Forts and fields: a study of 'monastic towns' in seventh and eighth century Ireland

Abstract

Due to the work of Charles Doherty, the phrase 'monastic town' is now part of the common parlance of medieval Irish archaeology and settlement studies. This was a phrase which had earlier been used by Ó Corrain to characterise major eighth- and ninth-century churches. Doherty popularised the expression in three articles written in the first half of the 1980s. In these, it was argued that, after ecclesiastical sites adopted a standard format in the seventh and eighth centuries, they became 'urban' from the tenth century. His model has been accepted by medieval archaeologists such as Bradley, Edwards and, to some extent, by Ryan.' In contrast, Mallory and McNeill have drawn a distinction between early church sites as major centres of resources (which they see as plausible) and the same sites as large centres of population (with which they disagree). Graham has pointed out that there is no known parallel for a theory of urbanisation founded almost entirely on monasticism and argues that the lack of a precise definition of the 'monastic town' compromises Doherty's concept. Elsewhere, Graham has suggested that such 'proto- towns' should be viewed in the context of mixed secular and ecclesiastical settlements which he postulates as the norm in early medieval Ireland from the seventh century.' More recently, Valante has queried the whole concept of an Irish monastic town on the grounds that she sees no evidence for early ecclesiastical sites being the 'hub of a redistributive system', nor for their 'urban' status. She defines urban as 'distinct from a rural settlement where the majority of denizens rely on agricultural production...' and suggests that in a pre-industrial society, commerce, manufacturing and provision of services are obvious possibilities for a non-farming economic base.