Bless me readers for I have sinned. It has been almost a month since my last post. However, things are set to change and I plan on posting much more frequently, starting with this report on a conference I spoke at recently in the Louth County Museum. The conference was called 'Reach the Future through the Past" (you can see a previous post about it here) and aimed to look at some of the ways in which heritage can engage with new technologies. 

I was invited to speak about my experiences with Seandalaiocht.com and share my thoughts on archaeology and the internet in Ireland. You can see my presentation above, created using an online powerpoint alternative called Prezi. The presentation is fairly self-explanatory and incorporated many of the ideas I talked about in a previous blog post called "Web 2.0 and Archaeology" so I won't re-hash them here.

Instead I'll give a quick run through of some of the other speakers on the day. The second presentation of the day (after my good self) was given by Paul Young of Cartoon Saloon, the company behind the Oscar nominated animated film The Secret of Kells. I must say I was blown away by how they had used Irish heritage, mainly from the early medieval period but also from the Iron Age and earlier as inspiration for a style of animation that is truely unique and owes nothing to Disney or Dreamworks. I've since bought the DVD and been even more impressed by their use of Irish history in an original, unpatronising way that doesn't resort to cliché. 

Next up was Ciaran McGuinness (from Archer Heritage) and Graham O'Rourke (from Mor Solutions; follow him on Twitter @morsolutions). They talked about a new mobile app they are developing with Louth County Museum which will provide audio, video and textual information on heritage sites in the county as well as detailed information about how to get to each site. The app looks very impressive and, as a way for a heritage company to diversify its business, it makes a huge amount of sense. I've written about the potential for mobile apps and archaeology before and I think they will become much more common in coming years. 

The afternoon session had a talk from Susan Cahill from Newstalk who talked about Talking History, the popular history/archaeology focussed radio talk show. Susan had some very interesting comments to make about identifying the audience demographic for heritage and tips on how to make content interesting for a popular audience while drawing in those with more specialist passions. Some of what she said certainly gave me food for thought in terms of the content that I'll be putting on Seandalaiocht in the future. 

The next presenter Mark Hawkes-Green talked about the setting up and running of an Art College in the Burren while Yanky Faschler talked about the potential for using heritage in the future, drawing parallels with the development of Jewish cultural identity in Israel. 

Finally, Niall Roycroft talked about the Archaeological Scene Investigation exhibition developed by the NRA and the Louth County Museum. The exhibition, which dealt with the archaeology of the M1 motorway has now been published as a website www.asi-louth.ie that incorporates the innovative and entertaining approach taken by the original exhibition. This kind of web publication points to a way of disseminating archaeological findings without resorting to expensive monographs that few buy and less read. 

It was a fascinating and unique conference and congratulations are due to Brian Walsh of the Louth County Museum for coming up with the idea and carrying it through so successfully. 

Incidentally, you can have a look at Graham O'Rourke's far more punctual blog post about the conference here.

The first extract below comes from an article published this morning in the Irish Times but the paragraph that follows comes from a small website describing excavations at Lisnagun Ringfort, Co. Cork in the 1980s. 

Is it just me or is there a striking similarity? 

Irish Times, Aug 10th 2010 
"Ring forts were built and occupied between circa AD 400 and circa AD 1200, in the Early Christian and Viking periods. Like stone cashels and some lakeland crannógs, they were the defended farmsteads of the native Irish Celts.These settlements were centres of mixed farming economy, and were largely self-sufficient in the production of tools, textiles and household goods. About 35,000 ring fort sites are currently identifiable in the Irish landscape – they are clearly marked on Ordnance Survey 6“ maps".

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0810/1224276470654.html

Lios na gCon Website
Ringforts were built and occupied between c.400 AD and c.1200 AD, in the Early Christian and Viking periods. Like stone cashels and some lake land crannogs, they were the defended farmsteads of the native Irish Celts. These settlements were centres of mixed farming economy, and were largely self-sufficient in the production of tools, textiles, and household goods. About 35,000 ringfort sites are identifiable in the Irish landscape today - they are clearly marked on Ordnance Survey 6" maps of which a small sample has been archeologically (sic) investigated.

http://liosnagcon.com/ringfort/index.shtml 

The sad thing is, this kind of lazy journalism takes away from the point of the article, which is an important one about the apparent illegal destruction of archaeological monuments. 

Thanks to Terry O'Hagan, a colleague of mine in UCD whose well-honed plagiarism detector, developed over long years of first-year essay correction, picked this up.