Hillforts are the most impressive field legacy from the Iron Age across many areas of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire. Although precision is not possible, it is likely that there are over 4000 in Ireland and Britain. Any academic or popular account of later prehistory from c. 1000 BC has to include a discussion of hillforts as the dominant monument type: their forms and architecture, possible functions, relationships with their setting and archaeological surroundings. Over recent years within Iron Age studies the importance of 'regionalisation' has emerged again as an important theme and one which requires information and data to be available at both the local level and at regional and inter-regional scales. There is no integrated system that will provide this information for hillforts, although a wide variety of sources exist in digital and paper form. These sources however are diverse, often difficult to access, and hard to integrate to produce wider interpretations and new research questions, since all previous syntheses have generally been at 'national' (i.e. Ireland, England) scales. Furthermore, most of the ways in which these sites are usually described are based on upstanding examples, but it is now essential to incorporate many ploughed-down remains, only visible as cropmarks, into understandings of these sites. This project will create an online interactive database that will include standardised information on all hillforts in the UK and Eire and enable interrogation and analysis at a range of scales from an individual hillfort to the whole collection. The database will be linked to Google Earth/Maps so that the locations of hillforts can be seen within their landscape contexts. At the close of the project, the data file will be available for re-use in a variety of software. The information held will be a compilation of all existing sources, re-structured to provide maximum achievable consistency and the ability to search all hillforts, evaluating and comparing them on meaningful characteristics such as number and configuration of ramparts, ditches and entrances. Evaluation, analysis and interpretation will take place at local, regional and inter-regional scales and the outcomes will be a paper atlas of hillforts, where cartographic presentation will be matched by succinct analytical texts. These will include extensive discussion on the structuring of the data, including consideration of what is and is not a hillfort and why, together with the interpretation of analyses and patterns established at the different scales and visualised through a series of maps and plans. The results will feed significantly into discussions of regionality and how hillforts fit with other data and interpretations. This work will be mirrored by a critical re-assessment of the dating evidence for these sites, including isotopic and other scientific determinations, numismatic and artefactual data, and documentary sources: these monuments are used in both the first millennia BC and AD, and evaluation of the chronological range of these sites at a variety of scales will allow closer readings of patterns through time, to match the spatial focus highlighted above. The analysis of this set of sites across the whole of Britain and Ireland - something not previously-attempted - will generate new configurations of information on similarities and differences amongst sites that will challenge prevailing views. Hillforts are of great interest to a large range of audiences, sometimes just for their intrinsic archaeological value but often as part of wider landscape, historical and environmental interests. Further to encourage the breadth of this participation, the database will be configured as a hillfort-wiki, capable of accepting user-generated content so that additional text and images can be attached to any hillfort, separately from the core data generated by the project,

The Troubles describes the social-historical phenomenon occurring between 1969 and 1994 when the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland was at its most extreme. Those 25 years have had a profound impact on the social, political, economic, cultural and spatial structures of Northern Ireland ever since. The consequent reaction by government, security and statutory authorities bore witness to a profound material impact upon inner-city communities resulting in architectural and spatial disconnection and disengagement with the economic and social structures that manage, govern and regulate the built environment. This review focuses on a specific aspect of material impact, the built structures installed within the inner-city to divide streets, disconnect spatial continuity, mitigate against vehicular flow and limit pedestrian movement. These vary in implementation and include walls, bollards, landscaping and the locating of housing across the path of existing streets. This material impact is extensive across inner-city Belfast. Whilst the sociological and economic impact of The Troubles has received much research attention the impact of these built interventions has yet to be systematically assessed. This review recognises the inner-city exemplar of Ballymacarrett, East Belfast as a community of disconnected people and disconnected spaces. The considered implementation of these divisive built structures has served to fundamentally fragment and spatially disconnect this community. This review conceives of a community as an intrinsic ecosystem of people and the built environment and addresses the challenging issue of engaging a disenfranchised and disconnected community with a broad range of stakeholders and academic research. The review process is a catalyst for inclusive discussion that involves a team of project partner stakeholders, directly linking the review process with the agencies with the remit and funding to implement urban regeneration and social housing policy review and change. The aims of this review are to utilise knowledge gained from academic and practice-based research methods to inform and stimulate discussion amongst key stakeholders with active inclusion from policy makers and the community. Such discussion has the stated aim of developing a policy discussion mechanism that will continue to progress the issues highlighted by the review beyond the review period. These aims meet address the objective of engaging research with non-academic stakeholders; empowering the related community; developing a methodological framework that is transferable to other contexts. The creation of buildings and spaces is a complex scenario involving stakeholders across the social, political and economic spectrum. As a consequence built artefacts contain much embedded information pertaining to a wide variety of perspectives that concern, and have potential to engage, the community within which they are installed. The research team of an architect and a fine art photographer presents a cross disciplinary approach to analysing this context. The disciplines have been aligned to provide a historical record that is accessible to a diverse audience of community, policy, politics and academia. Architectural and spatial analysis will identify Case Studies of built structures that will be documented and illustrated through conceptual photographic representation. Built structures will be utilised as mechanisms to extract data of historical and contemporary importance, eliciting new knowledge. Disconnections will be highlighted and former connections illuminated. The key relationships that are revealed will be essential tools towards addressing the very real architectural and spatial issues within inner-city Belfast communities. Such analysis will present a new perspective to the social, political, economic, cultural and spatial factors that shaped physical change in this community in a distinct and extreme period in cultural history.