Enchantments of stone: Confronting other-than-human agency in Irish pilgrimage practices

Abstract

In contemporary Ireland, mountains, holy wells, and islands attract people from various geographic and religious backgrounds to participate in annual pilgrimages. Scholars and participants continue to debate the historical links of these events to 19th-century turas, “journey” traditions, early medieval penitential liturgies, and even prehistoric veneration of natural phenomena. Drawing from recent participant observation at Croagh Patrick mountain and excavations on Inishark Island, I analyze how modern and medieval pilgrimage practices generated “enchantments” through movements and embodied encounters with stones that materialize both past human action and other-than-human agency. Rather than products of timeless continuity of experience, such enchantments have varied widely across time. Viewing pilgrimage movements and materials in their taskscape settings highlights the articulation between the embodied affects and political and ideological effects of pilgrims’ engagement with stones in particular historic contexts. Questioning simple narratives of continuity, this study demonstrates how a relational approach can enhance analyses of pilgrimage as scenes of social reproduction, ideological controversy, and political contest.

Reframing the first millennium AD in Ireland: archaeology, history, landscape

“…The latter perspectives, however, often developed to address distinct phenomena, are perhaps not always comparable or appropriate analogies. Matters have improved in recent years, with contributions by O'Sullivan (2008;), Ó Carragáin (20092010a;, Lash (2018a;2018b), Fredengren (2002), Newman (2007; and Soderberg (2022) advancing engaged analyses of daily life, magic, religion, landscape, art and aesthetics. Nevertheless, there remains a tendency toward empirically centred archaeologies of the first millennium AD that eschew wider theorisation or conceptual analyses; this trend had already invoked the ire of pre-Celtic Tiger reviews and syntheses (Cooney 1993, 633;.…”

Reframing the first millennium AD in Ireland: archaeology, history, landscape

“…The latter perspectives, however, often developed to address distinct phenomena, are perhaps not always comparable or appropriate analogies. Matters have improved in recent years, with contributions by O'Sullivan (2008;), Ó Carragáin (20092010a;, Lash (2018a;2018b), Fredengren (2002), Newman (2007; and Soderberg (2022) advancing engaged analyses of daily life, magic, religion, landscape, art and aesthetics. Nevertheless, there remains a tendency toward empirically centred archaeologies of the first millennium AD that eschew wider theorisation or conceptual analyses; this trend had already invoked the ire of pre-Celtic Tiger reviews and syntheses (Cooney 1993, 633;.…”

Ecclesiastical Tidescapes: Exploring the Early Medieval Tidal World

“…Their integration into early devotional practices are clear. Ryan Lash has emphasised that the importance in their use may not just be derived from the undoubted affect of their materiality (crystalline and often partially translucent they can glitter and sparkle when wet), but also from the physical engagement with the process of their collection from the strand, resulting in an attentive interaction with the liminal tidal zone (Lash 2018a(Lash , 2018b LIVING AND THINKING TIDALLY Tides are predominantly lunar phenomena; the ebb and flow of the tide up and down the shoreline is predictable and governed primarily by physical relationship between the sea, the earth and the moon, and to a lesser extent the sun (Pugh and Woodworth 2014, p. 35-40). Yet, it is not simply a process that sees the sea rise and fall to the same extent each day.…”