Brief Description of Education & Experience
My current research looks at Bronze Age upland settlement dynamics in Ireland, Scotland and Northern Britain. The project uses GIS to define archaeological research study zones and evaluate for geographic, geological, topographic and environmental patterns and analyses of existing and new radiocarbon datasets to produce more granular occupation chronologies. These chronologies are examined against localized palaeoenvironmental datasets to understand what -if any - role climactic shifts played in settlement patterns.
The project is funded by NERC (National Environmental Research Council) and UKRI (United Kingdom Research and Innovation) through QUADRAT DTP.
As part of my current research, I have served as the Assistant Site Director for the the first two seasons of excavations at Brusselstown Ring Hillfort in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. This includes desk based surveys, field survey, licensing, excavation, post-excavation analysis, and publication of the excavation. The excavations confirmed the GPS photogrammetry data of Dr. James O'Driscoll (2017), indicating that Brusselstown Ring is possibly the most densely occupied hillfort site and largest nucleated settlement in prehistoric Ireland.
My prior research focused on re-examination of the destruction horizons of the Brochs of Southern Scotland during the Roman Iron Age to better understand if attributing their destruction to Roman aggression is a supportable hypothesis. This included examining the role colonial and post-colonial attitudes played in the interpetation of the sites, their origins and Indigenous/Roman interactions.
I have worked on the excavation of Etruscan Tumuli in Itlay and surveying San Bushman Rock Art in South Africa.
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