Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Settlement, Political and Social Transformation in Armagh, Northern Ireland

在蒂娜·L·瑟斯顿博士的指导下，詹妮弗·谢弗-福斯特将为她的博士论文收集数据。在过去两个季节的考古田野工作的基础上，她将进行一次地球化学调查，然后在北爱尔兰的阿尔马郡进行小规模挖掘。阿尔马既有一个铁器时代(公元前700-公元400)的公民仪式中心，也有一个中世纪早期(公元400-1200)的基督教行政中心，传说中是由帕特里克建立的。因此，该区域有可能阐明社会和政治结构如何在这一较长的时间跨度内发展和变化。Shaffer-Foster女士将确定属于不同社会阶层的遗址，允许同时考虑统治当局的作用和基于社区的条件。这将提供对不断变化的社会政治关系的更平衡的理解，这一方法在史前和现在都有应用。它还将提供关于在以生存为基础的社会中，社会机构如何提供稳定和调解变化的洞察。考古学有能力追踪很长一段时间的变化，所学到的经验教训适用于今天的第三世界地区。在爱尔兰中世纪早期，岛上修建了带墙和沟的圆形住宅围栏。考古工作的重点是这些建筑，因为它们非常显眼，有时非常富有，而且因为没有封闭的，或？平的？这些地点隐藏在无处不在的牧场下，超出了视觉勘察的范围。然而，了解这些鲜为人知的平地是至关重要的，因为它们似乎与雷雨同时代，很可能居住着来自一系列社会经济背景的大多数人口。由于它们的能见度接近于零，该项目使用地球化学来系统地识别平坦的地点，确定它们相对于光线的使用，并检查属性是如何分布的，提供了一个自下而上的？以及修改后的？自上而下？在一个从典型的更平等主义的铁器时代基础转变为更集中的组织的时代，我们看到了一个新的视角。在地理信息系统数据库中管理的全面覆盖的地球化学调查将揭示五拉特周围地貌中的地点，这些地点从阿尔马逐渐向南，因此受到新成立的当局的监督。在普通聚居地的测试挖掘结果表明，磷酸盐含量升高，可以与主导该地区考古的更知名的精英遗址进行比较。结果将在网上公开，该项目将促进谢弗-福斯特女士的学术和智力发展。

Under the guidance of Dr. Tina L. Thurston, Jennifer Shaffer-Foster will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. Building on two past seasons of archaeological fieldwork she will conduct a geochemical survey followed by small scale excavation in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Armagh contains both an Iron Age (700 BC-AD 400) civic-ceremonial center and an Early Medieval (c. AD 400-1200) Christian administrative center, legendarily founded by Patrick. The region thus has the potential to shed light on how social and politicas structures developed and changed over this extended time span. Ms Shaffer-Foster will identify sites belonging to a variety of social classes, permitting consideration of both the role of ruling authorities and community-based conditions. This will provide a more balanced understanding of changing sociopolitical relationships, an approach that has applications in both prehistory and the present. It will also provide insight into how, in subsistence based societies social institutions serve to provide stability and mediate change. Archaeology has the ability to trace change over long periods of time and the lessons learned are applicable in third world regions of the world today.During the Irish Early Medieval period, raths, circular domestic enclosures with a wall and ditch, were constructed across the island. Archaeological work has focused on these structures because they are highly visible, are sometimes very wealthy, and because unenclosed, or ?flat? sites lie hidden under ubiquitous pasture beyond the scope of visual prospection. Yet understanding these little-studied flat sites is crucial, as they appear contemporary with raths and likely housed the majority of the population from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Because of their near-zero visibility, the project uses geochemistry to systematically identify flat sites, determine their use vis-à-vis raths, and examine how property was distributed, providing a ?bottom-up? as well as a revised ?top-down? perspective in an era that saw shifts from a typically more egalitarian Iron Age basis to a more centralized organization. Full coverage geochemical survey, managed within a GIS database, will reveal sites in the landscapes surrounding five raths, progressively further south from Armagh and thus the oversight of newly established authorities. Results of test excavations in ordinary settlements indicated by elevated phosphate can be compared with the better-known elite sites that dominate the region's archaeology. Results will be made publically available online and the project will further Ms. Shaffer-Foster's academic and intellectual development.