Summary  This lecture will examine the nature and purpose of the earliest chapters of kingship at Tara, when kingship was a religious rather than a monarchical institution. The religious nature of the kingship determined the sorts of buildings and monuments where kingship was enacted, as well as the rituals and ceremonies that were performed. The ‘rules’ bounding the actions and deportment of the early kings of Tara were communicated through myth and metaphor.

Speaker Conor Newman was chairperson of the Heritage Council from 2008-2016. He is a graduate of University College Dublin and was awarded a NUI Travelling Studentship 1987, before studying in Italy, France and the UK. Later, he was director of the Discovery Programme Tara Survey, 1992-96 and co-director (with Dr Mark Stansbury – Classics NUIG) of the Columbanus: life and legacy Project (PRTLI4 and Andrew Mellon Foundation), as well as a member of the International Scientific Committee of Making Europe: Columbanus and his legacy. He is the Acting-Director of the Centre for Landscape Studies (NUI Galway) and is co-director of the module SU407 Introduction to Art in Ireland, NUIG Summer School. He was awarded the British Academy’s John Coles Medal for Landscape Archaeology in 2011.