Introduction

This book is broadly aimed at the questioning person in the street as the great Irish archaeologist, Sean P.Ó Ríordáin, intended his now classic Antiquities of the Irish Countryside, first published in 1942 and now in its fifth edition revised by the late Ruaidhri de Valera. It is an attempt to synthesize the explosion which has taken place in our knowledge of the medieval period in Ireland, roughly from 1170 until 1531, which has been provided by archaeological excavation and field-work over the last generation or so.