This volume constitutes a collection of articles on current archaeological issues relating to the early medieval Celtic churches. Half the articles here focus on Wales, while the other half is divided amongst Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and Wessex. The assemblage of articles included here are welcome contributions to the field, particularly the articles on Welsh sites and material culture, which have until recently remained archaeological terra incognita to medievalists who work on other regions, even within the British Isles.
Nancy Edwards' introduction to the volume provides an overview of the history of scholarship on early medieval archaeology at Welsh and other Celtic environments and provides a state of the question overview that will make it essential reading for classes on related subjects. The first four articles of the book: R. J. Sylvester and J. W. Evans, "Identifying the Mother Churches on North-East Wales;" Andrew Davidson, "The Early Medieval Church in North-West Wales;" Neil Ludlow, "Identifying Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Sites in South-West Wales;" and Edith Evans, "Continuity and Renewal of Monastic Landholding in South Wales Before and After the Anglo-Norman Conquest;" look at the archaeological and documentary evidence for the early Welsh churches, much of it reflecting research supported by the Cadw-funded Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Sites project. Sylvester and Evans' search for the mother churches of northeastern Wales on the basis of traces on the ground such as plans and precincts and hints in law codes is a laudable effort at piecing together fragments of information that, while individually inconclusive together, form discernable patterns. Davidson sees the links of southern Welsh church sites to Roman forts not as a general effort toward romanitas, a term increasingly under fire in recent work on the Roman period itself, but rather as linked to site donation and reuse of sites of regional significance. In much the same way, Ludlow discusses reuse elsewhere of Iron Age hill forts, barrows, and circular enclosures, which are both used and copied in church enclosures in southwestern Wales. Other regional distinctions are apparent: Davidson notes the initial separation of cemeteries and churches in northwest Wales while Ludlow points to early examples of their integration in the southwest. The volume's authors disagree on long cist burials: Davidson takes a traditional view of this practice in Wales as symptomatically early (45) while Ludlow (70) and Edith Evans (88) point to the later continuity of this practice, in some cases possibly as late as the sixteenth century. Davidson also provides a helpful overview of the characteristics of tenth- to twelfth-century Welsh high-status churches: the presence of Group III carved stones, documentation of Viking raids, associated capel-y- bedd or chapel shrines over the founder's tomb or alternatively a tomb shrine in the chancel of the main church, and affiliated monastic retreats. Edith Evans provides a clear overview of the transformation of early south Welsh sites by new communities of Augustinians, Benedictines and Cistercians, under new Anglo-Norman patronage, and, as an appendix, an equally useful checklist of early medieval indicators for southern Welsh sites. She demonstrates that continuity of site does not necessarily imply continuity of the community in residence, and that clasau (monasteries operated by hereditary kinship groups) and Culdee-associated communities may have been displaced by regular canons rather than being transformed into them as per the older reading of this transition.
David Longley's "Early Medieval Burial in Wales," rounds out the opening section of the book by looking at the transformations and continuities of early medieval burial practices. Initially, stone- lined (long cist) and unprotected graves often co-exist in the same cemeteries. In some cases a transition in the eighth to ninth century from stone-lined to unprotected graves is indicated by a shift to a new cemetery, but elsewhere stone lined graves continue as a practice to a much later date. Longley also discusses enclosure burials as descending from late Iron Age practice and continuing into the marking of saints' tombs in cemeteries with chapels, which in turn attract burials ad sanctos. He reads the placement of inscribed stones in cemeteries and at what may be boundaries of kinship territory as similarly continuing pre-conversion practices. He also suggests continuity in the east-northeast orientation of graves, toward late April sunrise, with possible associations with both pre-conversion spring rites and Christian Easter.
Part II, "Sites, Buildings, Burial and Landscapes" broadens its purview beyond Wales. Elizabeth O'Brien's "Pagan or Christian? Burial in Ireland During the 5th to 8th Centuries AD," stresses that early medieval burial practices are political rather than religious. She starts with long cist burials (fifth to sixth centuries) in politically positioned singletons and small groups, some inserted in prehistoric barrows seen as ancestral burial sites (ferta). Practice then shifts towards a Christian mode of shrouded burial without grave goods in unprotected or lintel graves (seventh and eighth centuries), in both churchyards and familial plots, the latter mostly fading from use by the ninth century under ecclesiastical pressure.
In "Identifying British Christian Sites in Wessex," Teresa Hall argues that the church in Wessex was originally founded on a British episcopal structure based in monasteries in remote locations, sites lost to memory after their land holdings were confiscated and their authority replaced in the wake of the Synod of Whitby with new system of Anglo-Saxon sees based in towns. She reads the Anglo-Saxon narrative of the foundation of the see of Wessex by Ine as a form of deliberately propagated "cultural amnesia" about earlier church history in Wessex. This is one of the more assertively argued piece in the volume; some readers may object to various particulars of Hall's interpretation or to her charged language, but for those who may have been lulled into an depoliticized torpor by recent writings on the post-Whitby Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical hierarchy as a peaceable kingdom, here is a refreshingly brisk tonic.
Although Nancy Edwards' introduction to the volume follows developments since the 1970s in rejecting the concept of a monolithic Celtic Church, Phillip Guigon's "The Archaeology of the So-called 'Celtic Church' in Brittany" takes this a step further, quoting Wendy Davies by referring to the concept of a "Celtic Church" as a "harmful idea" and clearly demonstrating that church architecture in early medieval Brittany is linked firmly to neighboring areas of the continent, and not to the British Isles. Well-taken as Guigon's point may be for Brittany, what is obvious from reading all these articles together is the extent of the connections in architecture and material culture among the so-called Celtic areas of the British Isles; there may be no Celtic Church soi disant, but there is certainly an as-yet unlabelled commonality that is more extensive than can be explained by mere proximity. Otherwise the connections between these areas and Anglo-Saxon England would be equally as strong, which is not always the case.
Other articles here contravene a range of previously accepted hypotheses. In "A Peacock's Tale: Excavations at Caherlehillan, Inveragh, Ireland," John Sheehan demonstrates that this site is at odds with Charles Thomas' hypothesis of succession from "undeveloped" secular cemeteries (without churches) to "developed" cemeteries (with churches). Caherlehillan was planned from the outset as a Christian enclosed cemetery with a chapel centered on a venerated tomb, showing links to Britain, Gaul and the eastern Mediterranean.
Toms " Carragin in "The Saint and the Sacred Center: The Early Medieval Pilgrimage Landscape of Inishmurray," demonstrates that far from being a Tridentine invention or an unchanging vestige of the early Middle Ages, the Inishmurray pilgrimage evolved from a seasonal liturgy including the performance of the Eucharistic rite at a series of leachta, paralleling the Rogation processions in England and elsewhere and recreating the initial consecration of the site by its sainted founder. This practice then developed toward a popular penitential circuit in a period of longer-distance pilgrimages within Ireland at the end of the first millennium.
In his overview of recent "Excavations on the May Island, and Other Early Medieval Churches and Monasteries in Scotland" Peter Yeoman suggests that the different burial practices in separate areas at the May could reflect different penitential states within the community (240); but they could equally possibly represent different constituencies within the community, such as lay hospice residents, students and servants. Much more important here is his argument that Bede's attribution of the beginnings of Pictish stone architecture to Anglo-Saxon assistance is biased and that the dating of early Scottish ecclesiastical stonework, such as the Forteviot arch, should be reexamined case by case, with an eye to increasing Pictish royal patronage potential in the seventh and eighth centuries.
Although stone church construction in Wales has been conventionally dated to the twelfth century and later, Aimee Pritchard, in "The Origins of Ecclesiastical Stone Architecture in Wales" suggests that stylistic analysis of sculptural fragments may serve as an indicator of earlier date, an approach which art historians will find problematic given the possibility of stylistic conservatism or deliberate archaism, especially in decorative motifs. On this basis, she argues for an upsurge of stone church construction in Wales in the ninth and tenth centuries, starting on prestigious sites, in response to ecclesiastical reorganization and extensive contact with the Anglo- Saxons, exactly the sort of development via dependency against which Yeoman argues for Pictish architecture in the preceding article.
In his "A Suggested Typology for Pre-Romanesque Churches in Ireland," Conleth Manning more successfully proposes a chronological sequencing based on typology, arguing for a chronology of early Irish stone churches based on the gradual disappearance of antae and the substitution of corbels as start points for gables. One might add that this development may have been at least partially due to changes in masons' understanding of tectonics rather than to purely aesthetic considerations, and may consequently be an even more substantive basis for chronological sequencing.
The last two articles in this section of the volume concern groups of churches, on the same site or institutionally linked across greater distances. David Petts' and Sam Turner's article, "Early Medieval Church Groups in Wales and Western England" looks at potential liturgical explanations and geographically wide-ranging parallels for the arrangement of groups of churches. They focus in particular on the ninth to tenth century, when display of crosses, addition of ancillary structures such as grave chapels, and demarcation of boundaries denote an increasingly complex spatiality, reflecting but somewhat lagging earlier development in Anglo-Saxon areas and paralleling northwestern French and Irish sites. The elaborate array of churches at Armagh, recently the subject of extensive publications, may have been worthy of further discussion here.
In "Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Romanesque Church of Penmon, Anglesey," Richard Gem argues for a date in the 1120s for the earliest part of the church, the transept, as opposed to the Royal Commission's date in the 1160s-1170s. He places its construction under the patronage of Gruffudd ap Cynan as a clas church, antedating the Augustinian reform and paired with the eremitic community on Ynys Lannog.
Part III, "Artefacts and Production," concerns media other than architecture. Cecily A. Spall's "Reflections on the Monastic Arts: Recent Discoveries at Portmahomack, Tarbat, Easter Ross," otherwise an excellent overview of evidence of craftwork at this important recently excavated site, is hampered by unnecessarily absolutist dichotomies, as for example whether a type of production is primarily for internal use among a network of monasteries or instead supports local "political" or commercial demand. Such clear distinctions cannot always be applied to metalwork: a monastic smith who makes components for the ornamentation of book bindings can turn the same technical and ornamental repertoire to the fittings of a casket intended as a gift to a lay patron. The dichotomy also underestimates the complex reciprocity between early medieval clergy and elite laity. Similarly Spall's identification of Portmahomack's craftsmen as monks elides the possibility of resident lay craftsmen suggested elsewhere by texts from and recent commentary about the Insular monastic world.
In her "The Economy and Industry of Early Medieval Clonmacnoise: A Preliminary View," Heather A. King looks at the monastic settlement at Clonmacnoise as it develops over time from a major seventh- to eighth- century expansion to a ninth-century process of urbanization without evidence of manufacturing, challenging formerly established models of European urbanization. Perhaps most interesting is her discussion of the third phase, from the tenth to thirteenth century, which provides evidence of intensive production and fine craftsmanship in a broad range of media, both for in-house use and for sale, as well as a trans-regional trade fair.
In "Early Medieval Metalwork and Christianity: A Welsh Perspective," Mark Redknap gives an overview of recent finds at important Welsh sites that demonstrate a range of metalwork production. Here too the trans-regional connections across the British Isles are amply evident, most notably in the small portable reliquary shrines, which not only echo the Irish exempla but also demonstrate a parallel cult of secondary relics. Redknap follows the traditional reading of larger Welsh shrines, most notably that of St. Gwenfrewi, as reflecting Anglo-Saxon types. However, in the following article, "The Shrine of St Gwytherin, Denbighshire: An Alternative Interpretation," Cormac Bourke demonstrates that the closest parallels for this sizable portable reliquary, now preserved only in fragments, is St. Machan's Shrine from Lemanaghan, Co. Offaly (London, British Museum). Bourke argues convincingly for an Irish provenance for the shrine of St. Gwenfrewi, probably made for her translation to Shrewsbury in 1138 and acquired through the web of connections between Welsh and Irish elites, both ecclesiastical and secular, in this period.
In the final article of the volume, "St Fillan's Crozier - its Cult and its Reliquaries AD 1000-2000," Virginia Glenn provides a fascinating anatomy and biography of a relic within a reliquary within another reliquary, a sort of sacred matryoshka: St. Fiilan's crozier, embedded its own reliquary, in turn placed inside the Quigrich (Edinburgh, National Museums of Scotland). She tracks the crozier's adventures and phases of ornamentation and encasement from the late-twelfth-century abbey of Glendochart to a mid-fourteenth- century retrofit under French influence and possible royal patronage, to the late-fifteenth-century ornament of the current knop, and ultimately to the crozier's concealment during the Reformation and its emigration to Beckwith, Ontario along with its hereditary keepers, the Dewar family, who ultimately returned it to Scotland in 1876. Glenn's article is a lovely conclusion to a volume that brings to the reader's attention again and again the interconnectedness of the early medieval Insular world, connections that with the Quigrich extend all the way across the North Atlantic.