From Chiefdom to State in Early Ireland

Description

This book tracks the development of social complexity in Ireland from the late prehistoric period on into the Middle Ages. Using a range of methods and techniques, particularly data from settlement patterns, Blair Gibson demonstrates how Ireland evolved from constellations of chiefdoms into a political entity bearing the characteristics of a rudimentary state. This book argues that early medieval Ireland's highly complex political systems should be viewed as amalgams of chiefdoms with democratic procedures for choosing leaders rather than kingdoms. Gibson explores how these chiefdom confederacies eventually transformed into recognizable states over a period of 1,400 years.

D. Blair Gibson is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at El Camino College and the director of the college's Anthropology Museum. He has published articles in a number of journals, including the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology and the Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium. He is the editor of two books, Tribe and Polity in Late Prehistoric Europe (with Michael Geselowitz) and Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State (with Bettina Arnold).

'The title of this handsomely produced book will have specialists in the archaeology and history of protohistoric and (early) medieval Ireland salivating.' Anna Leone, Antiquity 'This ambitious and wide-ranging interdisciplinary study ... is carefully argued and provides much food for thought.' Landscape History