Thanks for reading! | The Top 10 posts of 2018


It’s that time of the year again … those few days where it’s socially acceptable to lounge about the house in a dressing gown and have sherry and selection box for breakfast. It is, hopefully, also a time for quiet reflection on the past year. From the point of view of this little blog, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been writing and how it has been received. This year I embarked on a series of posts about Irish material in the British Museum. Many of these have been quite popular and well received. My series on ‘things in several London museums that I find interesting’ have not ignited the popular imagination to the same extent, but maybe 2019 will be their year! In the meantime, here’s my list of the top 10 most popular posts, with a small selection of my favourites that didn’t make the list, but that I feel deserved more love than they got. So … take a trip down memory lane and pick up on some posts you liked or some you missed … either way, it’s my intention to keep writing into 2019 & I hope you’ll join me for some of my adventures …

10 Co Waterford: Archaeological Objects at The British Museum

9 Into the West: Knockmany Chambered Grave

8 Crop marks reveal a little more of Lisnacroppan Barrow, Co Down

7 Co Sligo: Archaeological Objects at The British Museum

6 Archaeologists know nothing! It's true - the OPW said so!

5 Topic of Cancer

4 Co Cork: Archaeological Objects at The British Museum

3 Further new discoveries in the Knock Iveagh landscape

2 Three Billboards Outside University College London: A case of approved plagiarism by Prof Andrew Bevan et al.

1 Archaeological Items of Irish origin at The Metropolitan Museum of Art


To this list, I'd like to direct your attention to three further posts that (I think) deserved to be more widely read this year, but didn't quite make the top 10:

Time Travelling Nazis in China and the British Museum

Archaeological Items of Irish origin at The Museum of Fine Art, Boston

Lusus Naturae or the real thing?: Cropmarks in Shannaragh & Cornamucklagh, Co Tyrone


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Billboards Outside University College London: A case of approved plagiarism by Prof Andrew Bevan et al.

Image
Introduction The oft-recited adage is that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Going by this logic, there can be no higher praise from an academic than outright plagiarism of your work. I have had recent cause to be on the receiving end of just such praise and I can assure you, dear reader, that it doesn’t feel like a compliment at all. In fact, it sucks. I decided that, rather than meekly accept it, I was going to fight back for the recognition due to my work. To this end, I reached out to the two universities involved (University College London and Plymouth University) and the publishing journal (PNAS) and asked them to initiate investigations into the conduct of their employees/authors. I trusted that these institutions would be keen to ensure that their academics adhered to the highest standards and that any deviation would be met with swift correction. I was wrong and my trust was sorely misplaced. Until now I have only really discussed this issue with my cont
Read more

The dreaded first test post!

Image
An irregularly updated blog about archaeology and related madness! ... might just be good! ** I'm always looking for guest writers! So if you have something that you want to say about archaeology, please get in touch! ** [** If you like any of the posts on this blog, please consider making a small donation. Each donation helps keep the Irish Radiocarbon & Dendrochronological Dates project going! **] <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Frobmchaarc-21%2F8002%2Fb7e77064-bfea-4ba8-954d-a415ec05ad0c&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.co.uk Widgets</A>
Read more

"Always remember to draw the swastika turning to the right": Some thoughts on swastika directionality in Early Medieval Irish Art

Image
Swastikas are, for a number of reasons, endlessly fascinating symbols. Like all symbols, they are only invested with the meanings we give them. Otherwise they are just little shapes and drawings that mean nothing in and of themselves. Owing to its long history and brief (if traumatic) association with Nazism, the swastika probably has a stronger resonance than most. You won’t spend long on the internet attempting to discuss the swastika before someone, trying to be helpful, notes that the Nazi version rotated counter-clockwise (elbows pointing left) and was bad, but the good Buddhist/Hindu version rotated clockwise. They may be trying to be helpful, but they are invariably wrong. It’s true that the version Adolf Hitler designed for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei only went one direction: counter-clockwise. What’s wrong is that not all other ( i.e. non-Nazi) swastikas turn the opposite direction (elbows pointing right). Rather than dutifully plod through a debun
Read more