Talk by Dr Roseanne Schot

A scene from the modern ‘Fire Celebration’ held each May on Uisneach (copyright Dr Ciarán McDonnell)

Summary The Hill of Uisneach, Co. Westmeath, is celebrated as the sacred ‘centre’ of Ireland and meeting place of the ancient provinces and is often ranked in early Irish literature with great royal centres like Tara. Uisneach was a place of gathering, ceremony and burial from early prehistory (c. 3000BC) and its sacral significance endured long after the introduction of Christianity, when it became the seat of power of one of early medieval Ireland’s most illustrious royal dynasties, the Clann Cholmáin of Mide. This lecture will explore the history and evolving role of Uisneach through the prism of its landscape, archaeology, associated mythology and early literature, charting the transformation of the hill from pagan sanctuary to seat of Christian kingship during the first millennium AD.

Speaker Dr Roseanne Schot is an archaeologist and director of the Tara Research Project in The Discovery Programme, Dublin. She is a graduate of NUI Galway, where her PhD research as an Irish Research Council scholar focused on the cultic and royal landscape of Uisneach, on which she has written extensively. She has maintained an active role in research and fieldwork at Uisneach and recently completed the first phase of a conservation plan for the hill, funded by the Heritage Council and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. She is a former research associate and part-time lecturer in archaeology at NUI Galway and has collaborated on a wide range of research projects in Ireland and Europe. She is co-editor of the book Landscapes of cult and kingship (2011) and is currently working on a book detailing the important discoveries and insights generated by archaeological survey and scholarship at Tara over the past two decades.