This serenity, however, was probably only ever present in the early morning because, despite its apparent isolation, the site was positioned close to the intersection of two major route ways, the River Shannon, running north/south, and the eiscir riada, a glacial ridge aligned east-west, which was a natural pathway across Ireland from prehistoric times. When founded originally Clonmacnoise would have been effectively an island in the River Shannon bounded directly by water on the north and surrounded elsewhere by an expanse of bog that stretched for miles in all directions.

According to tradition, Ciarán, the founder of the monastery, died in or about the year 549, having lived at Clonmacnoise for no more than six months. Early documentation is slight but, by the close of the seventh century, it was one of the major midland monasteries. By 790 its fame had reached the continent and it was important enough to receive gifts from Charlemagne and Alcuin of York. It was during the tenth century, however, that Clonmacnoise attained its greatest prominence. In return for conceding burial rights (which were evidently every bit as sought after then as they are today) it received major political patronage from the Clann Cholmáin kings of the Southern Uí Néill. In 909 the high-king, Flann Sinna, financed the construction of the daimliag mór, the great stone church that still dominates the site. At the same time the Cross of the Scriptures was erected with an inscription immortalising Flann as 'king of Ireland'. The Uí Néill identification with Clonmacnoise was such that, for a time, it was effectively the capital of Ireland. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the power of the Clann Cholmáin faded, the patronage of the monastery was taken up by the Ua Conchobair kings of Connacht and it was the burial place of the last high-king, Ruaidhrí Ua Conchobair. In the twelfth century its scriptorium produced several of the most important sources for early Irish history, including the Annals of Tigernach, the Chronicon Scottorum, the Annals of Clonmacnoise, Lebor na hUidhre and the collection of annals and genealogies known simply by its Bodleian shelf number as Rawlinson B.502. With the coming of the Normans, the importance of Clonmacnoise declined. After 1210 the settlement focus gradually shifted northwards up the river, Athlone became the major crossing point of the Shannon and the old church site declined.

Clonmacnoise was not alone as a great monastic centre. There were others including Armagh, Clonard, Durrow, Kells and Kildare but Clonmacnoise is unique in having a modern-day champion who has put time, energy, dedication and resources into its study. The archaeology of early Irish monasteries is little understood despite their role as formative influences in medieval Irish (and European) culture. Traditionally work has concentrated on the small remote churches off the west coast-island sites such as Skellig Mhichíl, Church Island and the recently (excellently) published Illaunloghan. For many people, particularly abroad, the typical image of an early Irish monastery remains a small eremitical church built in isolated, out of the way places. In Ireland, however, we have long known that this is but a part of the story. The monasteries of the east were large populous places with many churches. They were also the centres, not the island churches, that housed the libraries that were to be the powerhouses of the Carolingian renaissance and provided the Irish with their first starring role as forgers of European civilization.

The seventh and eight centuries were critical in the formation of the modern world. It was during this time that power was transferred from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, a power shift that lasted until 1945, when it crossed the Atlantic and passed to the United States. The Irish were key players in the ancient transformation. In the year 800 the Christian west consisted of four major powers, the Carolingian Empire, the kingdom of Asturias, Ireland, and the kingdoms of Britain. In such a small pool it was inevitable that the Irish would occasionally rise to the top even if it was not as political leaders but as scholars. A few years ago Thomas Cahill published a book on this period entitled How the Irish saved civilization. In what was perhaps its most insightful criticism David Howlett commented that the title was completely wrong, 'the book', he said, 'should have been called: How the Irish created civilization'. The generators of Irish intellectual endeavour were the monasteries and one cannot help but think that in any other country it would have been a priority to investigate a large monastery so as to understand more about how they made such a key contribution to the formation of the European identity. Alas, this has not occurred.

The problem with the excavation of a large monastic site is that it is a ten- or twenty-year undertaking. In an ideal world this should not be a problem. Even in non-ideal worlds the Wharram Percy (Yorkshire) project took twenty-five years, George Eogan's heroic work at Knowth, the best part of forty years, while the excavations on Mount Olympus, initiated in 1895 are still continuing. Three factors militate, however, against long-term research in the twenty-first century. Firstly, our modern bureaucratic age is unable to think beyond three- or five-year projects, not only in archaeology but in almost any area of endeavour except road-building. Anything that takes longer than five years is viewed suspiciously as an unreliable investment that might never be concluded. A 'twenty-year project', including the government's recently announced €34 billion plan for road building, is generally interpreted as meaning 'never'. Secondly, it is extremely difficult to find individuals who will devote themselves to a single site for ten or twenty years. Academic promotion committees can evaluate short-term projects but they are completely at sea when it comes to assessing an on-going twenty-year project. Nowadays, it is in an academic's financial interest to take on nothing that lasts more than between three and five years. Thirdly, the budget for archaeological research excavation in Ireland is ridiculously small. The Scottish government spends more money on the excavation of one site, Portmohomock (a site, incidentally, which is of central importance to the understanding of the early Irish monastery), than all of the money that is spent by our government on archaeological research in Ireland. It is not just the Scots that put us to shame. At Hamage (France-Nord) the resources of the Belgian and French governments have been invested in the excavation of a monastery that has seventh-century Irish (or at least Irish-style) levels, while in Italy the work of Richard Hodges at San Vincenzo al Volturno is also of relevance to understanding the Irish monastery. It is a sad comment on the present state of Irish archaeology that the total amount of money spent on archaeological research (apart from the Discovery Programme) would be rejected by an estate agent if it was offered as the down-payment on the purchase of an apartment in Dublin. In the poverty of our archaeological research monies, it is fortunate that we can rely on our Belgian, English, French, Italian and Scottish colleagues to inform us about the layout of early Irish monasteries. With one solitary exception-Heather King-who by her energy alone, redeems not only an apathetic Irish government but also the academic discipline of archaeology, which, in thraldom to theory and commerce, finds it impossible to initiate or maintain any long-term project.

King's excavations have concentrated in the Old Graveyard, where she has recovered the domestic settlement associated with the monastery. Also, together with her colleague Conleth Manning she has excavated the high crosses and carried out other smaller investigations across the site. The writing of excavation reports is notoriously complex, dependent on irregular funding, on the director's availability from other duties, and on the ability of specialists to produce their reports within a designated time. It is a general axiom that for every month spent recording in the field, three months need to be spent writing up. As the number and range of forensic studies increase, this can be seen to be an understatement. In the interim before the appearance of her final report, Heather King decided to initiate a series of Clonmacnoise studies in which she persuaded, cajoled and charmed the cream of Irish scholarship to apply their minds to the subject of Clonmacnoise. As a result, individuals whose thoughts might never appear in a published excavation report have made lasting contributions. Asked about the motivation for the publication of Clonmacnoise Studies, King said:

I was struck on one occasion by the remark that all of this information would be published in some obscure journal and that lectures would be given in foreign places or 'up in Dublin', and that the present-day inhabitants of Clonmacnoise would never get the opportunity to learn more about their native place. It was with this challenge in mind and with the realisation that there was a genuine thirst for knowledge about the site that the first Clonmacnoise seminar came about.

King has lived up to her word. The proceedings of the first seminar were published in 1998 and the significance of this second volume is that it demonstrates the reality of the series and reassures the world of scholarship that future volumes will appear.

One of the major unresolved problems regarding Clonmacnoise is the extent of the monastery. How large was it? Thirty-five years ago, Charles Thomas was the first to attempt to delineate the line of the vallum or monastic enclosure. He identified it as a surviving bank and ditch on high ground to the south of the complex. He lined this up with some surviving field boundaries to produce a roughly sub-rectangular enclosure, which was comparable to what was then known about the excavated example at Iona. In the first paper in this volume Donald Murphy places us all in his debt by establishing the position of the enclosure and it has proved to be different from the line proposed by Thomas. It is closer to the church complex and it was filled in towards the end of the eighth century when the monastery expanded beyond these bounds. Murphy suggests that the expansion may be connected with the construction of a major bridge across the Shannon in 804. The enclosure ditch was 5.00-6.20 m in width and 3.75 m in depth, which together with an internal bank, topped probably by a stockade, would have been an impressive rampart. Murphy is wrong, however, in thinking that Adomnán's Life of St Columba provides evidence that the ditch existed in the sixth century (pp 19-20). The early Irish, like most of their contemporary European counterparts, did not possess a modern historical sense. The only function of the past was to demonstrate current realities and it was adjusted accordingly. Adomnán was no Bede and certainly not a Ranke. The vallum may well have been in existence in the sixth century but the documentary evidence can only be used to show that it was present c.697, when Adomnán wrote.

The extent of the monastery is also the subject of Harold Mytum's paper but, in addition, he is also interested in the character of settlement on the site. He has used several pioneering forms of non-intrusive geophysical survey. Some methods were more satisfactory than others and resistivity survey, for instance, was disappointing because it tended to identify geological rather than archaeological features. Nonetheless, Mytum proposes an interesting settlement model, with the ritual complex at the core. Domestic settlement concentrated on the north (between the churches and the river) and on the east, which has been the focus of Heather King's excavations. The density of settlement on the east may be related to the position of the Nun's Church, which was a second ritual focus, and to the presence of the Pilgrim's Road, one of the principal route ways to the monastery. Domestic evidence is also present on the west but it is more dispersed than elsewhere. Mytum's work did not discover any sign of enclosures but, interestingly, the settlement evidence tended to have annular boundaries. He also found that the low bank regarded by Thomas as a possible monastic vallum is of relatively modern date. Mytum's work also provides evidence concerning the depth of surviving deposits on the site, something that will be very useful for future research.

Conleth Manning has done more than anyone since Leask to establish the chronology of pre-Norman Irish churches and his demonstration, published in volume one of Clonmacnoise Studies, that the cathedral is the daimliag of 909 was a tour de force both of scholarship and field observation. In this volume he directs his attention to the other pre-Norman buildings at the centre of the site. He suggests that Temple Ciarán, the small chapel or shrine built over the reputed burial place of the saint, was erected at the same time as the cathedral and it may even be slightly earlier because it is orientated differently from all of the other churches. Its round-headed doorway, which seems to be original, may be the earliest arch of mortared stone in Ireland. Manning proposes as a general rule that the deeper the antae (the projections of the side walls beyond the gable ends that were intended to support the ends of a roof carried out over the gables) the earlier the date and on this basis he suggests that Temple Dowling probably belongs to the late tenth- or early eleventh-century. He also identifies a previously unrecognised fragment of the original Nun's Church and demonstrates that the surviving round tower was constructed in 1124.

The Nun's Church is the subject of a detailed treatment by Jennifer Ní Grádaigh who argues that it was built, as the annals suggest, in 1167 at the behest of Derbforgaill. She re-evaluates the reconstruction work carried out by James Graves and the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1864-5 and concludes that 'while it was not as meticulous as modern-day archaeology would require, it was by the standards of the day highly enlightened and by any standards very carefully and sensibly carried out'. The reconstruction work is also the subject of Keith Emerick's paper. He is particularly informative on its role in the development of the 'philosophy of repair'. Unfortunately the standards of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society were forgotten when the care of ancient ecclesiastical monuments passed to the Board of Works in 1869. In England one does not find work of comparable quality until after the First World War when the monastic remains at Whitby, which had been shelled by the German navy, were rebuilt.

Aidan MacDonald raises important issues in a paper that details the documentary evidence, primarily annalistic, relating to the daimliag (or cathedral), the dairthech (now Temple Kelly) and eaglais beag (Temple Ciarán). He also provides a very full list of bishops of (and bishops at) Clonmacnoise and concludes that there were bishops of Clonmacnoise from the late ninth or early tenth century, whether they were bishops of a territorial diocese or not. His suggestion that the daimliag was built specifically as a bishop's church in 909 has much to commend it and reinforces the importance of that year as a key date in the evolution of the monastery. He views the role of the daimliag as parallel and complementary to the abbot's church, which he identifies as the dairthech (literally, 'oak house'). This timber building was in use from early times until the twelfth century and MacDonald is surely right in suggesting that its demise in 1167 was related to the declining role of abbots in the life of the community. The dairthech at Kildare, which I have suggested elsewhere was the same as Cogitosus's basilica, had a similarly long life. The origin and function of multiple churches in early Irish monasteries is a subject worth further study. It is a pity that MacDonald did not rectify his dates but simply cites the annalistic years. Accordingly, while some of his dates are accurate, others and not and the reader wishing to use this paper as an aid to further work will have to go back to the published annals and correct the dates appropriately.

Edel Bhreatnach re-examines some of the literary sources originating at Clonmacnoise in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She indicates that Lebor na hUidhre is a complex production that was not written exclusively at the site but she concludes, with Ó Cuív, that Rawlinson B.502 was 'glossed and possibly written at a scriptorium attached to the monastery of Clonmacnoise'. The difficulties of interpreting the tantalising references to monuments in medieval Irish poetry are highlighted by one example from the poet MacCoise in his elegy on the death of Ó Ruairc: An t-ór dearg so for a leacht/ do leaghadh féachtfor a se 'this red gold on his tomb which was some time since melted upon it'. Bhreathnach interprets it as referring perhaps to an engraved or cast-bronze grave cover of Limoges type (p. 102), while Swift considers it 'most easily interpreted as the type of inset Gothic lettering often found around the outer edges of later medieval tombstones' (p. 106). Given that the poem is probably of late medieval date, it would seem more likely that a lost brass is referred to. Cathy Swift's paper highlights the importance of publishing a new catalogue of the pre-Norman cross-slabs of Clonmacnoise. She warns about the tendency to date slabs on the basis of names found in the annals. The names tend to be common and the absence of patronymics or titles makes it difficult to be sure of the identity of those commemorated. By drawing comparisons with Iona and Islay, she also indicates that one may be able to identify the outlying estates of Clonmacnoise on the basis of concentrations of Clonmacnoise-style slabs at sites in the Shannon basin such as Bealin and Lemanaghan.

Settlement at Clonmacnoise did not cease with the decline of the monastery and for a time in the thirteenth century it was the site of an important castle, although there is no mention of it in the modern interpretative centre. Kieran O'Conor and Conleth Manning provide the first detailed survey and interpretation of this structure, which was built beside a natural harbour. The defences consisted of an inner ward dominated by a masonry hall-keep, an outer ward of earth-and-timber defences with wooden towers at the corners, and a barbican controlling access to the complex. It was built in 1214 on the orders of John de Grey, justiciar of Ireland, as part of a policy to control the midlands as far as the Shannon. The Gaelic Irish remained strong in the area, however, and the castle was captured in 1214 (presumably while it was being built), in 1223 and again in 1227. It is last mentioned in government records in 1233 and a record of 1288 suggests that by then it was long outside of official control. The authors attribute the present collapsed state of the keep to medieval undermining but, in my view, it is more likely to have resulted from slighting during the wars of the seventeenth century.

The volume also contains shorter pieces by Cathal Ó Háinle and Con Manning on an unrecorded seventeenth-century chalice from Clonmacnoise and by Peter Harbison on three nineteenth-century drawings of Clonmacnoise.

As is evident from the above, this is a scholarly study of enduring value but it is also a book that can be picked up and read by any intelligent reader. It is excellently edited (I did not notice a single misprint or misspelling), handsomely produced, attractively illustrated and a bargain at the price. Further volumes are promised on the early medieval bridge, on the excavation of the high crosses, and on the excavation of the Old Graveyard. Assuming the standards of the present work are maintained the series will constitute a remarkable contribution to the study of Irish archaeology.