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Accepted Paper:

Twixt land and sea: liminality and the promontory enclosures of the Atlantic façade  
Ros Ó Maoldúin (Galway University)

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the liminal draw of the Atlantic façade and consider the possibility that activity on promontories and their enclosure may reflect a concern with the magico-religious significance of liminal places on ancient seaways.

Paper long abstract:

Coasts are an obvious and acknowledged liminal landscape, situated between the worlds of land and sea and serving as the point of departure and arrival for sea journeys. Promontories inhabit a special place within that liminal landscape, projecting from the land into the sea. This paper will look at how traditional interpretations of these sites as defensive locations often fall short, how their enclosure may have had a magico-religious or ritual purpose and what rites we might expect to have taken place in such spaces. While not always easily accessible from the sea, promontory enclosures are arguably located along ancient seaways, or near landing and departure points, and it is proposed that they therefore mark significant points in a ritually imbued cultural landscape. The belief in an antagonistic relationship between land and sea will be central to this interpretation. This is evidenced in taboo and the use of liminal agents by coastal communities to navigate between those worlds (Westerdahl 2005). With a focus on Irish promontory enclosures, this paper will explore these hypotheses by looking at several elements including: established sea routes, individual site morphologies, placenames and maritime taboos.

Westerdahl, C. (2005). Seal on Land, Elk at Sea: Notes on and Applications of the Ritual Landscape at the Seaboard. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 34 (1) p.2-23

Panel S15
Liminal landscapes: archaeology, in between, here and there, inside and out and on the edge
  Session 1