Christianizing the landscape of Mag Réta: home territory of the kings of Laígis

This contribution arises from the Making Christian Landscapes (MCL) project which was funded by the Heritage Council through the INSTAR programme. The premise for the project was that the most promising approach to the complex processes of conversion and Christianization was an interdisciplinary landscape perspective focusing on fairly small areas. Nine areas were chosen within which all relevant strands of evidence were considered, including topography, land use, settlements, cemeteries, boundaries, landholdings and estates, routeways and pre-Christian monuments.2 The work was carried out by academic and commercial archaeologists in collaboration with historians. The consistent methodology employed facilitated comparison between the study areas. Some of these were chosen for their outstanding field archaeology (e.g., Corcu Duibne, Co. Kerry), while others were chosen because of unusually good documentary sources. For example, Fir Maige, Co. Cork, has the richest documentary sources relating to early boundaries, topography and ecclesiastical organization in Ireland, and helps to illuminate patterns in other areas, as we shall see (below). In most cases, however, areas were chosen primarily because of pre-development excavations of churches, cemeteries, ‘cemetery settlements’, settlements etc., which have important implications for our understanding of the process of Christianization. In general we found that, once allowances are made for factors such as marginal land, most areas are characterized by a high, and fairly consistent, density of churches. Some study areas had higher or lower densities, however, and there were significant variations in density within most study areas, while the density of other known settlements, such as ringforts, varied much more markedly.