Excerpt

Recipient of the 1992 ACIS Donald Murphy Prize for a Distinguished First Book, this monograph represents the fruitful combination of the two fields of sociology and Celtic studies. Based on the author’s Harvard dissertation, the study reflects considerable scholarship and knowledge of not only modern sociological theory, but also the Old Irish law tracts, one of the richest (and most problematic) sources for a reconstruction of early and medieval Irish society. Departing from the evolutionary view of early Ireland as constituting a “survival” of Indo-European, Iron Age or even Bronze Age social systems, Patterson marks the ruptures which occurred during the early Christian period.