Judith Findlater

PhD title Feeding Medieval Carrickfergus – A Multi-proxy Study of Livestock Husbandry in a Frontier Town

The project is to ascertain how Carrickfergus operated within the Gaelic landscape throughout the medieval period. This is to be achieved through the study of historical sources, maps, landscape survey, zooarchaeology and isotopic analysis. The relationship/interactions between Carrickfergus town and the hinterlands are to be explored using the above resources. This is to provide new socio-economic data through livestock economy of the time. The amalgamation of historical sources and previous works will be completed and new studies will be made on previously unanalysed zooarchaeological assemblages. This information will be reviewed with the study of isotopic elements of Strontium, Oxygen and Sulphur on some of the faunal assemblages that will enable an analysis of the mobility of the livestock throughout the medieval period to be carried out. It is also hoped that the results gathered will aid in providing additional isotopic data for the baselines in Ulster.