Reframing the first millennium AD in Ireland: archaeology, history, landscape

Abstract

There is a pressing need for more materially centred narratives and analytical frameworks for the study of later Iron Age and early medieval Ireland, which account explicitly for the exponential increase in data. The discoveries of recent decades should encourage new questions to be asked of first millennium AD Ireland, but notwithstanding recent advances, their potential to transform our understanding of the period has not been fully realised. It is suggested that in part this is a result of a general reticence toward theorising approaches to this period, and that concomitantly, much can be gained from explicit theorisation. More integrated and theoretically engaged research agendas are needed to facilitate holistic contextualisation in order to reframe first millennium AD Ireland. The paper considers a number of key areas where this necessity is paramount because of the transformative potential of new datasets, namely, the relationship between theory and historiography, mortuary archaeology, cosmology and religion.