In Dublin, the Wood Quay-Fishamble Street archaeological excavations were a constant media story throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when the threat of official destruction brought thousands of protestors into the streets. Although this highly-publicized protest failed to "Save Wood Quay," it did force the most extensive urban excavations ever undertaken in Europe that yielded more unprecedented data about town layout in Dublin 1,000 years ago than about any other European Viking town of the time. Dozens of often nearly intact building foundations, fences, yards, pathways, and quaysides, as well as thousands of artifacts and environmental samples, were unearthed in the course of the campaign. In this book, Dr. Pat Wallace, the chief archaeologist who directed the Wood Quay and Fishamble Street excavations, provides a detailed examination of the implications of these discoveries for Viking-Age and Anglo-Norman Dublin by placing them in their national and international contexts. Lavishly illustrated with over 500 color images, maps, and drawings, together with detailed descriptions and analyses of the artifacts, this pioneering study gathers all the finds and discusses them in the context of parallel discoveries in Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia, and northern Europe, with the historical, economic, and cultural milieu of Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin as the background. *** "This marvelous work memorializes a major archaeological discovery unearthed in Dublin between 1974 and 1981. Structural remains from 840 through 1169 CE, the most extensive for any site north of the Alps, were excavated by Patrick Wallace, who now analyzes his finds from Wood Quay, Fishamble Street, and related sites. A lively text and numerous photos enliven the hundreds of buildings unearthed.... Highly recommended." --Choice, Vol. 54, No. 4, December 2016 [Subject: History, Archaeology, Viking Studies, Medieval Studies, Art History, Irish Studies]

Dig through the layers of time to find the Viking past beneath our city streets. Shipbuilding, praying, raiding, trading and playing - Viking customs and habits are brought to life in this richly illustrated account of the beginnings of Dublin town. Viking Dublin was a vibrant, multicultural centre of commerce in early medieval Europe. Now Dublin is unique in the world for its enormous stock of preserved archaeological and written records. Together, they reveal intimate details of life in the city and bring us beyond the myths to a people who developed a small coastal settlement into a bustling hub of trade and craft. Fully illustrated with photographs, drawings and new maps, Dublin and the Viking World takes readers into the streets and homes of a major Viking city. Expert authors explore the acclaimed Dublinia exhibition experience and the latest in world-class scholarship to show readers the realities of the world of Viking Dublin.

Among the subjects covered in this celebration of medieval Dublin are: cross-cultural processes between Scandinavian settlers and the native Irish; spiritual and secular aspects of the city; and representations of Viking and medieval Dublin in texts and maps.

The relationship of Ireland with the Viking World is one of the enduring themes of the study of the Viking Age. The Fifteenth Viking Congress addressed key issues in the debate, including Viking-Age Ireland, the colonization of the North Atlantic, weapons and warfare, and the development of urbanism. This book, comprising papers by more than fifty of the world's leading Viking specialists, presents a broad range of ideas and approaches to these studies, supported by archaeological, historical, literary and linguistic evidence. --Book Jacket.

This volume contains a wealth of new research on Dublin's medieval past, including paired papers by Joseph Harbison and Rene Gapert that re-examine skulls found on the site of the Hospital of St John the Baptist, Thomas Street. Alan Hayden reports on his excavation of property plots fronting onto Kevin Street and New Street and what they tell us about the supposed fourteenth-century decline of Dublin, and Aisling Collins explains the significant findings from the dig of the church and graveyard at St James's. Antoine Giacometti examines a medieval tanning quarter that showcases leatherworking and shoemaking in medieval Dublin, complementing work by John Nicholl that analyses footwear styles in the late medieval city based on evidence excavated from Chancery Lane. This aspect of life is illustrated too in the findings of Paul Duffy's excavations in Thomas Street, which reveal a great deal about crafts in the western suburb of medieval Dublin. Franc Myles reports on the findings of his excavation at Keysar's Lane beside St Audeon's church in High Street, including some fascinatingly decorated medieval floor tiles; Jon Stirland reports on the discovery of two parallel ditches of possible early medieval/medieval date located to the rear of nos 19-22 Aungier Street; and Edmond O'Donovan describes his discoveries while excavating in the internal courtyard at the site of the Bank of Ireland at College Green, marked on Speed's 1610 map of Dublin as 'the hospital'. Historical papers include Denis Casey's analysis of Dublin's economy in its twelfth-century Irish context and Brian Coleman's study of taxation and resistance in fifteenth-century Dublin. Thomas W. Smith shines light on papal provisions to ecclesiastical benefices in thirteenth-century Dublin, while Stephen Hewer examines the oldest surviving original court roll of the Dublin bench, dating from 1290.

Viking-Age trade, network theory, silver economies, kingdom formation, and the Scandinavian raiding and settlement of Ireland and Britain are all popular subjects. However, few have looked for possible connections between these phenomena, something this book suggests were closely related. By allying Blomkvist’s network-kingdoms with Sindbæk’s nodal market-networks, it is argued that the political and economic character of Viking-Age Britain and Ireland – my ‘Insular Scandinavia’ – is best understood if Dublin and Jórvík are seen as being established as nodes of a market-based network-kingdom. Based on a dataset relating to the then developing bullion economies of the central and eastern Scandinavian worlds and southern Scandinavia in particular, it is argued that war-band leaders from, or familiar with, ‘Danish’ markets like Hedeby and Kaupang transposed to Insular Scandinavia the concept of polities based on establishment of markets and the protection of routeways between them. Using this book, readers can think of interlinked Dublin and Great Army elites creating an Insular version of a Danish-style nodal market kingdom based on commerce and silver currencies. A Viking Market Kingdom in Ireland and Britain will help specialist researchers and students of Viking archaeology make connections between southern Scandinavia and the market economy of the Uí Ímair (‘descendants of Ívarr’) operating out of the twin nodes of Dublin and Jórvík via the initial establishment of Hiberno-Scandinavian longphuirt and the related winter-camps of the Viking Great Army.