How did the Irish create and live in their own worlds in Early Medieval Ireland? This is the overriding question of a book, which brings an overview of the results of a century of archaeological excavations.

Early Medieval Ireland AD 400 – 1100. The Evidence from Archaeological Excavations.
By Aidan O’Sullican, Finbar McCormick, Thomas R. Keer and Lorgan Harney
Royal Irish Academic Monographs
Dublin, Royal Irish Academy 2013

The practicalities of daily life in an early medieval setting are something, which can only be approached archaeologically. One of the challenges getting at this information is nonetheless that most archaeologists prefer to freeze their butts off in moist and damp earthen pits, rather than sit at a desk collating the information and think about the grand patterns behind what they have found. Publishing the results is something archaeologists often try to avoid.

One consequence are the enormous amounts of unpublished archaeological reports lying around all over Europe (and sometimes even in the attics of the archaeologists, who are jealously guarding their trophies of knowledge until “better times”). Another consequence is that this state of affairs has progressed exponentially in the last 20 years, where “rescue-archaeology” gathered such a prominent position in the planning procedures of the modern landscapes of the 21^st century.

In this Ireland was never not a special case, although it did make an impact that “Celtic Tiger Ireland” crated a maelstrom of feverous building and development. What was more unusual was, that the Irish Heritage Mangers began to address this crisis in 2006 by establishing (from 2008) INSTAR: Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research.

The present – highly recommendable – book, which represents an overview of the evidence from the archaeological excavations in Ireland during the 20^th century and especially the last decades, is a lasting result of this.

Covering everything from landscape and subsistence infrastructure to craftworking and trade, it tells us in details about early medieval dwellings and settlements, the churches, the crafts and technologies and the rituals surrounding death and burials. This book investigates and reconstructs from archaeological evidence how early medieval Irish people lived together as social groups, worked the land as farmers, worshipped God, made and used objects and buried their dead around them. It focuses on the evidence from excavations conducted between 1930 and 2012 and uses that evidence to explore how people used their landscapes, dwellings and material culture to effect and negotiate social, ideological and economic continuities and changes during the period AD 400–1100.

Read together with the very recent book on the History of Early Medieval Ireland 400 – 1100 AD, the serious medieval traveller will be well equipped to get an understanding of what Early Medieval Ireland was all about.

The book is available in print as well as a pdf (half price)