Theories of liminality have long informed scholarship on peripheral regions of medieval Europe. Few of these regions were, however, as aggressively portrayed as frontier or march by contemporary commentators and legislators--or later historians--as was Ireland, both as a whole, and along internal ethnic borders. Drawing together the work of historians, art-historians and archaeologists, this book seeks to explode some of the myths created and manipulatively used by medieval settlers and their apologists. Exploring and interrogating afresh both documentary sources and material culture, the articles gathered here reveal the complexities, frustrations, and distorted visions which warped relations across ethnic and cultural boundaries, while placing Ireland's marches within the context of the creation and destruction of English royal ambitions.
Contributors are Howard Clarke, Anne Connon, Linda Doran, Clare Downham, Rory McNeary, Margaret Murphy, Danielle O'Donovan, Seymour Phillips, William W. Scott and Brian Shanahan.