ARCH30530

What was it like to be a person in early medieval Ireland, and in northwest Europe, AD 400-1100? Who did you think you were, and to what communities did you feel you belonged? How did you use buildings, landscapes and things to create and re-negotiate your social identities of ethnicity, kinship, gender, age and social status? What was it like to be a king in early medieval Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, or a chieftain in Viking Age Scandinavia, and how did you use performance, and material possessions to signal power, status and ancestry? What was it like to be a man, woman or child in a homestead in early medieval Ireland, and how did you experience the world? What was it like to be a young woman working at a quern or making a meal, or a craftsperson working in a Viking town, or a trader sailing your boat along the European sea lanes? What was it like to be an early medieval Irish monk on an island in the Atlantic, facing out into the abyss of hell across the ocean? This module will explore peoples' lives - from birth, through life experiences, to death and their ideas of the afterlife - in the early Middle Ages in Ireland and beyond. We will use evidence from archaeological excavations of houses, dress and costume, artefactual studies of objects and things, burial archaeology, historical sources, experimental archaeology and archaeological sciences to explore how alike and different these people were from us, and what this tells us about our own humanity.