This module examines the history and archaeology of Ireland from prehistory to modern times. Students will complete four units of study in chronological order in this module. Unit 1 includes lectures and fieldtrips that explore Ireland's prehistory, incorporating the earliest settlement of Ireland up to the Iron Age. Unit 2 includes lectures and fieldtrips that explore the beginning of the historic period with the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century to Viking settlement in the ninth century. Unit 3 includes lectures and fieldtrips that explore the Norman invasions and the emergence of English influence in Ireland until the fifteenth century. Unit 4 includes lectures and fieldtrips that explore the modern period in Ireland from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, focusing on religious change, settlement, rebellion, union, partition and peace building.

This unit will deal with the idea of prehistory, the earliest settlement of Ireland, the coming of farming and the megalithic tradition, technological, social development and increasing long-distance contact through the Bronze Age and the Iron Ages leading to an examination of the concept of the Celts and their impact on Ireland.

This Field Trip will include site visits to a series of appropriate sites in the Boyne Valley which might include: The Bru na Boinne World Heritage Site – Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth; The Hill of Tara; the Loughcrew passage tomb cemetery; Fourknocks passage tomb; Slieve Breagh barrow tomb cemetery.

This unit will explore the coming of the historic period and following a brief survey of the Roman background to this development the importance of the introduction of Christianity in the fifth century and the unique development of insular monasticism to a large extent independent of Rome in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries. Particular features of insular monastic sites including churches, round towers and high crosses and enclosures will be introduced and contextualized. The parallel development of the secular landscape will also be examined and will draw on the information in the 7th and 8th century law texts as well as recently uncovered archaeological data.

The Field Trip will invlude visits to a series of sites in the Boyne Valley which might include: Monasterboice monastic site and high crosses; Kells monastic site – round tower, high crosses and early church; Donaghmore round tower with Romanesque doorway; The Hill of Slane; Danestown bivallate ringfort, a high-status residential centre.

The coming of the Anglo Normans to Ireland in 1169 signaled a series of profound developments both political and physical – the traces of which can still be clearly seen in the Irish landscape. Ireland and the Lordship of Meath became Henry II’s ‘breadbasket’ – a major centre for agricultural production with a corresponding economy. The lasting legacy of this time is the series of great earth and stone fortifications, churches and cathedrals and, perhaps most important of all, a network of market towns and port towns to drive this new economy.

The Field Trip will include a series of site visits to appropriate sites which might include: Dun Dealgan Motte; Roche Castle; Trim Castle; Mellifont Cistercian Abbey; Bective Abbey; Millmount and Drogheda town walls; The medieval town of Trim

In this unit students will receive an introduction to the Plantation of Ireland from the early sixteenth century to the Battle of the Boyne which involved the transfer of the land of Ireland to new Protestant landowners. Following this cataclysmic change there was a gradual transition from castle to fortified house to ‘big house’ or mansion in the eighteenth century which will be explored. The prosperity of the Georgian period and corresponding economic and other development will also be discussed. The move towards independence through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will be outlined. This period saw the emergence of the religious-ethnic identities of Catholic-Nationalist and Protestant-Unionist. The struggle between these identities led to the partition and establishment of an independent Irish State and Northern Ireland. The development of the site of the Battle of the Boyne at Oldbridge, regarded as ‘holy ground’ by the Orange Unionist tradition in Northern Ireland, took place in the context of recent initiatives aimed at reconciling the two communities.

The Field Trip will include site visits to a series of appropriate sites which might include: The Battle of the Boyne battlefield and centre, Oldbridge; Beaulieu House; Boyne Navigation; Slane Mill; Slane Village; Slane Castle; Ledwidge Museum.