Evidence suggests that the middle of the first millenium AD was a significant period in Irish history: a time of increasing political centralisation and the erosion of Iron Age belief patterns and social structures.
In this persuasive thesis Aitchison proposes a date of AD500 as a cut-off point between Iron-Age and Early Medieval Ireland. His primary interest lies in this latter society with its new political organisations. He highlights monuments as a focus for study and argues that they have been been poorly defined and understood in the literature. He argues that a monument, while it is a reminder of the past, may also be invested with new ideological significance by a later society. Within this framework he investigates the way in which the Early Medieval Irish invested much older monuments with ideological meaning and uses Armagh and other royal centres as a vehicle for analysing central themes of early Irish history. The book coincides with a resurgence of archaeological interest in the sites of Armagh and the Navan Fort and includes a formidable bibliography.