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The Ó Cellaig lordship of Uí Maine was a substantial political territory and influential cultural power in later medieval Connacht. The central aim of this thesis is to identify and reconstruct the physical appearance of the Ó Cellaig lordly centres from their emergence as one of the principal offshoots of the Uí Maine in c.1100, to the demise of the lordship around the year c.1600. Due to the terms of the present writer’s Irish Research Council Employment-Based Scholarship, a subsidiary aim of the thesis is to carry out a review of how this research can be of value, in economic and social terms, to the present-day communities that inhabit the Ó Cellaig lordship today. This study initially examines the historical background of the lordship, and this achieved two things. Firstly, it identified for the first time a series of Ó Cellaig lordly centres for further investigation. Secondly, it enabled the defining of the physical boundaries of this territory at two key points in the history of these eastern Connacht lords, something which has not been systematically undertaken before. Thereafter, aspects of the physical landscape of later medieval Uí Maine were reconstructed, and this was used as the basis to explore the primary resources and then the economic conditions which underpinned this inland Gaelic lordship during the period. The present writer then reviewed the settlement forms usually chosen by the later medieval Gaelic elite, with a view to understanding what morphologies to consider when inspecting the individual Ó Cellaig lordly centres on the ground. In doing so, a new settlement form was identified, coined here as the bódhún, while initial insights were garnered on why certain sites were selected by the Gaelic elite during the high medieval period particularly, prior to the greater cultural uniformity that manifested with the adoption of the tower house castle in the late medieval lordship. The focus of the research then concentrated on the investigation of eleven representative case study lordly centres, thematically grouped due to their siting on or near lakes, in close proximity to rivers, or their siting on important medieval regional roadways. This approach produced a number of new insights into our understanding of the Ó Cellaig lordship, particularly the elite settlement forms chosen by the lords of Uí Maine throughout the period, in the form of crannóga, promontory forts, moated sites, ringforts and cashels. It also highlighted the continuity of use at many of these lordly centres through time, as well as the dynamic cultural landscapes which developed and were maintained around these focal points. More than this, the multidisciplinary approach has enabled a reevaluation of the accepted historical narrative of the late medieval Ó Cellaig lordship, showing the value which archaeology can provide in reconstructing the medieval past. Finally, important new considerations on the spatial organisation of Gaelic lordly centres more generally were brought to light, while this study also serves to add to the argument that when a researcher visits a later medieval Gaelic lordly centre on the ground, the principal settlement forms which survive for inspection come in the form of crannóga, promontory forts, moated sites, ringforts and cashels during the high medieval period, while late medieval elite settlement conforms largely to the construction of tower house castles. 2023-06-22 |
