EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Introduction
1. Introduction
This report, prepared by EMAP in 2009, comprises a first draft of a Vol. 2: Gazetteer
of Site Descriptions, for a projected larger, two volume (comprising both Text and
Gazetteer) publication that will be entitled Early Medieval Dwellings and Settlements
in Ireland, AD 400-1100, intended to be completed in 2010 (with vol. 1 to be
completd then). It is based on previous EMAP databases and research, but this draft
of the gazetteer was itself completed in a brief, five-month period between July and
December 2009 (the period of INSTAR funding for 2009).
Early medieval settlement archaeology utterly dominates the record of excavations in
Ireland, including settlement enclosures, complexes, landscapes and ecclesiastical
sites (O’Sullivan et al. 2009). For this reason, EMAP focused its research on dwellings
and settlements in 2009. EMAP’s research methodology towards the completion of
Vol. 2 draft progressed in this fashion. In July 2009, the EMAP team established a list
of what they regarded as the key early medieval settlements and dwellings to be
previously investigated in Ireland, largely based on a detailed review of the original
EMAP database for 1930-2004 and also a review of additional publications, reports
and the personal knowledge or previous research of EMAP members (e.g. Kerr on
Ulster, Kinsella on NRA schemes, O’Sullivan on crannogs, etc). EMAP team members
were then allocated responsibilities for preparation of each site summary, largely on
a county-by-county basis to maximise efficiency and production of reports. Working
under the direction of the project Principal Investigators, Dr. Aidan O’Sullivan and Dr.
Finbar McCormick, Dr. Thomas Kerr in QUB acted as the day-to-day co-ordinator of
the preparation of site summaries, ensuring close version control (e.g. designation of
‘top copies’) and adherence to project timetables.
Between July-August 2009, EMAP staff carried out research on early medieval
dwellings and settlements in a wide range of previously published sources (journals,
books, etc) and also identified from various sources what likely unpublished reports
were held in the National Monuments Service, DoEHLG, Rep. of Ireland and in the
Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA). Contacts were made with staff of
these institutions to arrange to review these. EMAP staff then contacted individual
site directors and companies by email, letter and phone to request permission to
read unpublished reports in NMS/NIEA and to use these reports in EMAP’s research.
It is striking that despite a severe economic downturn in late 2009, site directors and
companies were enormously supportive of the project and all site directors contacted
gave full permissions to consult the reports – a measure of the profession’s
commitment to dissemination and research. In a few cases, it was impossible to
locate or contact site directors (often due to staff redundancies in many companies).
In such cases, EMAP researchers utilised the brief summaries given in Excavations.ie
or in other publications. Between August-November 2009, EMAP staff then used
these unpublished reports to prepare brief site descriptions for this gazetteer. These
then required preliminary editing, while site plans, cross sections and other key
illustrations were scanned from books, papers and unpublished reports and inserted
in relevant locations in the Gazetteer.
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