The arrival of wine in Ireland

Abstract

abstract:Wine is assumed to have been among the earliest of Roman goods imported into Ireland, but archaeology, linguistics, and literary sources cannot provide definitive proof for any widespread availability of wine in Ireland during the early period of Roman control in Britain. An examination of the evidence for wine and its accoutrements in late Iron Age Ireland suggests that the Irish were initially less engaged with Roman material culture than were other peoples who lived near, but outside of, areas of direct Roman control, a situation that appears to have changed in late antiquity. The greater availability of wine and other exotic goods in Ireland in the fourth and fifth centuries ce is probably best interpreted as yet another aspect of the still poorly understood transformation of Irish society at the end of the late Iron Age, a transformation that eventually resulted in the integration of the Irish within the late Roman and early medieval European cultural sphere.