Inishmurray: Archaeological survey and excavations 1997-2000

Inishmurray: Archaeological survey and excavations 1997-2000
Author: Jerry O'Sullivan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

"On the small island of Inishmurray, off the coast of County Sligo, is one of the best-preserved early medieval church sites in northern Europe. Unlike many of the other stone-built establishments on Ireland's western littoral, this was no hermitage where a handful of ascetics sought refuge from society. Inishmurray was a monastery of some significance and around the end of the first millennium its community built a remarkable suite of stations on the islands perimeter that helped to establish it as one of the premier pilgrimage centres in the northwest of the country. In this, the first detailed study of the site since the 1880s, a comprehensive new survey and series of excavations form the basis for a major reassessment of its significance. In particular, the authors place the satellite monuments firmly in a tradition of ritual practice that is attested to at cities and important monasteries throughout early medieval Christendom. This book offers the reader an understanding of how the sacred topography of Inishmurray was experienced both by its resident community of monks and by the pilgrims who journeyed there." --Book Jacket.

On the Edge

On the Edge
Author: Diarmaid Ferriter
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2018-10-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782832521

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ONSIDE NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 The islands off the coast of Ireland have long been a source of fascination. Seen as repositories of an ancient Irish culture and the epitome of Irish romanticism, they have attracted generations of scholars, artists and filmmakers, from James Joyce to Robert O'Flaherty, looking for a way of life uncontaminated by modernity or materialism. But the reality for islanders has been a lot more complex. They faced poverty, hardship and official hostility, even while being expected to preserve an ancient culture and way of life. Writing in her 1936 autobiography, Peig Sayers, resident of Blaskets island, described it as 'this dreadful rock'. In 1841, there were 211 inhabited islands with a combined population of 38,000; by 2011, only 64 islands were inhabited, with a total population of 8,500. And younger generations continue to leave. By documenting the island experiences and the social, cultural and political reaction to them over the last 100 years, On the Edge examines why this exodus has happened, and the gulf between the rhetoric that elevated island life and the reality of the political hostility towards them.It uncovers, through state and private archives, personal memoirs, newspaper coverage, and the author's personal travels, the realities behind the "dreadful rocks", and the significance of the experiences of, and reactions to, those who were and remain, literally, on the very edge of European civilisation.

Illaunloughan Island

Illaunloughan Island
Author: Jenny White Marshall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2005
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Illaunloughan was a small monastery on the Atlantic edge of Ireland that lasted from the late 7th to the 9th century. The well-dated material evidence provides a chronological base for activities and customs that were previously of uncertain age in Ireland.

Glass of the Roman World

Glass of the Roman World
Author: Justine Bayley
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2015-07-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782977759

Glass of the Roman World illustrates the arrival of new cultural systems, mechanisms of trade and an expanded economic base in the early 1st millennium AD which, in combination, allowed the further development of the existing glass industry. Glass became something which encompassed more than simply a novel and highly decorative material. Glass production grew and its consumption increased until it was assimilated into all levels of society, used for display and luxury items but equally for utilitarian containers, windows and even tools. These 18 papers by renowned international scholars include studies of glass from Europe and the Near East. The authors write on a variety of topics where their work is at the forefront of new approaches to the subject. They both extend and consolidate aspects of our understanding of how glass was produced, traded and used throughout the Empire and the wider world drawing on chronology, typology, patterns of distribution, and other methodologies, including the incorporation of new scientific methods. Though focusing on a single material the papers are firmly based in its archaeological context in the wider economy of the Roman world, and consider glass as part of a complex material culture controlled by the expansion and contraction of the Empire. The volume is presented in honor of Jenny Price, a foremost scholar of Roman glass.

Landscapes of the Learned

Landscapes of the Learned
Author: Elizabeth FitzPatrick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2023-05-04
Genre:
ISBN: 0192855743

Gaelic literati were an elite and influential group in the social hierarchy of Irish lordships between c. 1300 and 1600. From their estates, they served Gaelic and Old English ruling families in the arts of history, law, medicine, and poetry. They farmed, kept guest-houses, conducted schools, and maintained networks of learning. In other capacities, they were involved in political assemblies and memorializing dynastic histories in landscape. This book presents a framework for identifying and interpreting the settings and built heritages of their estates in lordship borderscapes. It shows that a more textured definition of what this learned class represented can be achieved through the material record of the buildings and monuments they used, and where their lands were positioned in the political map. Where literati lived and worked are conceived as expressions of their intellectual and political cultures. Mediated by case studies of the landscapes of their estates, dwellings, and schools, the methodology is predominantly field based, using archaeological investigation and topographic and spatial analyses, and drawing on historical and literary texts, place-names and lore in referencing named people to places. More widely, the study contributes a landscape perspective to the growing body of work on autochthonous intellectual culture and the exercise of power by ruling families in late medieval and early modern northern European societies.

Bede and the Theory of Everything

Bede and the Theory of Everything
Author: Michelle P. Brown
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2023-09-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1789148278

An accessible biography of the venerable Bede, regarded as the father of English history. This book investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), the foremost scholar of the early Middle Ages and the “father of English history.” It examines his notable feats, including calculating the first tide tables, creating the Ceolfrith Bibles and the Lindisfarne Gospels, writing the earliest extant Old English poetry, and composing his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People. In addition to providing an accessible overview of Bede’s life and work, Michelle P. Brown describes new discoveries regarding Bede’s handwriting, his historical research, and his previously lost Old English translation of St John’s Gospel, dictated on his deathbed.

An Archaeology of Religion

An Archaeology of Religion
Author: Kit W. Wesler
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2012-04-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0761858466

Archaeologists have been increasingly turning their attention to the study of religion, but the field so far has lacked a cross-cultural overview. This text challenges archaeological conventions by refusing to respect the geographic and temporal boundaries with which archaeologists too often define their field. Worldwide in range and comparative in perspective, this exploration is guided by several fundamental questions: how do we recognize religion in the archaeological record? When should we recognize the first activities we call religious? What distinguishes a world religion? How can we see the formations of modern world religions in the archaeological record? An Archaeology of Religion begins with the first glimmers of what might be considered religious expression in the Paleolithic period and concludes with the complexities of world religions today. This book is an ambitious attempt to survey how scholars approach the identification of religious sites and practices in the archaeological record.

The Archaeology of the Early Medieval Celtic Churches: No. 29

The Archaeology of the Early Medieval Celtic Churches: No. 29
Author: Nancy Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 753
Release: 2017-10-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351546570

This volume focuses on new research on the archaeology of the early medieval Celtic churches c AD 400-1100 in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, south-west Britain and Brittany. The 21 papers use a variety of approaches to explore and analyse the archaeological evidence for the origins and development of the Church in these areas. The results of a recent multi-disciplinary research project to identify the archaeology of the early medieval church in different regions of Wales are considered alongside other new research and the discoveries made in excavations in both Wales and beyond. The papers reveal not only aspects of the archaeology of ecclesiastical landscapes with their monasteries, churches and cemeteries, but also special graves, relics, craftworking and the economy enabling both comparisons and contrasts. They likewise engage with ongoing debates concerning interpretation: historiography and the concept of the Celtic Church, conversion to Christianity, Christianization of the landscape and the changing functions and inter-relationships of sites, the development of saints cults, sacred space and pilgrimage landscapes and the origins of the monastic town .

Churches in Early Medieval Ireland

Churches in Early Medieval Ireland
Author: Tomás Ó Carragáin
Publisher: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2010
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

This is the first book devoted to churches in Ireland dating from the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century to the early stages of the Romanesque around 1100, including those built to house treasures of the golden age of Irish art, such as the Book of Kells and the Ardagh chalice. � Carrag�in's comprehensive survey of the surviving examples forms the basis for a far-reaching analysis of why these buildings looked as they did, and what they meant in the context of early Irish society. � Carrag�in also identifies a clear political and ideological context for the first Romanesque churches in Ireland and shows that, to a considerable extent, the Irish Romanesque represents the perpetuation of a long-established architectural tradition.