Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between the materialisation of power relations and the reification of social structure in high medieval south-eastern Ireland.

Paper long abstract:

The physical environment provides a key interface between social structure, the symbolic universe of explanation (cf. Berger and Luckmann 1967) and human action. It is argued in this paper that the material encoding of power relation figurations into the landscape via monument construction provides a crucial means for the (re)shaping of habitus and the internalising of social power relations. This is especially true in episodes of colonial landscape transformation, such as that which occurred in south-eastern Ireland in the Anglo-Norman period. These episodes provide an opportunity to examine the reinterpretation and/or reordering of place, i.e. space transformed by human interaction.

Secular and ecclesiastic conspicuous monumentality are examined in this respect. Also under examination is the extent to which it can be said that there are archetypal monuments associated with different facets of power, proposing the castle, or elite defended residence, and the church, or monumental ritual centre, as two such archetypes with cross cultural parallels across space and time.