Beyond the empire’s edge Despite the lack of any documented military presence, Roman objects are found in Ireland from the late first or early second century AD onwards. Although the overall numbers are fairly small, the general scarcity of indigenous Iron Age objects makes the presence of these exotic imports all the more striking (Bateson 1973; 1976; Freeman 2001). Roman material in Ireland has tended to be discussed more or less exclusively in terms of Ireland itself. Explanations for its occurrence have usually been quite particular to the Irish context: raiders, traders, refugees, displaced Irish princes etc. I would like in this paper to propose that we start to think of Roman objects in Ireland as part of a broader arc of cultural exchange that extends around the northern fringes of the Roman Empire in the first few centuries AD, incorporating Wales, northern England, Scotland and Scandinavia as well as Ireland.The issues surrounding the reception and transformation of Roman objects and ideas by indigenous communities are similar in each of these areas, and each has the potential to shed light on the broader range of cultural meetings that characterise these turbulent centuries. Although my comments in this regard will be limited to a few brief comparisons with southern Scotland, much deeper comparative analysis of these regions should be a priority for future research. Tara and the Romans The most important concentration of Roman material occurs in east central Ireland. Here we have, for example, the votive assemblage from Newgrange (Carson and O’Kelly 1977), inhumation burials with Romano- British grave-goods from Lambay Island (Raftery 1994, 200–3) and the key collection from the promontory fort at Drumanagh, still unpublished and inaccessible. It is in the context of this important regional group that we should seek to understand the material from Tara. The material from Seán Ó Ríordáin’s excavations comprises a fairly eclectic mix of objects, accumulated over several centuries of (perhaps episodic) interaction with the Roman world, from the second–fourth centuries AD. Some were manufactured in the Roman provinces; others may have been locally produced but were nonetheless influenced by Roman forms. Together they constitute the largest published assemblage of Roman material from Ireland. It is useful to begin by outlining some characteristics of the collection as a whole, which is a little obscured in the published report by the separate treatments of the pottery (Evans 2008), glass (Bourke 2008), ‘small finds’ (Allason-Jones 2008), barrel padlock (Velzian Donaghy 2008) and coin hoard (Grogan 2008b). Bringing these elements together reveals that the assemblage from Tara is actually highly unusual in its composition; different elements seem to tell us different (perhaps contradictory) things and this is reflected in the divergent interpretations provided by those examining different parts of the collection (e.g. Evans 2008; Allason-Jones 2008). Feasting and drinking: the pottery and glass Ó Ríordáin’s work produced a small collection of 24 pottery sherds representing fragments of at least eight vessels, although it appears that other sherds have gone astray in the period between excavation and final analysis (Evans 2008), and still more unstratified examples are unexamined in detail (Velzian Donaghy and Grogan 2008). The bulk of the sherds were recovered from the phase 4 habitation area, with a few from phase 4 ditch 1. Fragments from at least five high-quality Roman glass drinking vessels (Bourke 2008) were also recovered, with 288 16. Objects and ideas: Roman influences at Tara and beyond IAN ARMIT