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Newberry Essays in Medieval and Early Modern Studies 7generally affirms this territorial model and illustrates some of the dynamics implicit in thenegotiation of ecclesiastical hierarchies. 18 Based partially on their appearance in contemporary annals,Ó Carragáin posits three principal churches in the area—Kilmalkedar, Inis Uasal, and SkelligMichael—and musters archaeological and toponymic evidence suggesting that each held sway overminor churches within territorial domains—or termon lands—whose boundaries were in some casesdemarcated by wayside cross-slabs. 19The evidence of the cult of relics and saint dedications in the region buttressed this claim. Aneighth-century legal text known as the Córus Bésgnai defines a principle church as one “in which thereare relics of the founder,” and the distribution of relics by principle establishments is thought tohave been an important strategy for forging links and maintaining authority over subsidiarychurches. 20 Hence, the concentrated distribution of possible reliquary shrines at ecclesiastical sitesnorth of Skellig Michael’s and Inish Uasal’s hypothesized termon lands might indicate a converseprocess: an effort to express local identity and autonomy. 21 Though the cults of principle churchesneed not have totally subsumed others within their territorial sway, the relatively high frequency ofecclesiastical place-names deriving from local saints or from family groups in north Inveragh fitsneatly with the hypothesis of a greater number of independent establishments in this area. 22Ó Carragáin’s regional study hints at the degree of complexity, dynamism, and local variation thatmight have prevailed in medieval Ireland. Even if a territorial model of church organization waspredominant, the authority of principle churches—or indeed, the autonomy of minor churches—had to be actively constituted and spatialized. Recent anthropological considerations of the productionof power envision political authority as something that must be constantly constituted andrenegotiated within and through the landscape, not something simply imposed over clearlydemarcated territorial domains. 23 In their consideration of the modes through which the authority ofstates is internalized and reproduced, Ferguson and Gupta claim that states are “constructed entitiesthat are conceptualized and made socially effective through particular imaginative and symbolicdevices.” 24 The territorial domains of early medieval churches cannot be taken any more for granted.Even if spatial proximity and contiguity were more important than institutional genealogy in18 T. O. Ó Carragáin, “A Landscape Converted: Archaeology and Early Church Organization on Iveragh and Dingle,Ireland,” in The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe AD 300-1300, ed. M. Carver (York: YorkUniversity Press, 2003), 127-52.19 Ó Carragáin, “Landscape Converted,” 141. Termon is used in contemporary sources to refer the area of sanctuarydefined by an ecclesiastical enclosure, as well as sometimes to the lands over which a church claimed direct jurisdiction;see quote translated by Doherty below.20 Etchingham, “paruchia,” 154; C. Doherty, “The Monastic Town in Early Medieval Ireland,” in The Comparative History ofUrban Origins in Non-Roman Europe, ed. H.B. Clarke and A. Simms (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1985), 45-75[72-3].21 Ó Carragáin, “Landscape Converted,” 141-43.22 Ó Carragáin, “Landscape Converted,” 146.23 A. T. Smith, The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities (London: University of CaliforniaPress, 2003); M. Smith, “Networks, Territories and the Cartography of Ancient States,” Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers 95.4 (2005): 832-49.24 J. Ferguson and A. Gupta, “Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality,” AmericanEthnologist 29.4 (2002), 981-1002.25