Ritual in Late Bronze Age Ireland - Material Culture, Practices, Landscape Setting and Social Context

Abstract

This thesis develops a new perspective on Late Bronze Age (LBA) Ireland by identifying and analysing patterns of ritual practice in the archaeological record, as well as determining how distinct ritual practices relate to each other, their immediate environment and wider landscape, and the social contexts within which they were carried out. Ritual practices find expression in a range of contexts which can be studied separately; however, they belong in, and thus require, an over-arching, integrated ritual system to contextualise and attempt to understand their broader purpose. Consequently, this project centres on the question: Can an investigation of the practices of ritual feasting, death ritual, ritual deposition and fertility ritual, as situated within their broader socio-cultural contexts, yield fresh perspectives on the Irish LBA socio-cultural system? A more nuanced understanding of the social context of LBA ritual practice in Ireland is thus developed, thereby putting a human face on a body of scholarship previously dominated by studies of monument and artefact types. By applying anthropological analysis and a contextually focused theoretical framework to the large body of data this thesis examines aspects of LBA ritual practice and society not consistently engaged with by previous studies.