ABSTRACT
Archaeological landscapes are assumed to be those that, while once lively, have since been abandoned. How these lands have been abandoned or cleared of human society varies; abandonment can be the result of a slow and gradual decline of the population, or it can be the result of a forceful and even violent removal of peoples from their lands and homes as a result of pestilence and disease, economic expansion, warfare, or colonization. In this chapter, I will explore the colonial clearance of the Irish landscape in the late twelfth century, not so much by the physical removal of peoples from their land, but by removing them ideologically from the landscape. In doing so, the colonizer is able to justify and authorize their place by portraying Ireland as a barren, empty landscape. This strategy is not uncommon and certainly has been examined elsewhere, for example in the case of colonizing North American lands and the removal of First Nations or indigenous peoples (Axtell 1981; French 2003; Harris 2002). In this study however, I explore how the Anglo-Normans ideologically "cleared" or removed the early medieval Irish society from their lands by writing them off the map of Ireland.
