake-holes were found spaced regularly around the periphery of the sunken area. No evidence was found for any flooring material. At the eastern side, where the ground sloped upwards, two steps were cut into the subsoil, giving access to the sunken area; the steps coincide with a gap in the stake-holes. Close to the top step was a rectangular, bath-like pit, 3 m long and 2 m wide. Immediately south of the steps a pit formed an annex to the sunken area, and the two were separated by a slight ridge of subsoil and a number of small stake-holes. The excavators found a hearth less than 1 m upslope from the pit, to the south-east.

We believe that the sunken area would have been covered by a hemispherical, tent-like structure. Hazel charcoal was identified in the fill of some of the stake-holes; radiocarbon dating of a sample of this charcoal has shown that it came from a hazel tree that lived in the seventh and eighth centuries BC. Hazel rods, being long and flexible, would have been ideal for forming the framework needed to cover the area. The roof could have been made from hides or blankets, thatched with rushes or straw, or covered with sods. It is assumed that the small pit cut into the side of the structure was also covered by the roof. Stones heated in the fire could be easily carried with a tongs, or rolled downslope into the pit, where they would have radiated a significant amount of heat inside the covered area. If, as happens in modern saunas, water was sprinkled on the hot stones, steam would have been created and the temperature inside the covered area would have risen accordingly. Once the occupants of the sweathouse had enjoyed their steam-bath, they could climb the two steps and plunge into the pool outside to cool down.

We do not know if this sweathouse was used for the purely functional purpose of ensuring personal cleanliness—the occurrence of small bronze blades interpreted as razors in some Middle Bronze Age burials suggests that men became more concerned with their outward appearance at this time, between 800 and 1,000 years before the construction of the sweathouse at Rathpatrick—or if its use was associated with some complex ritual or symbolic bathing.

Sweathouses are a feature in many cultures in the northern latitudes. The best-known form is the Finnish sauna, the present-day Russians still choose to relax in the bania and the native peoples of North America built sweatlodges. Closer to home, geographer E Estyn Evans and antiquarian W G Wood-Martin recorded the use of drystone-built sweathouses in counties Sligo, Cavan and Antrim in the 19th century.

Parallels can be drawn between the sweathouse uncovered at Rathpatrick, on the N25 Waterford City Bypass, and a variety of ethnographic examples. In Ireland, sweathouses were used for medicinal purposes; Evans records that, in particular, they were beneficial for people suffering from rheumatic pain. In a parallel with modern custom, he also records that young women on Rathlin Island, Co. Antrim, went to the sweathouse to ‘improve their complexions before paying a visit to the Lammas Fair at Ballycastle’. However, these 19th-century Irish examples differed from their Bronze Age antecedents in their manner of heating: Evans records that they were heated directly by lighting fires in the interior, prior to use

The external appearance of the Rathpatrick sweathouse must have been similar to sweatlodges built by Native Americans. Those sweatlodges were built by pushing long, flexible branches, such as willow, into the ground, then bending them over and tying them together to make a hemispherical frame. The frame was covered with blankets or skins; more permanent lodges were covered with sods or daub. A pit was dug internally—either near the door or in the centre of the lodge—as a receptacle for the hot rocks that were used to heat the sweatlodge. The rocks were heated on a fire outside the sweatlodge and then carried inside on forked sticks.

In many cultures where they are recorded sweathouses are associated with rites of passage at significant milestones in a person’s life. In Finland and Russia it was a place where women gave birth. In North America the Sioux used sweatlodges for their ritual of purification (inapi). In Russia, before marriage a bride and groom went through separate purification rituals in the bania, but once the marriage ceremony was completed, they entered the bania together. Sweathouses are also linked to rituals associated with death in Russia. The mourners at the funeral took a communal bath in the bania after the funeral, in the belief that the soul of the departed would be warmed on its journey to the afterlife; this ritual bath was repeated 40 days after the funeral. In anthropological terms sweathouses are the locations where people cross social and spiritual boundaries, or where the normal boundaries are broken down. This aspect of their use is reflected in their physical siting at liminal (from the Latin limen, meaning threshold) locations in the landscape, such as at lakesides, beside streams on the edge of marshy areas, or on the fringes of, or in, forest clearings. Ethnographically they are also associated with individuals who are believed by their communities to have access to specialised or restricted knowledge, often of a religious, magical or otherworldly type.

Plan of the sweathouse and associated features. (Headland Archaeology Ltd)

The features excavated at Rathpatrick can be convincingly interpreted as the remains of a sweathouse. This is significant for a number of reasons. First, it suggests that some of the thousands of burnt mounds spread across the Irish landscape may have had a more complex use than the cooking function traditionally ascribed to them. At a superficial level it demonstrates a desire for cleanliness and hygiene in the Late Bronze Age. At a more profound level, if we follow the lead given by the ethnographic analogies, it is plausible that the Rathpatrick sweathouse was a structure that was of considerable social and spiritual significance to the community that built it. It may have been used to reinforce familial identities and as a place to enact group ceremonies. Restriction of access to the interior of a sweathouse may have been a way of emphasising differences in social standing between different members of the community. The location of the Rathpatrick sweathouse and burnt mounds in general re-emphasises the importance that our Bronze Age ancestors placed on wetland and watery environments and how these landscapes, which in modern terms are marginal areas, may have played a much more central role in the lives of those ancestors.

The identification of the Rathpatrick sweathouse not only adds a new type to the slim catalogue of Late Bronze Age monuments, it also adds another piece to be fitted into the emerging jigsaw of social and spiritual complexity in later Bronze Age Ireland.