Dowris near Kilcormac, Co. Offaly, is well known to archaeologists in these islands and probably in Western Europe also, for its association with a particular type of bronze found there in the early nineteenth century. Dowris was given the name Whigsborough in the 18th century. It is an extensive townland but for the most part bog. Historians concerned with Ireland before St. Patrick (432 A.D.) depended not on written sources, for there are none, but on the evidence which archaeologists infer from the ‘finds’ they make and the material they were made from.
Having regard to the material from which these ‘finds’ are manufactured archaeologists have divided the history of Ireland before Christ into three distinct periods. First the Stone Age. The first traces of man in Ireland can be dated to about 6000 B.C. Stone age man depended on hunting and used flint tools. The evidence for the settlement pattern of Irish Stone Age man is based on the tombs, which he had left behind - cairns, passage graves, etc.
STONE AGE
The Stone Age in Ireland is said to have lasted, until about 750 B.C. About this time bronze implements were introduced from Europe. Bronze Age man equipped with better tools took to farming. In fact he became a producer (Stone Age man had simply hunted). He also acquired a reputation for the manufacture of fine bronze tools. Harbison: says: “The widespread use of copper and bronze together with the well known Irish gold must have made Ireland one of the best known metal producers in Western Europe.
IRON AGE
The Iron Age is said to have begun about 500 B.C. The division of Irish prehistory into three distinct periods often comes in for criticism from scholars who wish to add sophisticated refinements so as to make the categories more realistic. Thus the Irish Bronze Age is divided into several periods based on the type of bronze finds. The Dowris bronze is referred to as the type of bronze associated with the latter bronze age. But perhaps we ought to go back to the beginning at this point - to Dowris in the 1820s.
T. D. Cooke, the historian
of Birr, reporting the find in the Dublin Penny Journal of 1833, said
that some ten years earlier Ed. Hennessy (the name is Kennedy in his History
of Birr) along with another person accidentally dug up the bronze pieces
in a potato patch about half way between Whigsborough House and Dough
Cowra. 
Almost
a cartload of bronze spearheads, horns, cauldrons, axe heads, etc., were
taken from the place, mostly collected by the Earl of Rosse and T. D.
Cooke. Cooke reported the find to the Royal Irish Academy in 1848.
Right: Crotal from the Dowras hoard
Fortunately a considerable
amount of material found at Dowris is still extant and in the collections
of the British Museum and the National Museum of Ireland. Archaeologists
have dated the Dowris material to about 7th century B.C thus marking the
first phase in the Irish Bronze Age.
Presumably this dating is based on the superior quality of the metalwork, and the finding of considerable numbers of decorative bronze pieces such as bracelets and dress fasteners.
Right: Trumpets from the Dowras hoard
OFFERING PLACE
More recently archaeologists have tried to explain the significance of such a large find on one site. Eoghan Cole advanced the theory that the objects found might represent the residue of offering-places, places where valuable materials were delivered into the waters of stream, river or lake for ritual or ceremonial purposes. Of course the lakes in Dowris have now been drained. Cole adds to this that two items of late bronze age metalwork, the horn and the crotal, might be taken to represent a ceremonial practice involving the bull. The objects representing the fertile elements of the animal, the bull’s horn and the scrotum.
Both types of bronze horn associated
with the period have been found at Dowris. Cole goes on to say that Dowris
must have been a central offering place because the find, almost 200 pieces,
was so large.
from Tullamore Tribune - September 8th, 2000
The Derrinboy Hoard
The hoard found during turf cutting in June 1959 included five objects surrounded by copper wire. The artifacts were found at a depth of about four metres below the surface of a bog.
The hoard is famous for its two gold broad-ribbet armlets of outstanding beauty and amazing craftsmanship and believed to be over 3,000 years old.
The armlets are cylindrical in shape with the ends touching. They are made of fairly heavy gold sheets, the edges of which were turned over to form a raised re-inforced border.
They have been dated to 1200-1000 BC. The decorative work is regarded as Southern British with some continental influences.
The hoard also consists of two gold tress rings, also cylindrical in shape and a neck ring, with a cylindrical leather core around which a gold wire was closely wound.
When the object reached the National Museum, where the entire hoard is currently located, most of the wire had been pulled off the leather.
The entire find was located surrounded in copper wire.
The nature of the objects (personal adornment in gold) suggests that the items were probably a type of funerary deposit related to one individual.
The Banagher Hoard
Details of the find are sketchy with the first publication of the artifacts stating that the items were found in a field some years before 1918.
The hoard includes a bronze bracelet, a gold dress fastener, two solid bronze rings and 125 amber beads.
The solid bracelet is pennanular in form, meaning that it is incomplete with a gap to allow a free-swivelling pin to pass through. It has evenly expanded bronze terminals at each end of the bracelet.
The dress fastener is lozenge-shaped. It is solid and tapers from a maximum thickness of 9 mm in the middle to 5.5mm at the junction with the terminals.
The circular terminals, one of which is slightly damaged, average 42 mm in diameter.
The terminals thicken towards the outside forming a sort of beaded edge.
The amber beads are probably from a necklace. The beads vary in shape and size with the largest (40 mm) likely to have been located at the centre front of the necklace.
The hoard is again located in the National Museum.
The Charleville Hoard
Extreme variation in dates of bronze items found in Charleville Estate in 1960 means that the collection of artifacts is not generally regarded as a hoard.
The collection includes spearheads, axeheads, gouges and a sickle.
A shield-pattern palstave (a form of bronze axeheads common in the Early Bronze Age in Europe) found in Charleville is usually associated with the period around 1,500 BC while another of the finds is dated to the 8th century BC.
These items too are stored by the National Museum.