ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of archaeology in the study of the Elizabethan colonization of southern Ireland. Initial foreign settlement by early modern European states, or by their authorized commercial organizations, are usefully characterized as the ‘proto-colonial phase’ of the epoch of modern colonial imperialism. For European overseas activities, the proto-colonial period may be generalized as c. 1450–1650. The ‘planting’ of English colonists in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is recognized as an important step in English colonialism and a turning point in Irish history, but twentieth-century politics and policies have discouraged its study (Dunlop 1888; Quinn 1966a). Recently, however, such publications as The Illustrated Archaeology of Ireland have recognized the significance of the proto-colonial or ‘plantation’ period, and archeological research on the Munster colony in the Irish Republic has followed the initiative of work undertaken on the Ulster colony in Northern Ireland (Lacy 1991; Mallory and McNeill 1991; Power 1991).
