ABSTRACT
In the Middle Ages in Ireland, urban centres were founded and expanded by Vikings and Anglo-Normans, as well as by the Irish themselves. Ireland—and these towns in particular—thus became increasingly integrated within international trade networks that spanned many thousands of kilometres and many hundreds of years. This chapter will examine some of the archaeological evidence that has come to light for the nature and extent of this trade, including numismatic, ceramic, palaeo-environmental, architectural, and various other artefactual lines of enquiry. The building boom of the “Celtic Tiger” years (c. 1995–2010) led to an unprecedented scale of archaeological excavation across Ireland, and this activity yielded a large corpus of information relating to medieval trade, urban commerce, and international communication. Much of this information is unpublished and difficult to access, and most of it has not yet been fully synthesised, digested, and incorporated into our overall understanding of Ireland's international trading connections in the Middle Ages. This chapter is intended as a small contribution to that process.
