The Uí Chellaig lords of Uí Maine and Tír Maine

An archaeological and landscape exploration of a later medieval inland Gaelic lordship

Daniel Patrick Curley

"The Ui Chellaig lord of Uí Maine and Tír Maine is an archaeological exploration and landscape study of one of the most significant lordships in late medieval Connacht. The Ó Cellaig lords were influential figures within medieval Gaelic society and this book details the settlements, economy and landscape of their inland lordship which covered an extensive part of the midlands. Illustrated throughout with informative maps and photographs, this book offers important insights into the Ó Cellaig lords and their local territories, and indeed into Gaelic medieval Ireland." Archaeology Ireland, Winter 2024

“Back in the 1980s, when the study of settlement and landscape in high and later medieval Ireland began to take off in earnest, little attention was paid to the world of the native Irish. Things have changed: quantitatively, it seems that more has been written over the past quarter-century about the landscape of Gaelic Ireland than about that of colonial Ireland. Dr Curley’s study of the Gaelic lordship of Uí Maine is the latest contribution to the project of redressing a historiographical imbalance. Based on a PhD thesis presented to the University of Galway, this is an outstanding work of scholarship: Daniel has a historian’s command of written sources, a geographer’s acute sense of landscape, and an archaeologist’s comfort with fine-grained survey data. In essence, his book presents a narrative of the changing geography of the lordship between the 12th and 16th centuries, documents its economic basis, and records in exceptional detail and with exceptional clarity the variety of its elite settlement forms ... The book tells a clear story from start to finish ... this is an original and important book.” Tadgh O’Keeffe, Current Archaeology. Issue 422