Pagan Ireland: Ritual and Belief in Another World

Pagan Ireland by John Waddell examines archaeological evidence for ritual activity across Ireland, exploring how prehistoric communities expressed belief through monuments, deposits, and ceremonial sites. Spanning several thousand years from around 4000 BC, it offers insight into the material traces of ancient traditions.

Written for a general audience, the book combines archaeological interpretation with comparisons from other cultures. Rather than offering fixed conclusions, it considers how patterns in the evidence may reflect underlying systems of belief, with sites such as stone circles understood as purposeful and symbolic constructions.

It also highlights the importance of natural cycles, with evidence suggesting close attention to the movement of the sun and sky, reflected in both monuments and artefacts.

From burial practices to symbolic craftworking, the study presents a broad picture of evolving traditions, revealing a complex and often enigmatic prehistoric belief system.

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Pagan Ireland | Back Cover

Driven by a very human desire to make sense of the world and control their lives, people created sacred spaces and monuments to facilitate communication with the gods and with ancestral figures. A multiplicity of sacred phenomena were part of everyday experience, with landscapes and objects often holding otherworldly meaning.

Written for a general readership, this wide-ranging study draws on archaeological and cultural evidence to address the difficult question of what beliefs might lie behind certain ritual practices. Sometimes it is possible to make a plausible guess as to what these may have been. A circle of stones was more than just a way of marking a sacred space: the round plan was an expression of a belief in a circular, cyclical cosmos, as witnessed in the path of the sun and the fixed stars, and in the rhythm of the year.

Sun worship is recorded throughout prehistory and is apparent not just at famous sites like Newgrange, but also in imagery etched in gold and bronze throughout time. The great disc of the sun travelled across the daytime sky and, at night, was believed to descend beneath the earth in the west, traversing a mysterious underworld, to rise again in the east.

Funerary ceremonies, solar symbolism, magical metalworking, an enduring belief in the cosmic circle, fertility rites, idol worship, and much more were all part of a great pagan tapestry. Veneration of the old gods survived well into Christian times.

Archaeologists frequently come across puzzling evidence for ritual activity, and Pagan Ireland explores a wealth of these discoveries. This work is a survey of the many rituals and beliefs that were vitally important elements of life in ancient Ireland over several thousand years, from 4000 BC onwards.

The Author

John Waddell, formerly Professor of Archaeology at the University of Galway, has written extensively on Irish archaeology. His work on Rathcroghan, a place rich in myth and legend, inspired his interest in Celtic mythology and his book Archaeology and Celtic Myth (2014). Other books by the author include Foundation Myths: the beginnings of Irish archaeology (2005) and The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland a new edition (2022), The Celtic World: A History (2026).