Thanks for that link, Irishguy; it is bookmarked & saved.
& thanks S-C for the concise info & Limerick limerick.
I think my own leg fell off when I pulled; my wife is mostly Irish descent.
This article claimed this Viking settlement was "Ireland's first town" and that the Vikings raided upriver monasteries, giving the (utterly false) impression that the Irish, Celts, and Gaels were all nothing more than wandering tribes or clans, with the exception of the monasteries.
What I was really asking was, what was the author &/or archaeologist trying to convey by calling it 'Ireland's first town'. Naturally, that ignores a few thousand years of history prior to 800 AD.
Is it the first 'fully intact' (his words, not mine) town excavated?
First of that time period?
First Viking town?
First one he's found? ;)
It just seemed so ludicrous that I'm still wondering what he meant. If I get mad enough, I may just have to book passage for us, so I can go over and ask him!
[P.S. added at the top where it will do the most good. Uh-oh. Looks like this post is going to go on a while, and not be concise at all. ;')]
The Vikings were the direct result of the Medieval Warming, and were going great guns for quite a while. Generally their decline is dated to Stamford Bridge, where Harald Haardrada (sp varies) got croaked by Harold II of England just weeks before William the Bastard invaded.
During the House of Normandy (I think that was the name, I used to know this stuff; four kings I believe, W, W2, Henry I, Stephen; the Normans of course being of Scandinavian descent), the Kings of England started carving chunks out of Ireland's eastern coast, I believe it was called "The Pale".
Sometime prior to the first English presence, the former Caig Caigi (five fifths I think it was; the five kingdoms, Leinster, Munster, Connacht, Ulster, and Meath) had become four kingdoms, when Meath was dismembered. I dunno for sure, but it's possible that internecine warfare and who knows what else weakened Ireland.
The same thing happened to Celtic areas in Britain; constant struggle between the Welsh and their lifelong blood enemies, the Welsh, led to continuous English rule from the time of Henry VII to the present day. Scotland was purchased piecemeal (bribery). And sometime since the '45 (1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie) someone wrote a tune "Parcel of Rogues" (recorded by, hmm, Steeleye Span I think, and an obscure group called "By Blood and Marriage") referring to the English. ;')
I've got bloodlines from all over the British Isles. (':
Like England, medieval Ireland was probably dotted with villages. Sites of Roman towns still were occupied in England, but most of those didn't resemble the Roman period original, the originals having been pulled apart for other things. I don't know that a single Roman-era bridge survived, and a bridge is a weird thing to pull down IMO.
The town name where my surname ancestors last lived before taking the boat over here 370 years ago can be found in the Domesday Book, but like a lot of those place names, it was a hamlet. :')