The central aim of the project is to characterize the environment, settlement patterns social structures and ritual practices of the people who lived and died in Ireland during the first five centuries AD. It will consider the nature of Ireland's interactions with the Roman Empire and especially with Roman Britain, with a view to reconstructing a more holistic and inclusive archaeological narrative for the later Irish Iron Age (0-AD 500).

• This aim will be delivered through objectives that seek to:
• Explain the nature of the interactions between Ireland, Britain and Europe in the Late Pre Roman Iron Age
• Reassess and reconsider the interactions between communities in Ireland and those in the Roman provinces, especially Britannia, through both the archaeological record and contemporary theoretical dialogues framed around the four key research themes:
  1. Identities and materialities,
  2. sacral and secular landscapes,
  3. fluid frontiers
  4. language and literacy
• Reassess the interaction between different communities in Ireland and their trade with south-west England and the Eastern Roman Empire, from the demise of Roman political administration in the west to the end of the review period