EMAP_2012_Report_6_1.pdf (7.3 MB) - The Heritage Council

data from over 300 sites, and has produced comprehensive tables and distribution maps on
industrial production, there are still a number of outstanding issues for future research. The
most clearly pressing issue is a lack of good chronology for much of the industrial activity. In
contrast to cereal-drying kilns, for example, which have been produced large numbers of
good quality dates, it appears that often industrial activity is either dated by bulk charcoal
(thus providing an unsatisfactory date), or by artefact typology. Without a good and reliable
typology it is impossible to identify chronological trends in production. An attempt has been
made in Section 3 to consider the individuals who wore or/and produced certain ornaments.
There is, however, still a temptation to present production and artefacts as ends in
themselves, divorced from the people who made/commissioned them. Further work is
therefore still required to understand what role industrial activity played in early medieval
Irish society, and how it affected those who were intimately involved in the production
processes.
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