You may not normally associate fighting talk with the pursuit of archaeological studies. We will rephrase that. Instead of fighting talk, let us say lively controversy, and that will surely be the case you confidently predict from a swift reading of a new book Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 by Daibhi O Croinin. No doubt it will be reviewed by a learned archaeologist in this newspaper, for it is serious, clearly written and obviously bound to stimulate fresh argument. Here are a few thoughts from a non archaeologist who has read and wondered and laughed - yes, laughed. (With the author . . . Early on, he claims that Irish medieval archaeology has not kept pace with the revolution in historical research. With a few luminous exceptions, he says, "Irish archaeologists have preferred to follow the rays of the summer solstice sun down the dark passages of prehistoric tumuli (and speculate endlessly about the `meaning' of such monuments), rather than excavate and report on the eighty thousand or so medieval settlement sites which stand untouched in the Irish countryside." Well, now!
Then he tells how some readers may be disappointed in that the author cannot give definitive answers to various big questions. When did Patrick come to Ireland? In what year did he die? Many readers may think they know already. "Alas! I can not do so. But there is at least the slight consolation that no one else can answer these questions either." Nor can he tell us when the Book of Kells was written and painted, and by whom.
He queries, rather wearily, the theory of an American professor of entomology who, apparently, relates the positions of the sixty eight still standing round towers to the positions of the stars in a map of the northern night sky at the December solstice. The American appears to say that these towers are more or less "magnetic antennae used for concentrating paramagnetic energy" or eco agriculture purposes. Writes the author: "In the face of science, the mere historian is reduced to silence."
As to Patrick, the only citizen of the Roman Empire who lived to tell the tale, in written form, of being made a captive and experiencing life beyond the bounds of that Empire: Patrick came perhaps half a century after Palladius. He was not sent as a bishop. He had no official sanction. It was a personal mission. And all that only in the first twenty five pages.
The author quotes from Umberto Eco: "Books are not made to be believed, but to be subject to enquiry." Published by Longmans, softback £15.99.