ABSTRACT
Several themes are apparent in the rapidly growing body of research dealing with the development of urbanisation in Ireland during the High Middle Ages. Much of the work of the last two decades is methodologically diverse, drawing pragmatically from geography, history and archaeology. The result is a fusion of documentary interpretation and field observation. Second, a growing conviction has emerged that the Anglo-Norman military colonisation of Ireland, which began in 1169, did not constitute as abrupt a breakpoint in the evolution of Irish society as once was assumed. While the sudden and substantial increase in documentation after the onset of Anglo-Norman colonisation is one of the most important factors differentiating the urbanisation of the High Middle Ages from that of the earlier medieval period, it is important not to attribute social change to this factor alone. Finally, research into medieval Irish urbanisation has increasingly been informed by analogical parallels drawn from elsewhere in the British Isles and Europe, largely because the Anglo-Norman colonisation of the island was part of a much more extensive movement of peoples occurring throughout Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
