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Who has not had the need to use a container of butter to accompany their meal for lunch or dinner? Butter is one of the most common parts of people’s daily meals, but is consuming it the only use? People have been using butter for centuries but according to some archeological findings and research done by prominent scholars, it was discovered that butter was being used for skin care and lubricant as well. For instance, it is believed that ancient Geeks and Egyptians used their butter as facial masks/hydrating cream, also as a lotion for dehydrated skin.
While many older civilizations had variety of uses for butter, this report will solely focus on bog butter found in the areas of Scotland and Ireland. Various intellectuals that have performed research in this area have theorized that ancient Scottish and Irish people buried their butter kegs because it was a common ritual. Sources supporting these theories come from researchers such as Caroline Earwood, James Ritchie, T.J Kelleher, and Chris Synnott.
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These regions have a unique butter history for the way they created their bog butter containers, the way they prepared their butter, and how they preserved their containers and buried them underground that they survived to this day.
To begin with, Scotland and Ireland contain numerous bog butter containers that are found buried more than a couple of meters underground. Over 200 containers have been found that are in a well-preserved condition and they have been stored in many museums around Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere.
Caroline Earwood is a scholar who studies domestic artifacts that date back even until the eleventh century, prominently in Scotland and other areas around the UK and Western Europe. Most of these containers date back to the Iron Age or the Medieval Period and when excavators found them, they thought they were either butter or stinky cheese because of the milky/greasy texture. The butter containers were most commonly found in the areas of Skye, Mayo, Galway, Donegal, Kerry, and other territories. This author makes a clear point to state that maybe these bog containers were found as they were because they were used as a ritual offering or as a way of repayment. That explains why the bog butter was carefully preserved, the butter was being stored by the people because it was not going to be consumed immediately. Earwood states in her article, “butter was stored not as food but to be used in some other process such as for greasing washed wool … and the deposition as a ritual offering” (Earwood 1997, 238).
As a matter of fact, she states that the butter found inside these kegs still had the cattle hairs inside it, “Bog butter commonly contains hairs, many of which have been identified as reddish/brown cattle hairs. The analysis also shows that bog butter does not contain salt” (Earwood 1997, 238). Although the butter had become a bit rancid it was in a very good condition and was said by chemists that it was safe to taste but was recommended not to. That is how most of the artifacts were found according to the archeological study. Scotland and Ireland’s butter is a particular source found in European museums and others around the world, something not commonly heard of. Furthermore, there has to be some type of evidence attached to what the sources are revealing to the audience. There many kegs of butter that have been found, studied, photographed, preserved, frozen, recreated, and drawn. Most of them are made of carved tree material and are smoothened out to fit the butter. The container found in Kyleakin Sky was made out of the popular alder tree and, “is considerably smaller than that from Morvern, being 356 mm in height with a maximum diameter of 330 mm” (Earwood 1997, 233).
The container and butter found inside it were dated all the way back to the 14th century according to the Radiocarbon Dating Research Unit. It is said that the butter derived from a cow and could be its milk and its fat. The studies on this bog butter container depict, “The top layer of the butter was slightly raised in the centre presumably to make sure any moisture ran off” (Earwood 1997, 238). The reason why the containers were found deep into the ground was because the areas in which they were found in have usually had rainy and cold climates throughout the years. The moist ground served these people as a fridge and even though the weather would get humid sometimes, it was nonetheless cold and the butter would not go rotten as quickly as it would in warmer regions. By the looks of how most of the keg containers have been found, it seems as though they were meant to be stored for a while and not just a couple of months as for it to be immediately consumed.
Many of the scholars agree with this theory. It has been demonstrated through a number of excavation findings and said that butter container is what was most commonly found in bogs. This butter was often confused with very milky cheese, sour cream, and tallow due to its lumpy consistency. As mentioned previously, it was carefully preserved in the moist dirt because unlike other countries, Scotland and Ireland’s ground doesn’t become too dry, it is typically rainy. Professor James Ritchie who performs research in Scotland wrote a detailed article based on his findings inside two kegs of butter from Skye. In this article, he states that the longer the butter was kept, the better it became over time, almost like wine. As he opened the kegs found more than 6 feet underground, he discovered the texture of the butter was moist even though it had been stored inside the wooden container for so long. He says that the butter looked so fresh it could be scooped out easily with just a fingernail and the keg the butter was found inside of, was a bit disintegrated and rotten. He further explains the condition of the butter and says that when it was removed from the keg the texture was, “of a bleached white colour and a cheesy consistency, cutting easily and cleanly with a knife” (Ritchie 1941, 9).
His research team proceeded to taste the butter and described the old butter was rancid and tasted very much like sour milk. It did not have a pleasant taste so he proceeded to make the claim that the many found bog butter containers were a tradition and it was probably not sold instantly but instead buried and kept. The bog butter was buried to increase its value, it was not sold immediately but after many years they were either offered as a ritual, exchanged for other valuable goods, or sold because it was praised the older the bog butter container became. Since the bog butter containers were kept as if they were treasures, they were even forgotten about or even lost in the ground. People became so protective of these containers they hid them so well to avoid people from stealing them that they sunk in the ground so deep they were never recovered until just some recent years ago.
Many of these butter containers are found in different areas but in similar conditions, in the same way other archeologists have found various kegs in what are known as peat bogs. These are large moist mosses full of dead plant material. It was inside one of these peat bogs located in the British Isles that the organic chemist known as Robert Berston from the University of England found a keg in a good enough condition to be studied. T.J. Kelleher, a publisher and editor who worked with science and history articles took a look at his research. Kelleher explained Berston’s findings and after a hard and thorough investigation on dating the container, he and his team came down to the conclusion that it originated around the end of the 15th century. Kelleher says that Berston and his group of scholars also went further into studying what exactly was contained in the butter substance. They came to the result that the butter was “55.4 percent fatty matter and 43.3 percent. Material which was volatile at 100 c” (Kelleher 2004, 2).
Based on this data found by a couple of scientists many become confused about whether it was simply animal fat or if it’s actually butter. It has been suggested that this could be due to lactic fermentation and how it proportions butyric acid (Kelleher 2004, 2). Either way, it is still more widely believed that it is butter and not just animal fat it has just become higher in acids as it actually has due to being stored underground for so long, it became heavily rancid. This paper has discussed the conditions in which the butter has been found and the areas in which the butter was found too, but it will go further into explaining why the butter was inside a keg. It has been briefly mentioned that the butter was placed inside the container because the longer it was kept in the container, the better and worthier the butter would later become. Chris Synnott, is s professor in food engineering and an employee at a museum of butter, he is also very involved in his local history. This professor wrote an important journal on the reasons why butter was kept in a container and why it was kept there for so long. Based on artifacts found in both Scotland and Ireland the author states that the substance was used as food rent and the butter must be “quality” butter. Synnott also says that fresh butter was said to have a strong garlicky flavor and in order to get rid of it, it was stored in the ground (Synnott 2010, 142).
The flavor of garlic did not result in garlic seasoning but in the herbs consumed by the cattle that later affected the taste of its milk. Butter was also stored in containers because the cattle wouldn’t produce milk as much following the summer, so people would store the butter in case of shortage for the winter. He also states that Christians would consume the butter during Lenten fare for and after lent finished, they would accompany the rest of the butter with a hog (Synnott 210, 142). Leaving the butter in the container for a long period of time caused fermentation, which explains why there was no salt added to the butter, the purpose was to create a nutritive butter. After extensive research on bog butter, it is significant to say that butter predominantly found in Scotland and Ireland has a rich and distinctive history.
Old butter artifacts found in these regions were so unique and naturally conserved and their kegs did not crumble in the moist dirt for many centuries. It is crucial to point out that Scottish and Irish people thought that the more time the butter was preserved underground, more benefits were brought to them. People tend to hear of aging cheese, wine, and even meat but butter in these particular regions was valued in a comparable way. Something the sources failed to mention was the reason of why the containers were made out of wood and not other material. Also, how the butter would have aged differently if it was stored elsewhere. Bog butter containers are found in many museums and are such an interesting phenomenon that some archeologists have attempted to recreate them today.
A Short History of Making Butter. (2021, Jan 29). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/a-short-history-of-making-butter-essay
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