Frequency of Cashels in County Clare

County Clare is full of many cashels such as the site I worked at this past summer, Caherconnell. This map from the library of County Clare shows all of the known cashel sites within the county. The occurrence of cashels directly correlates with the region of limestone known as the Burren.

Geography of County Clare

                   

Although ring forts are prevalent around all of Ireland, I chose to focus on the county I did my field research in. County Clare, Ireland is on the West coast of Ireland and is famous for its rocky landscape called the "Burren" meaning "great rock" in Irish Gaelic. This landscape is very different from the rest of Ireland's lush green hills and valleys. The Burren is made of limestone and was formed as a part of the sea 350 million years ago. One of the major theories as to why cashels are more prevalent in County Clare is because of the abundance of rock in the landscape. 

The Different Ring Forts

A rath is an earthen ringed fort.

A cashel is a stone ringed fort.

What is a Ring Fort?

To understand the importance of ring forts on the landscape of County Clare, Ireland, we must first understand what a ring fort is. A ring fort is a  circular fortified settlement that was constructed during the Early Middle ages to the year 1000 AD and continued to be inhabited until as late as the 16th century. There are two different types of ring forts : a rath and a cashel. 

Ring Forts: The Research Topic

Over the summer of 2015, I completed my archaeological field school by excavating in County Clare Ireland at the Caherconnell ring fort site. The idea for my research stemmed from the field work I had already completed last summer. The main goal of this research project is to understand the affects of ring forts on the landscape of Ireland, especially in County Clare. Pictured above is the site in which I completed my field school. Caherconnell is a stone ring fort located in County Clare, Ireland.

On November 14, 2015, I accompanied my classmates and professor to tour the community of little Vietnam. The purpose of this trip was to see first hand what we had been discussing in class and to reflect on the way humans have impacted this area of New Orleans. The first thing we did on the field trip was to visit the Vietnamese Farmer's market. Many of the stands had already packed up for the day, but there were still some people selling seafood and vegetables. Not all of the food for sale at the Farmer's market was grown by the back yard gardens as it became apparent from the "Dole" stickers stuck to various fruits, but we did see some of the fruits of the gardens. We then went look at where the levee gardens once were, and I was surprised to see how low the levee was in relation to the street. After, we took a ride though the streets of the neighborhoods, and we went look at the Mary Queen of Vietnam church. We met up with Victoria who was a former student who grew up in little Vietnam. Victoria explained to us her project she's working on with sustainable agriculture and really gave us a lot of insight into the community of little Vietnam. Victoria took us to a store and showed us some traditional foods. An older woman was outside of a grocery store selling winter melons that she had grown in her own garden. While we were there we also went check out a Hispanic store because as Victoria explained, little Vietnam is not only limited to people of Vietnamese decent. Before Victoria left us she explained the impact of environmental racism and how it has affected the community. What I took away from my experience with the time we spent in little Vietnam is that this is an extremely close knit community. The people rallied together with the help of the catholic church to get the levee garden space and then they did the same thing to fight the landfill in recent years. I really enjoyed learning about this culture and how they changed the environment's landscape and make it their own.

;This is a map of important places in little Vietnam, New Orleans according to our research and discussion of levee and back yard gardens in class. The polygons represent the different gardens made by the Vietnamese immigrants. The blue polygon represents the backyard gardens, the red represents the levee gardens, which were destroyed by hurricane Katrina, and the yellow polygon is a possible small field of gardens. I then put place marks down for important places to the history of the Vietnamese backyard and levee gardens or the people themselves such as the catholic church and the Versailles apartment complex.