Ian Redmond Russell
Contextualising Woodstown: An analysis of a 9th – 10th century Viking Longphort in Ireland.
Biography
Ian graduated with his B.A. in Archaeology and Greek & Roman Civilisation from University College Dublin in 1996 and an M.A. in Classical Studies from the same University in 1998. He started working as a professional commercial archaeologist with Archaeological Consultancy Services Unit Ltd in 1998 and became licence eligible in 2000. He is a Senior Archaeologist with ACSU and is skilled at photography, drone photography, V-RTI and 3D imagery. He has excavated a large number of multi-period sites over the past decades and was the director who led the team of archaeologists who found and partially excavated the 9th – 10th century Viking site at Woodstown, Co. Waterford in 2003-4, 2007 & 2018.
He co-wrote, with Dr. Maurice Hurley, the book ‘Woodstown: A Viking Age settlement in Co. Waterford’ published by Four Courts Press in 2014 and submitted a chapter (No. 7) entitled ‘The Woodstown Enigma: A discussion of the 9th – 10th century Viking Winter Camps at Woodstown, Co. Waterford, Ireland published by Routledge in 2023 in ‘Viking Camps: Case Studies and Comparisons’ edited by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson and Irene Garcia Losquino.
Research Interests
Ian's thesis will focus on attempting to contextualise the 9th – 10th century Viking Longphort at Woodstown by attempting to ascertain its form and function. So much was found at Woodstown yet so many questions remain unanswered. Was it just a raiding base, a centre for commercial trade? Or was it also a centre of manufacture with a settled Viking community with families of men, women and children integrated or partly integrated with its geographic and political neighbours? For example what did it look, sound and smell like?
Ian will attempt to answer these questions by a comparison of the archaeological/historical evidence and the material culture found at Woodstown, Linns and Dublin (in Ireland), and also at the similar sites identified at Foremark, Aldwark and Torksey (in the UK), to plot the known or possible locations of Viking Longphorts in Ireland and attempt to examine the nature and distribution of Viking raids in order to establish how they were carried out, why and what were their political impacts.