The role of exchange during the Irish Bronze Age: Forming connections between people, ideas and objects.

Ros Ó Maoldúin (PhD 2)   

This thesis aims to expand our understanding of exchange and hence social life during the Irish Bronze Age. Anthropological and archaeological studies of exchange provide an interpretive framework through which the Irish Bronze Age evidence is viewed.

The concept of value, as ascribed to people, ideas and objects, is used to help explain patterning in the material record, and to identify overlapping ’communities of practice’ and ’spheres of interaction’.

These ’communities of practice’ and ’spheres of interaction’ are further contextualised by an analysis of their relation to the constraints and opportunities provided by the Irish landscape and seascape, Bronze Age transport technology, and Bronze Age social forms.