Celtic Leinster: Towards An Historical Geography of Early Irish Civilization 500 - 1600 A.D.

This book marks a turning point in the historiography of Early Ireland. In it, the author reconciles the archaic nature of Irish political life with the brilliant civilization that flourished around it. He argues for the Irish landscape as being a major factor in the evolution and preservation of both archaic tribal institutions and the brilliant cultural achievement. We are shown a country barricaded and divided by great tracts of impassable forest, mountain and bog, which facilitated the survival of hundreds of tribal kingdoms long after the demise of similar territorial units elsewhere in Europe. However archaic these little kingdoms were they ensured that Ireland had a proliferation of kinds in the Indo-European tradition, and consequently royal patronage was on a scale out of proportion to the size of the tiny territories in which artistic achievement and scholarship were encouraged to flourish. In addition to reconstructing the Dark Age landscape of Leinster, the author provides an Historical Atlas of sixteen plates which breaks new ground in the field of Irish historical geography. The work includes four color plates including early manuscript maps of Irish territories, and numerous antiquarian line drawings are accompanied by a text which has carefully avoided repeating information in the main body of the book. This is a book which will open up new vistas to the historian, historical geographer, archaeologist, and anthropologist alike. It is an outstanding work of uncompromising scholarship, intended not only to inform the specialist, but also to give pleasure to all who are interested in the dawn of European civilization.