Thompson, Tok Freeland

Dr. Tok Freeland Thompson is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. He obtained his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Thompson has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Trinity College, Dublin; the University of Iceland; and the University of Ulster.

Ireland's Pre-Celtic Archaeological and Anthropological Heritage

2006 0-7734-5880-8
This work challenges current trends in thinking about Ireland and Celticity. Drawing on a wide range of disciplinary outlooks – including Archaeology, Folklore, Linguistics, History, Genetics and more – the author asserts that the pre-Celtic people’s cultures, and their contributions to traditional and modern Irish life, have been vastly under-appreciated. This work seeks to understand why this is so, and to redress that balance by partaking in an investigation of the evidence as well as by demonstrating how that evidence has been constructed. The author does not assume a priori neither the “invasion” hypothesis of Celtic people and cultures, nor the “immobilism” hypothesis which states that the idea of the Celts is a recent one, unconnected to actual peoples in the past. The result is a detailed study into the varied processes involved in the creation of the past, and a new, if perhaps controversial, picture of “Celtic” Ireland.