Archaeology of Ireland: Land of Saints and Scholars

Catalog description

Archaeology uses material culture, including artifacts and structures, in order to understand the daily lives of people in the past. Large-scale excavations carried out in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries have shed new light on Irish history, from the island’s initial settlement at the end of the Ice Age through the nineteenth century. This course will explore how archaeology can be used to reconstruct Irish history. Particular emphasis will be placed on the Irish “Dreamtime,” the Iron Age and early medieval periods (ca. 600 BCE to 1100 CE). We will also examine the role that the Irish monastic tradition played in perpetuating and passing on to posterity many of the classic texts of Western civilization.