Designs Upon the Land: Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages. By OliverH. Creighton

1 Introduction: Stones in Substance, Space and Time

“…Hence, crosses were 'stage props': stations during penitential processions (T. Ó Carragáin 2009, 215-16). Ó Carragáin likens the landscape of memory on Inishmurray to that documented for St Davids and discussed by Heather James, where wells, burial grounds and chapels of late medieval date, but possibly with earlier origins (James 1993), were connected with particular miracles and moments in the lives of saints. This spatializing of the cult across processional routes embellished with stone monuments might be considered as forming evolving and varied, but significant, elements of many early medieval monastic centres and their hinterlands.…”

“…A key challenge in landscape studies of early medieval monuments is a lack of direct investigation into the archaeological contexts of early medieval stone monuments through landscape-centred fieldwork and largescale excavations at monument sites (as opposed to keyhole excavation at the base of monuments). This imbalance is beginning to be addressed by work that has looked at different scales of spatial context for early medieval stone monuments (see James 2005;Griffiths 2006;Gondek and Noble 2010).…”