Armagh and the Royal Centres in Early Medieval Ireland: Monuments, Cosmology, and the Past

By N.B. Aitchison

Evidence suggests that the middle of the first millenium AD was a significant period in Irish history: a time of increasing political centralisation and the erosion of Iron Age belief patterns and social structures. In this persuasive thesis Aitchison proposes a date of AD500 as a cut-off point between Iron-Age and Early Medieval Ireland. His primary interest lies in this latter society with its new political organisations. He highlights monuments as a focus for study and argues that they have been been poorly defined and understood in the literature. He argues that a monument, while it is a reminder of the past, may also be invested with new ideological significance by a later society. Within this framework he investigates the way in which the Early Medieval Irish invested much older monuments with ideological meaning and uses Armagh and other royal centres as a vehicle for analysing central themes of early Irish history. The book coincides with a resurgence of archaeological interest in the sites of Armagh and the Navan Fort and includes a formidable bibliography.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1873448023
• ISBN13: 9781873448021
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"