An Archaeology of Learning:  Estates, Schools and Residences of Native Learned Families in Ireland c.1300―1600

Project Description

This project investigates the settlement archaeology of native hereditary legal, medical and bardic families, many of whom kept schools that had their golden age in the classical Gaelic tradition of the sixteenth century. The aim is to develop an approach to the settlements and material culture of the little-understood native professional class in Ireland, thereby creating a new research agenda for historical archaeology beyond the orthodox canon of enquiry into the high-status society of kings, chiefs, bishops and abbots. The project also contributes to the archaeology of learning and to an understanding of the social role of professional families in late medieval and early modern Europe.

Particular families have been selected for field studies. These include the O’Clery family of historians, Kilbarron, Co. Donegal; both the O’Davoren legal family at Cahermacnaghten, Burren, Co. Clare and the O’Doran lawyers at Ballyorley, Co. Wexford; the O’Connor medical family, Aghmacart, Co. Laois; and the O’Daly bardic family, Dromnea, Co. Cork. The residences of such families tend to range from tower houses to stone houses within enclosed settlements and there is good evidence to suggest that they each had school-house buildings.

Two seasons of excavation have been conducted on the O’Davoren landholding at Cahermacnaghten since 2007. The O’Davoren family served the O’Loughlin chief of Burren in law until the late sixteenth century and they kept a school which was particularly renowned during the mid-sixteenth century. A research excavation (08E435) was conducted in 2008 within a stone building locally known as ’Cabhail Tighe Breac’ in order to determine whether it was a schoolhouse associated with the late medieval Cahermacnaghten law school. The material culture from the primary occupation levels of the building was slight, but a fragment of slate with a single inscribed character, found in the western room, is potentially diagnostic of school activity. Masters’ and scholars’ slates used for writing are a common find from medieval and Renaissance schools in Europe and there is a significant Irish collection from Smarmore, Co. Louth. There was little domestic material and no pottery at all from the primary levels of the building. Architectural features suggest a date of perhaps c.1500 and later periods of modification.

Evidence from sixteenth-century sources indicate that the native schoolhouse ( sgoilteagh) was a specific building devoted to the scribal activity of the schools. Field evidence suggests that the schoolhouse may be identified as a sometimes enclosed single-storey non-defensive building with the proportions of a medieval hall or parish church. Unlike the grammar schools of colonial Ireland and of late medieval and Renaissance Britain and Continental Europe, the sgoilteagh was not a public but a private institutional space run in a hereditary capacity by a professional family.

Figure 2: Excavation in Cabhail Tighe Breac (08E435) on the lands of the O'Davoren brehon lawyers to the O'Loughlin, Burren, Co. Clare

Contact Details

Dr Elizabeth FitzPatrick ( Profile)

Department of Archaeology,

School of Geography and Archaeology, NUI, Galway

Contact: elizabeth.fitzpatricknuigalway.ie

Funding Bodies

Royal Irish Academy 2005–2008

Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2006–2009

Links

Learn more about the Burren Field School which conducts the excavations at Cahermacnaghten.

Explore the comparable archaeology and landscape of the Gaelic Morrison legal family at Dùn Èistean, Ness on the Isle of Lewis.

Visit the website of the Moore Institute at NUI Galway with which this project is affiliated.

Project Publications

2008 Antiquarian Scholarship and the Archaeology of Cahermacnaghten, Burren, Co. Clare. The Other Clare 32, 58-66.

2008 Excavation of a building at Cahermacnaghten, Co. Clare, in I. Bennett (ed.) Excavations 2007. Wordwell, Bray.

Reports

2008 Archaeological excavation at Cabhail Tighe Breac, Cahermacnaghten, Co. Clare (08E435): preliminary report for the Royal Irish Academy.

2007 Archaeological excavation of a building at Cahermacnaghten, Burren, Co. Clare (07E0395): preliminary report for the Royal Irish Academy.

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