Seandálaíocht - Irish for Archaeology

At the moment I am heavily involved, along with my colleagues Emmett O'Keeffe and Terry O'Hagan in the organisation of TAT 2009. TAT, or to give it its full title Thinking About Things: Interdisciplinary Futures in Material Culture, was a response by the three of us to a call for proposals for conference funding from the UCD Graduate School of Arts and Celtic Studies. All three of us being perennial volunteers and always looking for something to distract attention from actual PhD work, we were immediately on the look out for some ideas.

With a little help along the way from Dr. Graeme Warren and Dr. Jo Bruck we realised there was an existing college research strand on material culture. A subject central to archaeology but also lots of other disciplines. We decided to go with it, making it a truly inter-disciplinary effort (I don't think the website even mentions archaeology).

Preparations are well under way and in fact we are meeting to go through the submitted abstracts tomorrow. Its a big job because we have received about double the number we expected, from all across Europe and America. Hopefully the programme will be up soon. In the meantime make sure you register and come to Dublin from the 5th to the 7th May 2009!

I just received my Spring 2009 copy of Archaeology Ireland which contains my article on bullaun stones and metallurgy:

Dolan, B. 2009 Bedrocks and bullauns: more than one use for a mortar? Archaeology Ireland Vol23 (1), 16-19.

I plan to scan the article in and have it up online as soon as I can. I just have to figure out how to make pdfs with searchable text from scanned images...

UPDATE: I've now scanned and uploaded the article as a searchable pdf. Enjoy!

Have a look at the new video page for a selection of technology related clips. At the moment there's a few on iron, a flint knapping tutorial and the great Bronze Age beer experiment. I'll keep adding to the page as I find interesting stuff and I'll add anything vaguely archaeological that I find as long as its interesting. There's a surprising amount out there. Please let me know if you see any good ones I can add to the list!

Fast-forwarding to today the reconstruction of the ship was sailed to Dublin in the summer of 2006 finding a huge crowd to welcome it when it sailed up the liffey to where its predecessor was likely built. The ship was over-wintered in the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks until it was craned out in the summer of 2007 following lots of labour intensive maintenance of the hull. I was there when they lifted it into the water just beside th eastlink toll bridge and spent a fun morning filling the ship with a couple of tons of ballast.

The ship spent some time in Dublin being prepared for the voyage before sailing off on its return journey. Its route out along the Liffey went straight past my front door which I was unfortunately standing at as I was only on the reserve list for the voyage! Luckily about two weeks later I got a call to say I would be joining the ship in England, halfway through the voyage. I had one week to buy all the equipment I needed and get to London where I met the other replacements who joined the ship half way.

In the summer of 2008 I was lucky enough to be part of the crew of a reconstructed viking longship built by the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark. The Sea Stallion is a reconstruction of a ship deliberately sunk in the Roskilde fjord sometime after it was built in 1042AD. The accurate date for the ship comes from dendrochronological analysis of timbers from the ship that also allowed identification of where the timbers for the ship were sourced. This turned out to be somewhere in the vicinity of Hiberno-Norse Dublin.

We met the ship in Lowestoft in eastern England but frustratingly, the weather gods prevented our sailing for a full week. Eventually we got going and sailed across the North Sea to Holland before making our way northwards to Denmark and the Limfjord. Sailing at night in the north sea is an experience that will always stay with me and I was lucky enough not to feel sea sick and to actually enjoy sleeping on deck under the stars with the ship rocking me to sleep!

Our arrival in Roskilde was spectacular with a huge flotilla of boats, yachts and traditional craft escorting us in and thousands of people lining the shore to greet us. An incredible ship, incredible crew an incredible experience and at the same time an amazing bit of experimental archaeology.

I would highly recommend a trip to the Roskilde Ship Museum if you can ever make it but in the meantime have a look at my Sea Stallion page for some more photos and here and here for even more images and information.

My publications page has now been fully updated. I have included download links for many of my articles and one full journal.

The page will be kept up to date with all my publication activities as and when I manage to actually write up the various projects I have in mind!

I have just posted a calendar feed that can be downloaded for most calendar applications or added to your google calendar. It contains information on archaeology related conferences and lectures in Ireland. While I attempt to put every conference I hear of in, please feel free to contact me if you know of one I haven't added.

I've taken the plunge, bought the domain name and set up the site. Nothing fancy but I hope this will serve as a portal for anyone trying to find me on the web. I'll post work related news and the occasional personal story and/or rant.