This AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award project, in partnership with the National Museums of Northern Ireland, focuses on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century archaeology of the historic town of Carrickfergus, County Antrim, primarily derived from excavations undertaken throughout the 1970s by the late Tom Delaney of the Ulster Museum. The demise of Carrickfergus in the early eighteenth century has ensured the remarkable preservation of the town’s post-medieval archaeology, a relatively unique phenomenon in urban archaeological investigations in Northern Ireland. The artefactual and archival record of the town is employed to address the nature of cultural entanglements in late-medieval and early-modern Carrickfergus, investigating the transformation of the settlement from a sixteenth-century garrison to a seventeenth-century mercantile port town engaging with the global commercial world. The Carrickfergus archive is key to understanding the tangible expression of cultural change and continuity in the seventeenth century, particularly during the extension of British control into Ireland. This research is also concerned with tracing the extent of the emerging European consumer economy in the material culture of the town and in placing Carrickfergus in its wider historical context.