Professor Aidan O'Sullivan - Within Without – The Archaeology of Partitions

Professor Aidan O'Sullivan

Do fence me in: boundaries, liminality and transgressions in early medieval Ireland, AD 400–1100
Imagine an early medieval king out on his royal crannog, highly visible but made usefully remote by shoreline, water and palisades. Imagine the saint standing waiting on that shoreline, growing increasingly impatient and contemplating miraculous violence. Imagine the householder hearing a call from the rath gate, a stranger who knows not to enter without permission, or to look in the house door without permission, or to walk in that door without permission. Imagine the early Irish cleric thinking, ‘Our monastic vallum enclosure is now too small—we could fill the ditch in’. People in early medieval Ireland were familiar with boundaries; through social status, role, gender, age, kinship and ideas of neighbourhood, they understood and negotiated boundaries every day. This lecture will explore the nature and role of boundaries and how you could, and could not, cross them in early medieval landscapes and in people’s imagination, inspired by early Irish law, narrative literature (adventure and voyage tales), saints’ Lives, and the archaeology of ringforts, crannogs, cemeteries and monastic enclosures.

Professor Aidan O’Sullivan is Head of School and Professor of Archaeology at University College Dublin. His research interests are early medieval Ireland in north-west Europe, AD 400–1100; wetland archaeology and environments globally; and experimental archaeology and material culture. He is co-author of Early medieval Ireland, AD 400–1100: the evidence from archaeological excavations (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin) and is currently co-PI of the ‘Early Medieval People and Things (EMPAT)’ project.

Within Without – The Archaeology of Partitions

Almost all archaeological sites and monuments include a ditch, a wall, a fence or a bank—something that divides space physically and sometimes symbolically. The space on either side of these dividing features, whether enclosed or separated, can have its own significance or meaning. Conceptual divisions like inclusion and exclusion, privacy or social standing can be more challenging to identify but are no less significant. Using archaeology to examine socially and physically constructed partitions, and the spaces they divide, can help to give us insight into how spaces were used and what they meant to the people who used them.

8th Annual National Monuments Service
Archaeology Conference organised on behalf
of the National Monuments Service by
Wordwell | Archaeology Ireland.

Edmund Burke Theatre, Trinity College, Dublin, 18 October 2025