Settlement, political and social transformation in Armagh, Northern Ireland

The topic of power holds great interest for social scientists and in the last few decades there has been a reexamination of how power is expressed "from the bottom-up" as opposed to the traditional "top-down" narrative. Bottom-up approaches to power examine the ways in which power can be broadly dispersed and exercised at the community level, as exemplified in the modern day development of so-called grass-roots initiatives. Discussion of power in both past and present have usually assumed a top-down perspective, where power is vested in elites, structure, and social hierarchy, while ordinary people have little power. However, studies from a broad array of social sciences have demonstrated that power from below can result in successful outcomes even in the presence of centralized elite decision-making, a finding which has ramifications for understanding how people are effectively governed, rebel and are motivated to change. This dissertation examines power and landscape in Early Medieval Ireland (c. AD 400-1200), a time period that is important in the construction of national identity and is usually viewed from a top-down perspective. The dissertation considers power and agency in all facets of society, with fieldwork undertaken to systematically examine a settlement landscape of all people, even marginalized populations. Fieldwork for the dissertation took the form of systematic surface survey, geochemical survey for soil phosphate, and excavations at locations indicated by the geochemistry, in a landscape just to the south of the known Early Medieval settlement at Armagh.;Early Medieval Ireland was comprised of numerous complex chiefdoms ruled by kings and populated by farmers, artisans, professionals and early Christian religious practitioners. Our historical knowledge of this period in time comes from numerous insular legal documents, recorded in a later era, hagiographies and other church documents, and literary resources. Archaeological knowledge derives largely from raths, the most common archaeological site in Ireland, a circular domestic enclosure consisting of an earthen wall and ditch. Raths were once thought to have been the homes of the elites in society, although recent research suggests that they may have housed a greater extent of the population than previously thought. However, due to the focus on kings and churchmen, Early Medieval Irish archaeology is generally considered from the "top-down" and little is known about those who inhabited known but rarely found unenclosed sites and what life was like for those who were "poor.".;Finds from surface survey and excavations in locations indicated by the geochemical survey included a significant number of lithic remains. Lithics are not usually presented as part of the Early Medieval toolkit, a situation that is explained in part by nationalism and an idealistic view of the period as a Golden Age; these topics are explored in-depth in Chapter 7. Lithics likely were the tools of the poor, but could have been utilized by all members of society. Whether or not they embody power from the bottom-up may be ascertained by future research. Raths, however, are modern-day manifestations of power from below. These sites are commonly known as "fairy-forts" across the island, and tradition dating back at least one hundred years forbids their alteration or destruction. In this way, local people have defined important places in their landscape, separate from those that are defined for them by state governing bodies. Raths are liminal places now, and may have conveyed liminality in the past. The nature of their construction and taboos surrounding their access suggest that these places were seen as collective goods, protected from outsiders and unwelcome guests by the liminal nature of the ditches that surrounded them. Access to raths was part of community membership and because of the interconnected nature of Early Medieval society, all, even the poor, could potentially claim these places as part of their landscape. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).