This is a comprehensive study of Irish Viking graves and grave-goods and includes a detailed analysis of the Kilmainham-Islandbridge burial complex, and with a fully illustrated catalogue and typological discussion of the grave-goods.

Different approaches have been conducted to analyse the interactions of the different belief systems in the early medieval world. This book assesses the relationship between clerics and Scandinavian-influenced laity in the Irish Sea area through the placement of furnished graves at or near ecclesiastical sites in the ninth through the eleventh centuries. Other areas of funerary studies have moved beyond a dichotomy of Christianity and paganism, acknowledging that practices can be multifaceted. Yet, statements regarding Viking Age furnished graves in or near ecclesiastical sites are still not as pervasively open to this line of thinking. To bridge this gap, this book delves into the historiography and context of the burial practices through multidisciplinary analysis. The ecclesiastical sites and furnished graves of the eastern (southwest Scotland and northwest England), central (Isle of Man), and western (Ireland and Northern Ireland) Irish Sea areas are then examined using various sources to understand their contexts and relationships. In the final chapters, the sites and graves are brought together to identify any trends, any unique circumstances that led to local variances, and their fit into the larger picture. Viking Age furnished graves can be seen as an acceptable variation among an array of burial practices, and the relationship between the clergy and laity is far more complex and closely tied than has been portrayed. Viking and Ecclesiastical Interactions in the Irish Sea Area from the 9th to 11th Centuries will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in the history of the Vikings in the British-Irish Isles and their relationships with ecclesiastical institutions.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference held in Oslo in late 2005, which brought together scholars working in a wide variety of disciplines from Scandinavia, Great Britain and Ireland. The papers here began as those read at the conference, augmented by two written immediately after by attendees, but have been updated in light of the discussions in Oslo and more recent scholarship. They offer historical, archaeological, art-historical, religious-historical and philological views of the interaction and interdependence of Celtic and Norse populations in the Irish Sea region in the period 800 A.D.-1200 A.D. Contributors are Ian Beuermann, Barbara Crawford, Claire Downham, Fiona Edmonds, Colmán Etchingham, Zanette T. Glørstad, John Hines, Alan Lane, Julie Lund, Jan Erik Rekdal and David Wyatt.

An examination of the uses, meanings, and social impact of Viking Age textiles. This volume offers the first full study of archaeological fabrics and their decoration found in the North Atlantic region and dating broadly from the Viking or Norse period. With contributions from both academic scholars and practitioners, it shows how approaching early medieval textiles from archaeological, historical and literary contexts, and through the processes of learning and employing the traditional skills of making them, brings about a more nuanced understanding of early medieval cloths: their creation, use and meanings within their respective societies. The book is divided into two parts. The first, "Textiles and their Interpretation", takes the reader on a journey from how wool was processed in the Viking Age, and the conservator's role in preserving and interpreting archaeological textiles, to different types of analyses that researchers use to understand and explain textiles from across the wide area of the Viking-influenced North Atlantic region. The second, "Understanding through Replicating", investigates the results of practical experiments in the reconstruction of surviving medieval fabrics and the resulting empirical conclusions that can be made about their manufacture and wider cultural implications.

This is the first practical archaeological study of Irish Iron Age lorinery. The horse and associated equipment were very much at the heart of the social changes set in motion by contact with the Roman Empire; the examination of the snaffles and bosals allows us to bring the people of the Late Iron Age in Ireland into focus.

This book explores multiple burials, the presence of more than one individual within a grave, within the Viking Age mortuary landscape throughout Scandinavia and the lands of their westward diaspora. Even though a number of spectacular examples have captured the imagination of professionals and the public alike, multiple burials have not been the subject of dedicated and systematic archaeological investigation. By adopting a perspective grounded in relationality and an analysis that centres on three types of beings—humans, animals and things—this book explores the ways in which each being entered into entangled relationships with the other, thereby mutually constituting the nature of their existence in Viking Age minds. For the first time, the corpus of Viking Age multiple burials located across the lands of the Western Scandinavian diaspora and their counterparts in the urban trading centres of Kaupang (Norway) and Hedeby (formerly Denmark) is synthesised into a single study, firmly situating the multiple burial rite within the wider suite of normative burial practices observed across the Viking World. The book meaningfully engages with a developing discourse in the Scandinavian tradition increasingly revealing the fluidity of being across human, animal and thing bodies in Iron Age mentalities and material culture. Ultimately, it poses the question: are humans, animals, and things similar forms of bodies and beings in the Viking World? This book will appeal to students and researchers of death and burial in the Viking World.

Celtic hanging-bowls were produced from the fifth to the eleventh century and range from simple functional vessels to great masterpieces of the period. The first part of the publication sets the bowls in their historical and cultural background and discusses all key aspects of hanging-bowlresearch, including the much-disputed topics of origin, use, and chronology. The second part is a comprehensive and highly detailed catalogue, dealing with the whole series from Britain and Europe. The publication is lavishly illustrated with over a thousand black and white illustrations and eightcolour plates. This long-awaited book by the leading authority on the subject will become the definitive work on this distinctive class of Celtic artefact.

This volume brings together scholarship from many disciplines, including history, heritage studies, archaeology, geography, and political science to provide a nuanced view of life in medieval Ireland and after. Primarily contributing to the fields of settlement and landscape studies, each essay considers the influence of Terence B. Barry of Trinity College Dublin within Ireland and internationally. Barry’s long career changed the direction of castle studies and brought the archaeology of medieval Ireland to wider knowledge. These essays, authored by an international team of fifteen scholars, develop many of his original research questions to provide timely and insightful reappraisals of material culture and the built and natural environments. Contributors (in order of appearance) are Robin Glasscock, Kieran O’Conor, Thomas Finan, James G. Schryver, Oliver Creighton, Robert Higham, Mary A. Valante, Margaret Murphy, John Soderberg, Conleth Manning, Victoria McAlister, Jennifer L. Immich, Calder Walton, Christiaan Corlett, Stephen H. Harrison, and Raghnall Ó Floinn.

The identification of a 9th-century Viking settlement at Woodstown, on the south bank of the River Suir, 9km upstream from Waterford City's Viking Triangle, has significant implications for our understanding of the earliest phases of Viking raiding in Ireland and the establishment of their settlements on the island. This monograph is the definitive report on the archaeological excavations undertaken at Woodstown, as it draws together all the existing evidence from the site and places it in its national and international context.

"This book reveals another very different side of Viking society. It claims that the Viking legacy was not simply one of 'rape and pillage', but included law and order, agriculture and trade, as well as language and heroic literature. It also provides evidence that the influence of Scandinavians in the British Isles continued well after 1066"--Jacket.