10 December 2026

Of Ships and Men in Argyll and Beyond: Military Levies in the First Millennium

Online talk by Alex Woolf

Organised by Society of Higland & Island Historical Research. Email to researve a place, and to receive the Zoom link. Participation is free for members and students. Non-members are requested to pay a lecture fee of £5. More details from their website.

One of the major problems faced by historians of Dark Age societies is the question of demography – how big were the societies and the units of societies we study? Starting with the military levy surviving from seventh-century Dál Riata, this lecture will explore various ways of estimating population using material from Ireland, Norway, and England.