Materialising Power

This richly illustrated book offers a fresh perspective on linear earthworks, perhaps the most enigmatic and neglected of all of Ireland’s prehistoric field monuments.

Focusing on one of the best-preserved and largest examples of the monument type in Europe, the renowned Black Pig’s Dyke in County Monaghan — named from a folk-tale that describes how the earthworks were torn into the landscape by the angry marauding of a giant mythical schoolteacher-turned-pig — the authors integrate the results of excavations undertaken by Aidan Walsh in 1982 with new surveys and scientific dating to present a radical reassessment of the chronological and physical development of the monument and its environmental and archaeological setting.