ABSTRACT
From an archaeological perspective the ‘sacred’ component of landscape in prehistoric Ireland has largely been seen as spatially bounded: ritual ‘sites’ and monument ‘complexes’ that somehow stood apart from the world of everyday experience. An important temporal dimension to these sacred places is evident where there is an obvious developmental history. The Hill of Tara and the Boyne Valley ‘necropolis’ are prominent examples, where the past was appropriated in later times through the reuse of ‘ancient’ monuments. This study will consider how ‘past’ and ‘sacred’ were intertwined as deeply embedded elements in landscape perception in late prehistoric Ireland. Two themes will be examined. First, it is suggested that cults of sun worship were widespread in early religious belief in Ireland until the adoption of Christianity. An example here is the southwest region where such a religious orientation is evident in a succession of megalith ‘traditions’ from the Neolithic onwards. The second theme will be to consider how these ‘ancient’ megaliths played an active role in the creation of a mythologised landscape during the Iron Age, and how they manifest the enduring nature of religious belief through time.
