English peasant settlement in Anglo-Norman Ireland - Dr Kieran O'Conor

Imirce - Migration and Ireland through time

NATIONAL MONUMENTS SERVICE
6th ANNUAL ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE

This paper examines the sometimes conflicting historical, archaeological and place-name evidence for English peasant immigration and settlement in Ireland during the very late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, immediately after the Anglo-Norman invasion. In this respect, there are difficulties at present in distinguishing English peasant settlement from that of ordinary native Irish people in the countryside of Anglo-Norman-dominated parts of eastern and south-eastern Ireland through archaeological methods alone. It will be argued, however, that this difficulty can be ameliorated somewhat by taking a multidisciplinary approach to this problem.
Dr Kieran O’Conor worked during much of the 1990s for the Archaeological Survey Branch of the National Monuments Service. He was appointed a research fellow at the Discovery Programme in 1997 and made Director of the Medieval Rural Settlement Project there in early 1999. Dr O’Conor is now Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies, University of Galway. His research interests include castles, medieval rural settlements, high medieval Gaelic Ireland and medieval landscapes. He is a Council member of the Heritage Council.