Dress, ornament and bodily identities in early medieval Ireland: an archaeology of personhood
Maureen Doyle
Supervisor: Dr. Aidan O'Sullivan
Funded by: UCD ADASTRA Scholarship
Abstract
Identity in early medieval Ireland (c. 400-1200 AD) was not fixed and unchanging, but rather was subject to a continual process of negotiation and performance. While there are many ways of expressing identity, my focus will be on how it was presented and performed through the body. What can we learn from archaeological data and historical sources about how people in early medieval Ireland regarded issues of identity, including gender, age, class/status, religion and ethnicity, and how they expressed this through their dress (in the broad sense of bodily adornment) and the treatment of the body in both life and death?
Archaeological approaches to identity in the past are relatively recent, but the topic is increasingly receiving attention. Archaeologists argue that it is possible to consider issues such as gender, status/class, age, and perceptions of identity and its possible subversion, through the remains of material culture. Key points in the debate include the concepts of fluidity and complexity of identities, which are seen as changing over the course of life. The archaeology of personhood – the achievement and interpretation of being a person – is also relevant to issues of identity, particularly in relation to the tensions and interaction between individuals and the norms and perceptions of their society.
By studying what people wore (dress, ornaments, etc.), and how they presented themselves (e.g. hairstyles, general costume, bodily behaviour) during the course of their lives – as well as how they were ultimately presented by others in burials – we can trace what identity meant to them, and how they perceived themselves and others. Artefacts such as dress items and ornaments, pictorial images from sculptures and manuscripts, and burial practices involving differential treatment of the dead, provide basic sources of information from which I will seek to draw out the inherent meanings which they communicated. Such meanings may be further illuminated using historical documents, as well as theoretical approaches to embodied identity, and the archaeology of other early medieval European societies, including Anglo-Saxon England, Merovingian France and Viking Age Scandinavia.
In studies of early medieval Ireland to date, the question of understanding people has largely been approached through the written sources, rather than through the archaeological evidence. My research goal is to offer a new, material perspective on early medieval Ireland by focusing on people and their perceptions and performance of identity. I will apply a range of theoretical approaches on embodied identity, drawn from archaeology, anthropology and sociology, to this period, and explore the evidence from the perspective of how people experienced and expressed their identity through dress and the presentation of the body. By taking this multi-disciplinary approach, using comparisons with other European societies, and looking at contexts (e.g. the location of objects on bodies, in houses and in burials), I hope to illuminate issues of individual and social identity in early medieval Ireland.
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