This book investigates the archaeological evidence for crafts and production in early medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100, with a particular focus on the extensive excavated evidence from rural secular and ecclesiastical settlements. The volume firstly provides an overview of the social and ideological contexts of crafts and technologies in early Ireland. It then outlines the extant evidence specifically for iron-working, non-ferrous metalworking, glass, enamel and millefiori, bone, antler and horn, and stone working, and characterises each craft practice in terms of scale, outputs and implications for society. Tables provide additional information on wood craft and pottery. The book then provides a detailed review of the use of different materials in dress and ornament, touches on cloth and textile production, and explores how social identities were performed through objects and material practices. The book then provides a voluminous site gazetteer accounting for all evidence for craft and production on hundreds of early medieval settlements, with numerous tables of data, site plans, artefact drawings and photographs and an extensive bibliography. The book is based on the work of the Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), which was funded through the Irish Heritage Council and Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht's INSTAR programme, a collaborative research project carried out by University College Dublin and Queens University Belfast which reviewed all archaeological excavations in Ireland between c.1930-2012. This particular book, building on EMAP's previous studies of dwellings and settlements, and agriculture and economy, provides the baseline for a generation of studies of early medieval crafts and production in Ireland in its northwest European contexts.

This monograph provides a comprehensive synthesis and discussion of the archaeology of early medieval settlement in Ireland. Drawing on both published and unpublished material, it sets out an interpretive, analytical text and a gazetteer of some 241 key early medieval settlements revealed through archaeological excavations. Analysis focuses on four major areas: early medieval houses and other buildings; settlement enclosures; agriculture as part of the wider settlement landscape; and crafts and industrial activities on early medieval settlements.

This book describes, collates and analyses the archaeological, zooarchaeological and palaeobotanical evidence for agriculture, livestock and cereal production in early medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100, particularly as revealed through archaeological excavations in Ireland since 1930. It is based on the research of the Heritage Council-funded Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), a collaborative research project between University College Dublin and Queens University Belfast, supported by the Irish government Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Providing a range of insights into farmsteads and field enclosures, livestock management (particularly of cattle) and crop cultivation, along with a series of datasets presented in tables and gazetteer descriptions, it is arguably amongst the most detailed, focused and comprehensive analyses of early agricultural practice in its social and economic contexts in Europe, and the wider world.

Despite never having been previously published, Ann Hamlin's pioneering study on the archaeology, architecture and history of the early church in Northern Ireland, her Phd thesis, has proved influential, not least for the wealth of information it presents, and the skill with which it synthesises information from different disciplines. The work forms a gazetteer of 266 sites related to early Christianity, many identified for the first time, together with a discussion section. This considers numbers, distribution and topography of sites and the different classes of material evidence (enclosures, churches and other buildings, burials, carved stones, ballauns, wells, ecclesiastical metalwork and evidence of economy and technology). It also integrates written and place-name evidence.

This work is an examination of those environmental and political factors which have influenced the distribution of settlement types in northwest Ireland during the Early Christian period (AD 500-1000). Various site types are discussed in Chapter One; the physical geography and history of the six counties of Northern Ireland which make up the study area is the subject of Chapters Two and Three. Cultural remains and written sources, both of which give insight into how society in general and the individual farm economies functioned during this period, are discussed in Chapter Four.