This project will create an online edition and translation of the Welsh poetry attributed to Merlin surviving in manuscripts before 1800. We will produce new, detailed studies of the relationships between these poems and the broader Merlin tradition, and of how the Welsh poems develop over time. The corpus to be edited consists of c. 102 poems of c. 4450 lines in total in c. 519 manuscript copies. This includes seven major early poems (c. 980 lines) extant in medieval manuscripts, as well as c. 95 later poems surviving from the early modern period, which often adapt and echo the earlier verse. Welsh poetry is an important source for the internationally renowned Merlin legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who spread the Arthurian tradition throughout Europe, appears to have drawn on Welsh poetic sources. Despite their importance, the Welsh Merlin poems remain largely unedited. This means researchers in Arthurian studies are currently unable to access these works, let alone assess their significance in a broader international context. By editing all this poetry for the first time and making it freely available, this project will enable Arthurianists to engage with these texts in detail. The new diachronic and comparative studies undertaken in the project will also greatly advance the field. The public and the education sector will have unprecedented access to these fascinating works, and a section of the edition website aimed at schools will highlight Merlin traditions and their relevance to Wales, Britain, and beyond. The poetic corpus will be presented in a freely-accessible online edition. This will include the edited texts with manuscript transcriptions and corresponding images (served via IIIF technology), introductions, commentary, textual notes, and translations, ensuring maximum accessibility. We will make the templates and models used to create our text edition platform openly available to ensure that such editorial projects are easier to produce in future and that this project has a productive legacy. In addition to producing this edition, the project will study the links between the Welsh Merlin poems and broader Arthurian tradition. We will produce a new comparative study of Geoffrey of Monmouth's work (especially his Vita Merlini) and early Welsh Merlin poems, illuminating the relationship between them. This comparative study is crucial in enabling scholars to view the Welsh poems in a broader European context and to cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, bringing the Welsh texts to the core of international Arthurian studies. As well as being cross-cultural, our approach will be cross-period. Producing this edition, which is innovative in encompassing both the earliest Merlin poetry and later verse, will enable us to advance research into how Merlin verse developed over time and was shaped by contemporary interests, as when deployed by early modern Welsh historians. It will also revolutionize approaches to Welsh literary history, highlighting how early Welsh poetry develops into early modern "free verse", thereby creating new avenues for teaching and studying Welsh literature across traditional period boundaries. We will hold numerous public outreach events, working with schools and heritage organizations. We aim to impact school curricula by highlighting to schools and teachers how the project resources could be used by them and how certain texts could be deployed for the first time in the Welsh A-level syllabus. We aim more broadly to change public perceptions of Merlin by highlighting his close connections with Wales and Welsh literature, including sites like Carmarthen (traditionally interpreted as 'Merlin's Fortress') and the Brittonic 'Old North' of northern England and southern Scotland. The project will provide significant new advances in the study of Welsh literature and Arthurian tradition, reframing the field of Arthurian studies and enabling new interdisciplinary research opportunities.

Principal Subject of the Research\nThe inscribed stones and stone sculpture are still the most prolific form of material evidence for Wales cAD 400-1100. Analysis of the catalogue data on monument context, form, ornament and inscriptions illuminates research questions about this formative period of Welsh history. These are addressed in the catalogue discussions and brought together in the introductory chapters. The material throws unique light on questions concerning conversion to Christianity, identification of early church sites, their hierarchy and evolution, as well as changes in liturgy and belief. The inscriptions provide the main source for study of the Welsh and Irish languages in post-Roman Wales and their evolution and can shed light on literacy and learning. The identification of local and regional sculptural groups contributes to debates concerning wealth and the exploitation of resources (stone), the role of patronage, changing cultural identities, the impact of Irish, Anglo-Saxon and Viking settlement in Wales, and the significance of Welsh cultural and artistic contacts with other parts of Britain and Ireland, especially around and across the Irish Sea, as well as with the Continent.\nKey Aims\nCompletion of A Corpus of the Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales, Volume III: North Wales, the final volume of the Welsh early medieval sculpture corpus series, thereby finishing the overall project, the first country in Britain to be completed to modern scholarly standards. This will complete the provision of a pan-Wales multi-disciplinary, well illustrated analytical catalogue and introductory discussion. This will act as the key resource on the subject for the foreseeable future and may be used by other scholars, both in the UK and globally, in a range of disciplines (archaeology, history, Celtic Studies, geology, religious studies); also by public and heritage bodies, e.g. Cadw, facilitating future protection and display; other specialists e.g. archaeological units. Completion of the published resource will allow wider academic and more popular dissemination. \nWhere and how the research will be undertaken\nThe book analyses data collected for the catalogue and sets it within the broader context of research on early medieval inscribed stones and stone sculpture in Wales, elsewhere in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere in Europe as appropriate. It will also take into account relevant published research on the archaeology, history, languages and religion of Britain, Ireland and Europe. Initially research focussed on primary and secondary written material, including published books and academic articles and medieval and later manuscripts in Bangor, Aberystwyth and Oxford and relevant on-line data, to write draft catalogue entries and bibliographies for each monument. Fieldwork was then conducted throughout north Wales and in National Museum Cardiff to record and check each extant monument and its original find-site if appropriate to enable final catalogue descriptions to be written; comparative material was visited where appropriate. Additional comparative research, for example on Continental material, was carried out in Oxford. Using the data gathered in preliminary research, fieldwork and comparative work, and incorporating research of my collaborators, I am now writing up discussions of individual monuments and the broader introductory analytical chapters, a process which would be completed by the award of a Fellowship.\nOthers involved\nThe Corpus has been undertaken with the continuing support of two partners: The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and National Museum Wales. For Volume III: North Wales photographs and line-drawings have been done specially by or for the RCAHMW. Specialist contributors are Jana Horak and Heather Jackson (NMW, geology); Patrick Sims-Williams(Celtic languages); David N. Parsons (runes); Helen McKee (later palaeography).

The project considers language in Atlantic Europe ('AE'=Britain, Ireland, northwest France, western Iberia) from first metallurgy (c. 2900 BC) to Latin's arrival (Cádiz 206 BC, Ireland c. AD 400). CONTEXT. Many still believe that 'the Celts' spread from Iron Age central Europe (c. 750-100 BC) bringing Hallstatt and La Tène material culture and Celtic speech; so earlier eras further west are non-Celtic by definition. A previous AHRC project showed the inadequacy of this model to explain Hispano-Celtic. Cunliffe's work on maritime networks and Koch's on AE's first written language, Tartessian, led to a shared conclusion: Celtic probably evolved from Indo-European in AE during the Bronze Age. Data bearing on this problem has expanded explosively in recent years, but key research is divided by specialisms and languages (French, German, Portuguese, Spanish). A gulf separates archaeologists and linguists (who use effectively different languages even when speaking the same). Most researchers focus on one period and modern nation. There are compelling reasons to view Metal Age Atlantic Europe as a whole. When AE's pre-Roman languages come into view, most are Indo-European, the majority specifically Celtic. Shared types of prestige metalwork used similarly across AE define the Atlantic Bronze Age (c. 1250-750 BC): complex cultural packages (using exotic raw materials), ideas and technology spread and evolved along Atlantic routes from the 3rd millennium BC onwards. AIM: In an innovative initiative, a team of linguists and archaeologists will collaborate closely, sharing detailed evidence and methodologies, to overcome chronic barriers in Celtic Studies. The team will assemble a large body of archaeological and linguistic data bearing on the question of how, when, and where Proto-Celtic emerged from Indo-European. The evidence will in the first instance be compiled as an extensive GIS (Geographic Information Systems) project, combining: 1) pre-Roman language evidence in AE, contextualizing Celtic names and inscriptions in long temporal archaeological contexts; 2) evidence implying overseas contacts: a) international metalwork and ceramic types and their sites (burials, hoards, settlements, ritual sites); b) scientific evidence for mobility/geographic origin of materials and people; 3) 14C dates, isotope analysis, and ancient DNA. OUTPUTS. We will share the GIS project with partners. The National Library of Wales will host an online version from 2013 (to include Iron Age data from the earlier project), maintained to 2019. International archaeologists and linguists will meet in a workshop in 2013 and conferences in 2014 and 2015. Cunliffe and Koch will edit books based on these events to follow Celtic from the West (2010; 2012). Monograph topics will include: Copper- and Bronze-Age western Iberia by UW RF Gibson (2013); Hispano-Celtic (2015) and Proto-Celtic (2016) by Koch and UW RF Fernández; later Irish prehistory by AHRC RF1. A resource on 14C dates and Bronze Age metal sourcing will be created by AHRC RF2 Bray (2016). The team will co-author a popular illustrated 'Palaeo-Atlantic World' and Welsh version (2015). BENEFITS. Researchers habitually isolated by subject, discipline, and language will cross borders. The GIS project will provide a valuable multidisciplinary, multi-national resource, with open access in the website. We will use data and skills from private-sector archaeology, which in turn will benefit from innovative analysis by academics. Combining philology, heritage, academic and rescue archaeology will promote a rounded approach to the past, widening public access and opening career paths for specialists. Rethinking the history of the Celtic languages will challenge old ideas in the devolved regions. Celtic Studies is popular, but mass Celticism is haunted by passé Romanticism and imagined nations. A fresh approach as 'Palaeo-Atlantic studies' will spur interest and foster constructive new directions.

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,

Advisory guidelines on archaeological data entry encourage use of controlled vocabulary but the means to achieve this are lacking. Many datasets simply have free text descriptions. Other databases employ pick lists based on major thesauri but the output is still text rather than any standard ID that other databases will employ. Links to online thesauri exist with some web based data entry systems but free text entry inevitably leads to errors of various kinds. Controlled vocabularies are not readily available in standard semantic formats and easy means to provide controlled indexing are not generally available. Data providers lack an efficient way to provide uniquely identified controlled indexing of data that is compatible with semantic technologies and standards. Knowledge Exchange (KE) activities based on enhanced vocabulary services are the focus of the proposed work. The general aim is to provide the means to encourage, but not force, data providers to use controlled types, by providing services to do this easily, together with tools for retrospective enrichment of existing datasets. The work follows on from the STAR project that developed web services and user interface widgets that will be adapted and extended to meet the user needs described in this proposal. The services and KE activities will make it significantly easier for data providers to index their data with uniquely identified (machine readable) controlled terminology - ie semantically enriched and compatible with Linked Data. A further aim is to make it easier for vocabulary providers to make their vocabularies available in this format. The project builds on the STAR/STELLAR collaboration between University of Glamorgan Hypermedia Research Unit and the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), with ADS playing a dual role as co-Investigators and users of the project outcomes. The work is in collaboration with project partners, English Heritage, who act as both vocabulary providers and users of the linked data creation and semantic enrichment services, together with RCAHMS and RCAHMW, in their role as national vocabulary standards setting bodies. Wessex Archaeology Ltd. and the Bespoke HER User Group join through their association as heritage data managers, data providers to Local Authorities and users of ADS resources. The project will employ three major vocabulary resources maintained by EH as exemplars - the Monument Types Thesaurus, the Event Types Thesaurus and the MIDAS Archaeological Periods List. These resources will be converted to standard machine readable data formats and made freely available under a suitable open licensing arrangement. It is anticipated that converting these resources into standard linked data format with unique identifiers will encourage wider use of controlled terminology by archaeology users and act as exemplar for the wider cultural heritage domain. RESTful web services will be developed for the project to make the vocabulary resources programmatically accessible and searchable. These will include provision to 'feed back' new terms (concepts) suggested by users. Summary of the main anticipated outcomes: - Freely accessible and reusable persistent vocabulary resources as linked data, the techniques to achieve this being made freely available - Web Services to SKOS representations of the vocabularies and semantic enrichment services, along with web application components - Knowledge exchange for semi-automatic tools (using the services) to facilitate retrospective semantic alignment of existing datasets - Knowledge exchange for tools to facilitate semantic enrichment (via URIs) within data entry - Mechanism for feedback of supplementary terms to augment existing vocabularies - The software developed will be available as open source.