NATIONAL MONUMENTS SERVICE 8th ANNUAL ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE
Within Without, the archaeology of partition
DATE: Saturday 18 October 2025
Most archaeological sites and monuments contain boundaries—ditches, walls, fences or banks. Space on either side of such dividing features can have its own significance or meaning. As well as obvious physical divisions, conceptual and social divisions such as inclusion and exclusion, privacy or social standing can be more challenging to identify but are no less significant. This conference examines those socially and physically constructed partitions and the spaces they divide to offer insight into how they were used and what they meant to the people who used them
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
08.30–09.15 Registration
09.20–09.30 Opening address:
Session 1: Landscape Delineation
Chair: Dr Ros Ó Maoldúin, Chair of Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland
09.35–10.10—Where power lies: rethinking Ireland’s Iron Age linear earthworks as territorial oppida
Cóilín Ó Drisceoil, archaeologist, National Monuments Service
10.15–10.50—Dykes as deeds? Re-evaluating linear earthworks from early medieval Britain
Professor Howard Williams, Lecturer, University of Chester
10.50–11.00 Q & A
11.00–11.25 Tea/coffee
Session 2: Bounded
Chair: Eimear O’Connell, Project Manager of the Irish Walled Towns Network
11.30–12.05—Do fence me in: boundaries, liminality and transgressions in early medieval Ireland, AD 400–1100
Professor Aidan O’Sullivan, Head of School of Archaeology at University College Dublin
12.10–12.45—Inside, outside and through town walls: urban–rural relationships in late medieval Ireland
Dr Margaret Murphy, medieval historian and Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Registrar at Carlow College, St Patrick’s
12.45–12.55 Q & A
13.00–13.50 Lunch
Session 3: Within and Without
Chair: Rob Goodbody, Historic Building Consultant
13.55–14.30—Behind the façade: materiality, craft and display at the Provost’s House, Trinity College Dublin
Dr Melanie Hayes, architectural historian and research fellow of the European Research Council Advanced Grant project STONE-WORK at Trinity College Dublin
14.35–15.10
Becoming American: the archaeology of enslavement and racialisation at the Isaac Royall House, an eighteenth-century Massachusetts slaveholding estate
Dr Alexandra Chan, archaeologist and author on the Academic Advisory Council of the Royall House and Slave Quarters museum
15.10–15.20 Q & A
15.20–15.40 Tea/coffee
Session 4: Partitions
Chair: Dr Sharon Greene
15.45–16.20—Field boundaries in Ireland’s historic landscapes
Dr Richard Clutterbuck, Project Manager, Archaeological Management Solutions Ltd
16.25–17.00—Crossing boundaries, challenging divisions: integrating archaeology into post-Troubles conflict transformation
Professor Audrey Horning, Professor of Anthropology at William & Mary (USA) and (Hon.) Professor of Archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast
17.00–17.10 —Q & A
17.15–17.25 Close of conference:
Michael MacDonagh, Chief State Archaeologist, National Monuments Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
