Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

With the passing of Billy Dunlop, on the 15th of September 2011, Irish archaeology lost one of it great promoters and enthusiasts. I cannot claim to have known Billy longest or best, but, like many field archaeologists working in Northern Ireland, I owe him a vast debt of gratitude for his kindness and generosity. For those stories shared over cups of tea on site or for the books lent to me from his personal collection I was, and remain, grateful. In time, I trust, appropriate obituaries and appreciations will appear from the pens of others better acquainted with more aspects of his life. My intention here is to set down a general outline of his life along with some of my memories of this energetic and charismatic man, who I am privileged to have known and been able to call both a mentor and a friend. Billy was born in 1920 in Court Street, Newtownards, and grew up on Deleware St, off the Ravenhill Road, Belfast. At the age of 14 he joined The Post Office as a telegraph mess...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end.  If you think the post is useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc.**] On the 17th of August 2011 Fin Dwyer published a blog post on his Irish History Podcast site detailing “ 8 Reasons why the Building Boom was Bad for Irish Archaeology ”. I only saw it a little while later, when a link was posted on the Irish Diggers Forum Facebook page. The original post is, obviously, a heartfelt and deeply personal assessment of the Irish archaeological profession’s recent past. This is my response.  In the spirit of engaging in debate on the topic, I wanted to make a more formal and considered reply, that exceeded pressing the ‘like’ button on a Facebook page, or writing a brief comment on the blog page. Indeed, the comments on the original piece quickly became fractious and one response from the blogger to a critic was failure to enga...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end.  If you think that this post is useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc.**] Last week archaeologist Dr Charles Mount published a blog post about the relatively rare phenomenon of houses in the Irish Copper Age . As is the way of such things, it was rapidly seized upon by a number of archaeologists and related groups on Facebook and quickly ‘shared’ and ‘re-shared’. On my own Facebook page I shared it with the comment that it was a ‘brief, but elegant, summary of Copper Age houses’.  While I don’t know Dr Mount personally we are ‘Facebook Friends’ and he added a comment asking that if I knew of any more sites he had missed, to let him know. The simple answer was: No, I haven’t a notion about any other houses dating form that period. Rather than leave it there, I started thinking and doing a little research … and I still have no extra houses to add to...