Seandálaíocht - Irish for Archaeology

Ok, so its not strictly archaeology but since I can see it out the window from where I sit writing archaeology I figure its allowed. Feast your eyes on the unimaginatively named 'Dublin Wheel', a stunted cousin of London's famous eye. It has been rising beside the Point Theatre for the last few weeks but the spokes only arrived at the weekend. I heard a rumour that it was taken from under the noses of our northern neighbours in Belfast, maybe there was a bit of trouble smuggling it out? 

It has yet, as far as I'm aware, to acquire a witty moniker from Dublin's denizens but I'm sure that won't last long. Suggestions in the comments please! 

It has been over a month since this blog has seen any action but you are all on notice. This will be changing soon!

Although maybe not too soon, I head down to Kerry tommorrow for a week of sanity and its unlikely I'll be able to post while I'm down there. Still, I'm hoping to make the trip to Skellig Michael and to St. Gobnet's house in Ballyvourney so I should have a few photos to share when I'm back. 

In the meantime I'm working on finishing my series of posts on Grey Literature today and will post as soon as I'm done. 

My masters thesis (available here) has finally been published in article form in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Section C, almost five years after I finished it. The paper was co-written with Prof. Gabriel Cooney and is available to download on the new-look Royal Irish Academy website here or on my personal site here. 

I've also had two smaller publications come out recently including a review for the Irish Museums Association Newsletter and a contribution to a lithics report written by Dr. Graeme Warren on stone tools from a Mesolithic site in Scotland. 

Full references are below and you can find (and usually download) my other publications here. 

• Dolan, B. and Cooney, G. 2010 Lambay lithics: the analysis of two surface collections from Lambay, Co. Dublin, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 110C, 1-33.
• Dolan, B. 2009 Report on the Annual lecture of the Irish Museums Association. Irish Museums Association Newsletter 56, 9-10.
• Warren, G. with Dolan, B. 2009 Stone Tools in Murray, H. K., Murray, J. C. and Fraser, S. M. (eds) A tale of the Unknown Unknowns: A Mesolithic Pit Alignment and a Neolithic Timber Hall at Warren Field, Crathes, Aberdeenshire. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 97-107.

Seandalaiocht is now a paid up member of the Twitterati with its own profile page and even a few followers. I've avoided Twitter for some time now, not really understanding what the point of it was, but I'm already seeing its addictive effects and I've only been on it for a few days.

If you call yourself a twitter fiend and you'd like to get shorter versions of the random ramblings on this blog then start following me!

I've also set up a twitter account for the events page which will update whenever I add something to the events calendar. You can sign up for it here.

This post is to celebrate (a little late) the 1,00th unique Irish visitor to Seandálaíocht. If my Irish is ok - and it probably isn't - the post title should read 1,000 Irish visitors to the Seandálaíocht website. That's according to the flag counter widget you can see above and on the blog sidebar. In reality I added that some time after the blog started so according to Google Analytics - a magical time wasting tool provided for free by Google - I've had something more like 1,198 unique visitors from Ireland (yes you're all very special) with 2110 unique visitors in total from 60 different countries.   

The most popular page on the site besides the home page (1128 views) and the blog page (1503 views) was the list of archaeological societies and other institutions (470 views), probably because it turns up in search engines a lot. The most popular post was one pointing the way to the archaeology jobs in ireland facebook group (183 views) with one on a viking house in Dublin coming a close second (179 views)

After a little thinking I have decided to seperate off my C.V. and publications to my personal site. 

I think this makes more sense as the casual visitor to the Seandalaiocht site generally has no interest in my employment history. It'll also give me a bit of space and - now it's done - some time to fix up the links, video and image sections.  

If all those head-hunters out there are looking for more info on me I'd prefer its all on one clean site free of rants and ramblings. This may mean some broken links to files and pages on Seandalaiocht in the short term but I'll fix them as I find 'em. 

UCD has, somewhat scandalously, revised its tuition fees for PhD students. Whereas previously fees reduced in the 4th and subsequent years, they will now continue to be set at the astronomically high rate charged for the first three years (something over 5 grand for me I think).

This might sound reasonable at first glance but when it comes to PhD students in Arts at least this must largely be profit for the University. UCD provides only a supervisor and access to a library (not even inter-library loans) which is often poorly stocked. Many students work from home, not even costing the college for heating or electricity.

This is slightly different in the Sciences where the first few years would often involve laboratory facilities but even in the practical disciplines people in the latter years of their research are writing up and using minimal college resources, presumably the rationale for the previous payment structure.

What the changes represent are essentially a tax on PhD students, the supposed vanguard of the "knowledge economy". Most students in the arts would have funding, but only for three years (despite UCD now regarding PhDs as four year courses as per the American model).

Students, like me, who are attempting to finish up within those three years and run over by even a month, now face paying over thousands of euros with no income and only the prospect of signing on when they finally succeed in submitting.

Why the hell would anyone do a PhD in UCD?

Please please please sign this petition online if you think anything I just said made some semblance of sense.

Last Wednesday I gave a guest lecture to the UCD Archaeology Society on 'Bullauns and Early Irish ironworking'. It detailed some of the ideas I have already published here and presented some more in-depth arguments I have outlined in an article recently submitted to the Journal of the Royal society of Antiquaries of Ireland.

Volume 23, issue 3 of Archaeology Ireland has arrived in the post and includes a little plug for www.seandalaiocht.com in the "News from the Net" section. Links discussed in this regular Archaeology Ireland feature are available online here.

Originally this post had the word 'résumé' in it but I have since learned (from that font of all undergraduate wisdom Wikipedia) that as someone involved in academia what I present here is actually a CV. Apparently a résumé (note correct spelling) implies the kind of brevity I have been discouraged from indulging in since i wrote my first grant application. 

Anyway the point is that I have finally finished and fully updated the CV section of my website. This will be particularly good news to all those out there looking to offer me a job.