- Power, Politics and Status -
In Early Christian Ireland, the fundamental unit of social organization was the
tuath (Kelly 1988: 3-6), of which there were at least 150, each comprising up to
several thousand people; it was larger than a kin-group, and it was a political rather
than an ethnic or cultural entity. Membership of a tuath was an important part of an
individual's identity, not least because of the political obligations that it entailed.
Individual tuatha varied considerably in size and prestige, and their power fluctuated
over time; at times one tuath could exercise dominance over a few others. By the
eighth century AD some dynasties were beginning to be able to exert more stable
authority over even larger territories. As with the prehistoric groups, archaeology
has had little or no success in identifying the extent of the tuatha.
There have been various attempts to define political groups on archaeological
grounds alone, mainly by defining territories around hypothetical political centres.
One of the most successful concerns the late Hallstatt fortified sites with rich burials
of the sixth century Be in southern Germany (Harke 1979); if these really were
the centres of independent politieS, then each one dominated a territory about 100
kilometres across, much bigger than the Irish tuath. On the other hand, the rich
burials of the fifth-century Early La Tene period in the Rhineland have a much closer
spacing, suggesting a very different sort of social organization.
It would be dangerous to extrapolate uncritically from the few areas and periods
for which we have good documentation, whether archaeological or historical,
because the patterns they reveal are so different. There is no reason to think that
political groups of the size of the larger late iron age tribes described by Caesar or
of the Irish kingdoms of the late first millennium AD were typical of other periods.
These may well have been the product of unusual historical circumstances, and we
should expect the more common pattern to have been one of much smaller political
units, perhaps of the scale of the tuath. Such political groupings may therefore have
offered what was generally only a very small stage for the political activities which
took place within and between them.
Perhaps the most important form of identity for an individual was as a member
of a kin-group. According to the early Irish literature, the most informative source
for this, many social rights and obligations were exercised by the derbfine, or four-
generation descent group sharing a common patrilineal great-grandfather (Kelly
1988: 12-16). The group held land in common; it was responsible for offences
committed by any of its members, and likewise sought retribution in common for
grievances. By the eighth century AD a three-generation group with a common
grandfather was beginning to be a more important social unit, but kinship was still
an important basis for social relationships. It is highly likely that kinship was
the dominant factor in social relationships in earlier periods also, but the classical
authors tell us little of social organization at this level, and archaeology has not been
good at exploring social organization in such fine detail.
We know even less about the fundamental forms of social identity within the
kin-group, in particular concepts of male and female or adult and child. It is clear
that categories of male and female were well established; prehistoric burial traditions
regularly show distinctive sets of personal ornaments and possessions which are
correlated with sexual identification of the skeletons to show gender divisions in
society. The Irish laws also treat men and women differently, in terms that seem