Beasts and Feasts in Late Medieval Ireland: The Case from Mcdermot’s Rock

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The twelfth-century Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland triggered a complex swirl of changes that presage dynamics of European colonialism in modern times. One key pattern is the emergence of divides between Anglo-Norman (colonizer) and Gaelic (indigenous) identities. Negotiating differences between “being Anglo-Norman” and “being Gaelic” was vital to implementing and resisting colonial projects in medieval Ireland. Anglo-Norman perspectives on such divides are relatively well known. Gaelic attitudes are not. This paper uses zooarchaeological data from on-going excavations at McDermot’s Rock—an island retreat in County Roscommon—to compare foodways at a Gaelic high-status site with those from Anglo-Norman castles in eastern Ireland. Colonialist texts tend to denigrate Gaelic foodways as disorderly and bestial. The large and well-preserved faunal assemblage from McDermot’s Rock provides an unparalleled opportunity to discover how animals were used in feasts and other activities to build a Gaelic society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37843.0