Understanding Local and Regional Routeways and Movement in Late medieval and early modern Burren, Co. Clare

Project Description

Roads, paths and routes preserve historic communications and boundaries, memories of events and everyday actions, evidence for how people organised and used their surroundings and they may even suggest how travellers and locals perceived and communicated messages about their environment. The Burren, famous for its karst landscape and well-preserved upstanding archaeological monuments, is crossed by an extensive network of roads, paths, tracks and multiple layers of fossilised field boundaries; it was also, in the later medieval and early modern periods, a centre of Gaelic Irish lordship, culture and settlement. The aim of this research is to identify and define evidence for routeways and movement in late medieval and early modern Burren in order to enhance our understanding of the economic, social and conceptual organisation of that region. This study utilises photogrammetric aerial survey and terrain modeling, historical sources and maps, existing archaeological research and field survey to build an outline model of movement and routeways at a number of scales of analysis: the Burren region, the O’Davoren’s land-holding in Cahermacnaghten townland, and between buildings within the estate.

It is proposed that the Burren’s modern road network in many cases uses medieval routes and paths. This is evident from the historical accounts, pilgrimage routes, and the situation of contemporary settlement remains in relation to their surroundings and, in particular, religious centres and monuments. However, movement within Gaelic land-holdings, such as the O’Davoren’s in Cahermacnaghten, appears to have been by less formal paths and routes, perhaps reflecting a familiarity with the karst landscape still evident amongst local farmers today. Using Cahermacnaghten as an example, the study also suggests there was a deliberate separation of the public spaces around the roads, as at Cahermacnaghten cashel, from private and more intimate space within the Gaelic estate core, as at Cabhail Tighe Breac, the likely site of the O’Davoren law school. The importance of the Burren’s relict field boundaries as historic landscape features is also highlighted. By mapping with GIS the location of medieval and early modern settlements and churches in relation to the Burren’s modern roads and paths, and studying in more detail relict field boundaries within Cahermacnaghten townland, further insights will be gained on the connection between movement and landscape organisation in the Gaelic lordship of the Burren.

Contact Details

Richard Clutterbuck

(Contract Archaeologist)

Contact: richard.ccrds.ie 

Funding Bodies

INSTAR 2008

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