Performing Feasts and the Use of Animals in Ritual Contexts in Iron Age Ireland

Summary

Activities at large ceremonial complexes are interpreted as regional community endeavors that form group identities and reify social and political structures. Imposing monuments such as Dún Ailinne, Navan Fort, and Rathcrogan have provided tantalizing glimpses into ritual and ceremonial performances of the Irish Iron Age (500 BC-AD 500). Communal feasting has been suggested to be a key practice at these sites during the later periods of use. At feasts, social structure and identity are reinforced, wealth is redistributed, and political alliances are formed. In this way, feasts become a space for community concerns to be negotiated. The large hilltop complexes, however, are not the only ritual spaces in Iron Age Ireland. During the later prehistoric period, there is a proliferation of smaller ceremonial enclosures and barrow burials. Variation in ritual performance at these different sites provide insights into cultural concerns across different scales of society. This paper examines the role of animals and feasting at smaller hilltop enclosures and burial monuments of the later Iron Age in comparison to activities at the large ceremonial complexes, in order to better understand both ritual and ceremonial performance in these more private spaces and the social framework from which these practices develop.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21588