Men Who Eat Ringforts: Understanding Environmental and Heritage Destruction in the Modernist Lawscape

Abstract

The Men Who Eat Ringforts is the title of an article that appeared in Dublin's Village Magazine in
2010. Written by Tony Lowes, a member of the environmental non-government organisation
Friends of the Irish Environment, it detailed that the widespread destruction of ringforts, Ireland's
most plentiful historical monument, is largely due to a lack of law enforcement and to farmers
“gobbling up land they have no connection with.” However, without any substantial legal protection, ringforts have existed in the Irish landscape, some for over seven thousand years. If so, how
did roughly 32,000, out of what is estimated to have once been over 60,000, manage to stay standing?

Keywords: cultural heritage law, environmental law, climate change law, cultural heritage, law and geography