ABSTRACT
Little is known of the process of commissioning and paying for metal objects in earlymedieval Ireland. Some have argued that craftsmen worked in highly controlled circumstances thus allowing potentates to control the supply of luxury goods and so help to perpetuate their power. In law, however, metalworkers were free and could rise to fairly high status. Metalworking evidence is widespread on Irish sites of the early medieval period-on ringforts, crannogs, and ecclesiastical foundations. Iron-working was ubiquitous and this may reflect the need, known to farmers of today, to attain some skill so as to keep agricultural equipment in repair-in other words it may be unspecialized metalwork or the jobbing work by an itinerant craftsman. The iron was probably obtained mostly from bog iron ore, but other sources may well have been exploited. Iron was sourced in sufficient quantity to make sword blades-although the characteristic sword in pre-Viking Ireland was small like the Roman gladius, and made of fairly soft metal at that. In the Viking period, blades of high quality were imported, and much larger iron objects, such as plow coulters, were fabricated.
