Publisher's description:
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.

Table of contents:
VII List of Illustrations
XI Acknowledgements
XIII Abbreviations
XV List of Contributors
1 Introduction Terra Nova: A Crown on the March and aPeople of the Periphery, Emmett O'Byrne and Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh
TOWN AND COUNTRY: AGGRESSIVE SYMBIOSIS
15 Religious and Cultural Boundaries between Vikings and Irish: The Evidence of Conversion, Clare Downham
35 From Dyflinnarskiri to the Pale: Defining and Defending a Medieval City-State, 1000–1500, Howard B. Clarke
53 "The Key of the County": Saggart and the Manorial Economy of the Dublin March c. 1200–1540, Margaret Murphy
79 New Ross: From European Archetype to Town "Situated in the Marches", L.M. Doran
MATERIALISING IDENTITY
97 Style over Substance: Architectural Fashion and Identity Building in Medieval Ireland, Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh
139 Creating Borders in Twelfth-century Ireland? Toirrdelbach Ua Conchobair's Diversion of the River Suck, Anne Connon and Brian Shanahan
171 Callan and Ormond: Architecture of the "Middle Nation"?, Danielle O'Donovan
195 The March in Roscommon, 1170–1400: Culture Contact, Continuity and Change, Rory McNeary and Brian Shanahan
RIVAL WRITS ON THE FRONTIER / PERCEIVED IDENTITY AND REAL AUTHORITY: RE-EXAMINING THE SOURCES
229 The Politics of Grievance and the Making of Medieval Irish Identity Blood, Law and Identity in Leinster and the Crown of England 1200–1340, Emmett O'Byrne
251 Royal Authority and Its Limits: The Dominions of the English Crown in the Early Fourteenth Century, Seymour Phillips
261 The March Laws: For Use or Ornament, William W. Scott
287 Conclusion, Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh and Emmett O'Byrne
291 Index of People
296 Index of Places
299 Subject Index.