IoA/BM Seminar Fitzpatrick

Professor Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (Galway, NUI): Wilderness and territorial boundaries in medieval Ireland

Professor Fitzpatrick's lecture explores the role of wilderness places as long‐standing liminia of Irish medieval kingdoms. Using landscape, myth and historical sources, it is argued that they constituted blocks of mensal land characterised by threshold geographies and enriched natural resources including hunting grounds. Among their archaeological signatures are prehistoric funerary mounds and cairns, early churches and medieval battle sites.