Seandálaíocht - Irish for Archaeology

This is the first in a series of videos just uploaded to YouTube that nicely demonstrate a number of Scandinavian flint knapping styles. 

Apparently the Ordnance Survey in the UK are planning on making all of their mapping data available free online next year. It will be interesting to see how its made available - formats, downloadability etc

It would certainly be nice if the OSI followed suit although their are some online viewers available, downloadable maps are still prohibitively expensive.

Considering the fact that we pay for the maps anyway through the tax system, state mapping really should be freely available to private citizens (if not for commercial use). This is especially true when it comes to early editions, many of which are now out of copyright.

The County Kildare Archaeological Society has recently produced a DVD containing every volume of the society's journal from 1891-2007. A huge and incredibly useful resource for archaeologists, historians and many others.

The DVD was launched by Cllr Tom Purcell last Tuesday and is available for purchase from the society's website.

I've been away in New Zealand taking a break from all that is Archaeology so Archnews has slipped a bit.

Considering that this is likely to happen quite frequently I have decided to make it a roughly monthly post - making it more of a trip down memory lane than a rolling review of Archaeology in the news.

Hopefully this will alow me to find the time in the last year of my PhD to keep on posting.

Last night the Director of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis presented a lecture entitled "Collections present and absent at the New Acropolis Museum, Athens" in the Ceramics Room of the National Museum on Kildare Street.

The talk itself detailed the building of the museum and explained some of the choices that had to be made and decisions that were taken in its design and construction.

However, while the lecture was ostensibly about the Museum itself there was an undercurrent throughout about the 'absent' artefacts mentioned in the title. Dr. Pat Wallace, Director of the National Museum of Ireland flagged this from the start, somewhat enigmatically assuring Prof. Pandermalis that while he was constrained by politics when talking about the controversial issue of repatriation of the Elgin Marbles, the Professor could be certain that he was 'among friends'.

Read more about the lecture on my Heritage Key blog here.

The CFP for the annual AYIA conference 2010 has just been announced by the organisers in Cork. My first conference presentation was at the AYIA conference in 2004 and I was one of the organisers of the 2007 conference, as well as an editor of the proceedings.

Its highly recomended for anybody starting out on their research careers who wants to present in a professional but relaxed atmosphere. And its usually good craic as well!

Those of you who knew Blaze may like to attend. Please do download the notice and forward to anyone who might be interested.

I recently received the excellent news that the call for papers for Trowel Volume XII has been re-issued. The volume had stalled recently but with new editors, a new website and a new online format it looks like this unique student publication, celebrating its 21st birthday, will continue despite the current hard times.

As a past editor I will be very interested to see how the transition to online publication will work and whether the relatively recent book reviews and reflections sections will continue. The inclusion of the thesis lists on the websites re-instates a valuable function served by Trowel previous to financial and logistical problems that led to us dropping them for Volume X.

Trowel volume X can be downloaded or read here on Seandálaíocht.com and Volume XI can be purchased using this order form.