The Diachronic Landscape of Ceremony at the Irish "Royal" Site of Dun Ailinne

Summary

The site of Dún Ailinne (Knockaulin) in County Kildare is one of four major ceremonial sites of the Irish Iron Age. Although numerous ceremonial centers of various size dotted the Irish landscape, Dún Ailinne, along with Teamhair (Tara), Emain Macha (Navan Fort), and Crúachain (Rathcroghan,) stand out due to their size and location. These characteristics indicate that the sites would have been major foci of ceremonial activity, and would have impacted the ceremonial activity itself. Although excavations have largely focused on the sites themselves, archaeologists have long acknowledged the importance of the larger "sacred" landscape in which these major ceremonial sites are situated, postulating that their proximity, visually and physically, to other sites in the landscape would have had an important effect on the performance and experience of ritual and ceremony. As such, these landscapes are not "monolithic" entities of sacredness, but have unique developmental trajectories that may have played an important role in shaping and reflecting emerging ideas in the local community. This paper seeks to understand how the development and evolution of the larger landscape would have impacted the local performance and experience of ritual and ceremony at Dún Ailinne.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21576