In recent years there has been a rapprochement between history and archaeology in Britain and Ireland. Two formerly quite distinct disciplines have learned to appreciate how documents and artefacts together can enrich our understanding of everyday life. Always important to understandings of classical, Dark Age, and medieval society, archaeology has also opened up new horizons for appreciating domestic and industrial buildings, burial patterns, urban morphology, land use and environment, and the consumption of both food and objects in the early modern period. I look at some recent research that has enhanced our knowledge of local, regional, national and transnational identities in a sometimes poorly understood ‘fringe’ area of Europe.