From the past to the Future: integrating archaeology and conflict resolution in Northern Ireland

Contested understandings about the past continue to reify the divided character of post-Troubles Northern Ireland. In particular, the unresolved legacies of the extension of English control over Ireland in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through warfare and plantation continue to structure daily lives in the province. Yet the archaeological record of this period complicates the accepted dichotomous narratives through highlighting complexity. These nuances, however, have been lost in recent decades as an overly simplistic model of colonizer versus colonized has emerged as the dominant political paradigm. The management and presentation of sites associated with the process of plantation can arguably create the space necessary to bridge the divide, and to challenge accepted understandings. Cross-community engagement in the process of archaeological discovery and interpretation on plantation-period sites in Northern Ireland highlights the critical role archaeology can play in peace and reconciliation in post-conflict societies.

A stacked Late Quaternary fluvio-periglacial sequence from the Axe valley, southern England with implications for landscape evolution and Palaeolithic archaeology

The current model of mid-latitude late Quaternary terrace sequences, is that they are uplift-driven but climatically controlled terrace staircases, relating to both regional-scale crustal and tectonic factors, and palaeohydrological variations forced by quasi-cyclic climatic conditions in the 100 K world (post Mid Pleistocene Transition). This model appears to hold for the majority of the river valleys draining into the English Channel which exhibit 8–15 terrace levels over approximately 60–100 m of altitudinal elevation. However, one valley, the Axe, has only one major morphological terrace and has long-been regarded as anomalous. This paper uses both conventional and novel stratigraphical methods (digital granulometry and terrestrial laser scanning) to show that this terrace is a stacked sedimentary sequence of 20–30 m thickness with a quasi-continuous (i.e. with hiatuses) pulsed, record of fluvial and periglacial sedimentation over at least the last 300–400 K yrs as determined principally by OSL dating of the upper two thirds of the sequence. Since uplift has been regional, there is no evidence of anomalous neotectonics, and climatic history must be comparable to the adjacent catchments (both of which have staircase sequences) a catchment-specific mechanism is required. The Axe is the only valley in North West Europe incised entirely into the near-horizontally bedded chert (crypto-crystalline quartz) and sand-rich Lower Cretaceous rocks creating a buried valley. Mapping of the valley slopes has identified many large landslide scars associated with past and present springs. It is proposed that these are thaw-slump scars and represent large hill-slope failures caused by Vauclausian water pressures and hydraulic fracturing of the chert during rapid permafrost melting. A simple 1D model of this thermokarstic process is used to explore this mechanism, and it is proposed that the resultant anomalously high input of chert and sand into the valley during terminations caused pulsed aggradation until the last termination. It is also proposed that interglacial and interstadial incision may have been prevented by the over-sized and interlocking nature of the sub-angular chert clasts until the Lateglacial when confinement of the river overcame this immobility threshold. One result of this hydrogeologically mediated valley evolution was to provide a sequence of proximal Palaeolithic archaeology over two MIS cycles. This study demonstrates that uplift tectonics and climate alone do not fully determine Quaternary valley evolution and that lithological and hydrogeological conditions are a fundamental cause of variation in terrestrial Quaternary records and landform evolution.

Archaeology, Architecture and Digital Adaptation: Developing a GIS for Archaeological Excavation on Crete

This paper is not about the history or archaeology of Priniatikos Pyrgos per se. Rather, it is a review of how the site was recorded using both traditional survey and planning techniques and digital approaches applied through a Geographical Information System (hereafter GIS) during the 2007 through 2010 seasons. Earlier work at the site will necessarily be reviewed, specifically the geophysical survey work of the Istron Geoarchaeological Project and the excavations by Hayden and Tsipopoulou between 2005 and 2006, and regional survey work by Hayden and colleagues in the Vrokastro region (Hayden, this volume, 1999, 2004; Sarris et al. 2005; Shahrukh et al. 2012). The digitisation and incorporation of the latter into the project GIS will be explored in some detail.

Three medieval buildings in the port of Ardglass, Co Down

Three buildings in what is now a small port in Ardglass, Co. Down are connected by their location on the ridge overlooking the harbour and quay. Because of the Irish vernacular style related to tower houses they have all been called castles, but analysis shows that they were originally more commercial in their purpose. The largest of the buildings is identified as a line of shops. The building adjacent to that was possibly used as a warehouse or communal hall, while the third building appears to have been used as a watch tower for the port. As such they relate to other commercial buildings found in late medieval Irish towns, notably Kilmallock, Co. Limerick.

New Ways of Looking at the State Apparatus and the State Archive in Nineteenth Century Ireland: Curiosities from that Phonetic Museum - Royal Irish Constabulary Reports and their Political Uses, 1879-91

This essay seeks to contextualise the intelligence work of the Royal Irish Constabulary, particularly in the 1880s, in terms of the wider British and imperial practice and, as a corollary, to reflect upon aspects of the structure of the state apparatus and the state archive in Ireland since the Union. The author contrasts Irish and British police and bureaucratic work and suggests parallels between Ireland and other imperial locations, especially India. This paper also defines the narrowly political, indeed partisan, uses to which this intelligence was put, particularly during the Special Commission of 1888 on 'Parnellism and crime', when governmentheld police records were made available to counsel for The Times. By reflecting on the structure of the state apparatus and its use in this instance, the author aims to further the debate on the governance of nineteenth-century Ireland and to explore issues of colonial identity and practice. The line of argument proposed in this essay is prefigured in Margaret O'Callaghan, British high politics and a nationalist Ireland: criminality, land and the law under Forster and Balfour (Cork, 199