ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the issue of linkages-genuine and apparent-between folklore and the archaeology of later prehistoric and Roman period Europe. A great deal of Welsh and Irish medieval mythic literature, compiled within a Christian context, contains allusions that appear to relate to elements of preChristian imagery and cult practice, as reflected in the material culture of Britain and parts of Europe during the later first millennium BC and earlier first millennium AD. The problems inherent in the acknowledgement of linkages between medieval texts and material pertaining to earlier pagan ritual are those concerned with dislocations in chronology and in spatial continuity: the earliest Irish myths may have been written down in the seventh or eighth century AD, but
the earliest Welsh mythic literature probably dates no earlier than the tenth or eleventh century. Similarly, it is difficult to comprehend the apparent correspondences between descriptions of supernatural heroes in Welsh and Irish myth and their putative prototypes, which consist of pagan cult-images whose distribution is largely Continental rather than British or Irish.
