A landscape converted: Archaeology and early church organisation in Iveragh and Dingle, Ireland

The process of conversion in Ireland was initiated in the late fourth or fifth century but probably continued until the eighth (cf. O'Brien 1993, 133-6), and the story of the maturation of the Irish Church in this period is one in which the alternative of paganism recedes gradually. The present study concentrates on the period of ecclesiastical consolidation rather than the initial stages of the Church's establishment, essentially because the archaeological data from the later period are currently more intelligible. A model is proposed for the development of the Church and its reshaping of the cultural landscape at the western ends of the Iveragh and Dingle peninsulas, Co. Kerry.