Award for postdoctoral research by archaeologists at Bangor

The School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology will benefit from a recent award for postdoctoral research on the archaeology of Wales. The award shows there are opportunities for early career researchers to obtain research fellowships in the current funding environment, and highlight the important contribution postdoctoral scholars can make in the humanities.

The School’s expertise in Celtic archaeology has been recognized by the University of Wales Publications and Collaborative Research Committee, which has awarded its one-year research project in Archaeology for 2009/10 to Professor Raimund Karl of the School, who will collaborate with Professor John T. Koch at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth, who will co-direct the 'Early Celtic Societies in North Wales' project.
This follows on from a similar success last year for Professor Duncan Tanner's and Dr Andrew Edwards' ‘Welsh Language Acts and Welsh Language Activism 1964-2001: A Pilot Project,’ with the School thus winning two out of the three grants awarded by the University of Wales Publications and Collaborative Research Committee since 2008.
Drawing on the directors’ well established track record in Celtic archaeology and linguistics, as well as Professor Karl’s pioneering work on early Celtic social structures and his use of social complexity theories in archaeology, the project will investigate the interaction between local, small-scale societies and the emergence of complex societies during the formative period of what today can be considered to be characteristic for Wales. The research will be undertaken by a postdoctoral researcher (to be appointed), and will lead to an application to support a larger scale project building on its findings.

In addition, the University of Wales Publications and Collaborative Research Committee has also decided to support the excavations in Moel y Gaer, Llanbedr hillfort, also directed by Professor Karl, and carried out in collaboration with the 'Heather and Hillforts' project in Denbighshire. The initial excavations aim at examining an area of high magnetic susceptibility near the north-western entrance of Moel y Gaer, Llanbedr, where a possible earlier entrance was closed up after having been damaged by intensive fire, and are the first project in a planned larger research collaboration between the School, Oxford University and the 'Heather and Hillforts' project to examine the hillforts of the Clwydian Range and Llantysilio Mountains.

Posted May 2009