Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button at the right. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. To help keep the site in operation, please use the amazon search portal at the right - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue **] Session 3 of the Archaeology of Gatherings Conference, Sligo, October 2013 < Part I | Part II | Part IV | Part V | Part VI > Suitably refreshed, entertained and educated by Simon O’Dwyer, [ Website | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | SoundCloud | YouTube ] we reassembled for the first afternoon session, again chaired by Sam Moore. This portion of the conference began with Prof. Clark McPhail ( University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign ). Prof. McPhail was also the Keynote Speaker (Sociology) for the conference. His chosen topic was The Life Course of Temporary Gatherings . His first observation was that archa...

Reconstructing the lifeways of people who perished in 19th century Kilkenny and London. Lecture by Drs Julia Beaumont and Janet Montgomery at the Discovery Programme, 19 th of March 2014. Report by Philippa E Barry In March 2014, the Discovery Programme , in partnership with the Irish Isotopes Research Group (IIRG), was delighted to welcome Drs Julia Beaumont and Janet Montgomery to speak about their work on Great Hunger victims in both Kilkenny and London.  The research was mostly a product of Julia’s PhD for which Janet acted as supervisor.  Janet was instrumental in bringing the use of strontium and lead isotope analysis to investigate human mobility into archaeology in the UK and as such, contributes to the recently formed IIRG. Julia’s research turned out to be groundbreaking – because they sampled teeth from individuals from known contexts over very specific periods of time, they were able to apply historic data to a Neolithic Scottish popula...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. **] The Turoe Stone as it was Even though I grew up only a few miles away from the famous Turoe Stone , I’ve only visited it a small number of times. If you’re not familiar with it, the Turoe Stone is the largest and most complete of only a small group of  La Tène decorated stones, which include Castlestrange , Co. Roscommon, and Killycluggin , Co. Cavan. All this meant very little to me when I was a child – as far as I was concerned, it was just a big stone in a field somewhere … it was the west of Ireland … we had loads of them! It was only when I got to university that I first got to visit it – on an Archaeology Society field trip, led by the late Prof. Etienne Rynne. A few years later I managed to get out there again, this time in the company of Daniel Büchner (ch...