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REVIEW BY TADGH O’KEEFFE
Back in the 1980s, when the study of settlement and landscape in high and later medieval Ireland began to take off in earnest, little attention was paid to the world of the native Irish. Things have changed: quantitatively, it seems that more has been written over the past quarter-century about the landscape of Gaelic Ireland than about that of colonial Ireland. Dr Curley’s study of the Gaelic lordship of Uí Maine is the latest contribution to the project of redressing a historiographical imbalance. Based on a PhD thesis presented to the University of Galway, this is an outstanding work of scholarship: Daniel has a historian’s command of written sources, a geographer’s acute sense of landscape, and an archaeologist’s comfort with fine-grained survey data. In essence, his book presents a narrative of the changing geography of the lordship between the 12th and 16th centuries, documents its economic basis, and records in exceptional detail and with exceptional clarity the variety of its elite settlement forms.
The book tells a clear story from start to finish, but, to my mind at least, it raises issues – as do other recent publications, which is why I highlight them here – about the nature of this newly emergent tradition of archaeological scholarship on Gaelic Ireland. First, it privileges the historical record: it is archaeology at the service of what the documents tell us about people, places, and polities. Second, it adheres to the theory of a binary ethnic distinction between natives and colonists, which naturally leads to assumptions of essentialism: the natives did things one way, the colonists did things a different way (in this book, for example, see the generalisations on pp.264-265). Third, its inward-looking perspective paints a problematic picture of Gaelic-Irish exceptionalism: when the wider medieval world is not considered for comparative purposes, the principles and structure of lordship in Gaelic Ireland, and the physical expression of lordly power (in this book, see the analysis of Athlone Castle on p.166 as an extreme example), inevitably appear bespoke.
These concerns notwithstanding, this is an original and important book. I hope that Daniel does not sit back now, PhD published, but expands his enquiry into other Irish regions.
The Uí Chellaig lords of Uí Maine and Tír Maine: An archaeological and landscape exploration of a later medieval inland Gaelic lordship
Daniel Patrick Curley
Four Courts Press (€45)
ISBN 978-1801510912
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