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Elizabeth FitzPatrick

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1877-2389

Professor Elizabeth FitzPatrick (Ph.D. 1998, Trinity College Dublin) is a historical landscape archaeologist who works independently as an academic researcher and writer. Her research, which intersects archaeology, place-history and place-lore, is about recomposing historical landscapes through investigation of lived human practices at monuments and natural places. The focus of her work in this field is medieval and early postmedieval Ireland, with reference to Scotland. She has pioneered cross-disciplinary research on the concept of borders in historical polities, publishing on border landscapes of Irish kingdoms and lordships, landscapes of pedigree and power, places of political assemblies, the border estates and built heritage of literati who served ruling families, and the territorial context of hunting grounds and sites of conflict. Her current research concerns the landscape thinking and human practices associated with the origins and life-courses of hill-centred borderscapes in historic territories.

She is a member of the European Association of Archaeologists, the Society for Medieval Archaeology, London, the International Institute of Geopoetics, Paris, the Irish Environmental History Network, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Dublin.

outlandsarchaeology@gmail.com

Research Interests

Historic borderscapes, landscape, settlement, territory and territoriality

Themes

Earth.

Selected Publications

2023 Landscapes of the learned: placing Gaelic literati in Irish lordships 1300ꟷ1600. Medieval History and Archaeology. Oxford University Press (Pp. 353). https://global.oup.com/academic/product/landscapes-of-the-learned-9780192855749?lang=3n&cc=at

2022 Gaelic political assemblies and power-display in borderlands of Westmeath lordships. In S. O’Brien (ed.) Westmeath history and society: interdisciplinary essays on the history of an Irish county, 57-79. Dublin. Geography Publications.

2019 Rethinking settlement values in Gaelic society: the case of the cathedral centres. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 119C, 1-34. 10.3318/priac.2019.119.06

2019 Finn’s wilderness and boundary landforms in medieval Ireland. In M. Egeler (ed.), Landscape and myth in northwestern Europe, 113-46. Borders, Boundaries, Landscapes, volume 2. Brepols, Turnhout. 10.1484/m.bbl.5.115994

2017 Finn’s seat: topographies of power and royal marchlands of Gaelic polities in medieval Ireland. Landscape History 38:2, 29-62 (Routledge). 10.1080/01433768.2017.1394062

2016 The last kings of Ireland: material expressions of Gaelic lordship c. 1300-1400 A.D. In K. Buchanan and L.H.S. Dean with Michael Penman (eds), Medieval and early modern representations of authority in Scotland and the British Isles, 197-213. Routledge, London and New York. 10.4324/9781315594736

2015 Assembly places and elite collective identities in medieval Ireland. Journal of the North Atlantic 8, 52-68. https://doi.org/10.3721/037.002.sp805 republished in 2017 Gilchrist, R. and Watson, G. (eds), Medieval archaeology: critical concepts in archaeology, 4 vols, vol. 4 Medieval social archaeology. Abingdon and New York. Routledge.

2011 FitzPatrick, E. Aughris Headland, In: Aalen, F. H. A., Whelan, K. and Stout, M. (eds.), Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape. 2nd ed. Cork: Cork University Press, 352-367.

2009 FitzPatrick, E. Native enclosed settlement and the problem of the Irish ‘ring-fort’, Medieval Archaeology, 53, 271-307.

2004 Royal inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c.1100–1600: a cultural landscape study. Studies in Celtic History 22. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge. Pp. 294.