Circa 500BC to 500AD Iron Age. Irish stone head. Limestone; broken at the base, lower part of mouth

Circa 500BC to 500AD Iron Age. Irish stone head. Limestone; broken at the base, lower part of mouth chipped. Height: 180mm; width: 125mm; depth: 100mm; weight: 3.52kg.The front of the stone is smooth and flat, the back is curved and roughly worked. The flattish facial composition comprises protuberant lentoid eyes with lightly defined eyelids, elongated triangular nose, and narrow open mouth, with minimally defined lips. A small hole (diameter: 4mm) is drilled into the centre of the mouth. The head is oval, with a narrow chin. In addition, the ears have been rendered as a large C-shaped raised outline at either side of the head. The stone is broken at the neck, removing the original base; it may originally have been set into another stone. It is notoriously difficult to be certain about the dating of an isolated stone head. The introduction of the carved stone head in Ireland can be traced to the Iron Age, but representations of the human head continued to be produced into the medieval period and beyond. Lorrha, Co. Tipperary is renowned for the wealth of its medieval heritage. It was a significant ecclesiastical centre, and substantial remains of a monastic complex survive there. The doorway arch in the south wall of St Ruadan`s church, dated to the late twelfth/early thirteenth century, has a carved head at its apex. The late medieval head of a woman is over the doorway of the Augustinian priory. The east wall of the nineteenth-century church incorporates two carved stone heads, believed to have come from the Dominican friary adjacent to it. It might appear at first glance that a stone head associated with a place of such rich ecclesiastical history as Lorrha must date from the medieval period. However, this stone head differs stylistically from the medieval examples at Lorrha, and there are reasonable grounds for regarding it as a prehistoric object.The Iron Age (`Celtic`) carved stone head is characterised by simplicity of form. The simplified representation of the features of the prehistoric stone head contrasts with the more realistic style that was introduced with the Romanesque building tradition. In the words of Barry Raftery, an authority on the Iron Age in Ireland, `the realistic portrayal of the human form was of no great concern to Celtic craftsmen`. This stone head, despite the open mouth, possesses a spare, primitive quality, the lack of embellishment contrasting with the more naturalistic examples from the medieval period. Any suggestion of elaboration, such as an in relation to the hairline, is absent. A number of stone heads provide parallels for this example. A stone head in Wakefield Museum, Yorkshire, dated 600 BC-AD 43, has a similar `long face` style with lentoid eyes, elongated nose and open mouth. A stone head found at Holt, Wrexham in December 2013 can be placed in this group, although there is reluctance in ascribing an Iron Age date as it did not come from a securely dated context (Portable Antiquities Scheme website). An example in the National Museum of Ireland, from Trabolgan, Co. Cork, also has similarities with this stone. It was found in a ringfort, and although it was originally interpreted as an Iron Age find, an early medieval date is a possibility. Another carved stone that provides further comparisons is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The item, listed as `Head of a man wearing a cap or helmet` is a limestone head dated to the second to third centuries. One aspect of the head that is of particular interest is the small hole drilled in the centre of the mouth. This type of hole is present on a number of Iron Age stone heads. Etienne Rynne, writing on the corpus of Celtic stone heads in Ireland in 1972 noted that `the hole in the mouth feature seems to be characteristic of some Celtic stone heads`. Two heads from Armaghbrague, near Newtownhamilton, Co. Armagh each have a circular hole to the side of the mouth; there is a small hole in the mouth of the front face of the famo