Seandálaíocht - Irish for Archaeology
 
A friend linked to this video on Facebook. It's by the guys from Prehistoric Music Ireland and it reminded me of some old footage I recorded at WAC 6 a couple of years ago which you can see above. It's a very short taster video showing a little bit of a demonstration of reconstructed early Irish musical Instruments including trumpets and horns. I was very impressed by the talk and by the noises that came out of the instruments. Particularly the giant, 'Celtic', Loughnashade trumpet.


I would highly recommend having a look at the full video that inspired this post. Its embedded after the break or you can go straight to YouTube. 

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Not strictly Irish or archaeology but involving a childish love of Lego, this has to be one of the coolest videos I've come across on YouTube in some time. Indulge me. 
  
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I am very happy to announce the launch of the definitive SMELT 2010 documentary (although I can't guarantee a Christmas special or director's cut won't appear. Depends how much money I make from this...). 




SMELT 2010 was an experimental archaeology weekend held in the National Heritage Park, Ferrycarrig, Co. Wexford with the primary aim of smelting Irish bog ore in a reconstructed bloomery furnace. We had some success, producing iron, but no usable bloom. Still, it was very successful for a first smelt. You can read more in previous blog posts, or soon on the project website, which I am in the process of updating.  

The full-length video is up on Vimeo and embedded above but, due to space restrictions, it is fairly low quality. The video is also available on the Seandálaíocht YouTube channel in super high quality HD, but split in two (length restrictions!). They are  embedded after the break (click "Read More" below). 

You can also download the full video in HD for your own use here (right-click the link and click save as) but be warned that the file is very large (1.2GB) so it will take a long time to download if you have a slow connection. You can download a much smaller (320MB), lower quality, version here if needed.

EDIT: New links and embedded videos have been added to rectify a problem with the audio levels in the original video. Please download again if you have an old version!
 
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The Tales of Medieval Dublin lecture series continues next Tuesday in the Wood Quay offices of Dublin City Council. I haven't managed to get to any which is why I was delighted to find that the lectures are being published online. 


The next event is 'The Wife's Tale' and is given by Dr. Gillian Kenny, an expert on medieval women. Click the button below to add it to your Google Calendar.
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Just a quick note to let people know that more videos from Smelt 2010 are now up on Vimeo. These are time-lapse videos of the experimental smelt, some of which have already been seen. 

Work is in progress on a final video report of the smelt using these videos in combination with other video taken at the project. 

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As promised here is some video from Smelt 2010. During the project I tried to capture as much as possible using time lapse photography to give a sense of the activity and number of people involved in a smelt. The video above shows the painstaking building of the furnace chimney which was built up of sausages of pre-mixed clay. The clay was mixed using equal parts horse dung, potters clay and sharp sand. The mix worked very well and we ended up with no cracks at all in the furnace. You can see the hardy volunteers in the background kneeding the sausages of clay in their hands.
The next video is from near the end of the smelt when we began to burn down the charcoal after about five hours of charging. It was getting late at that stage and the light fades until you can only see the glow of the burning charcoal. Unfortunately the lack of light meant no time-lapse of the removal of the bloom but we do have photos.
These and other videos and photos will be combined with standard video taken over the course of the weekend into a video report on the smelt which will be made available as soon as its ready. I have to thank Mark Gordon for acting as cameraman for the event and volunteering to edit all the footage, no small task. 

UPDATE: One more video of the opening of one of Niall and Eoin's charcoal pits is available over at charcoal.seandalaiocht.com.
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GALWAY MARKET

I have just been perusing www.britishpathe.com, a wonderful collection of old British newsreel footage from the age of empire. There's some great Irish material capturing aspects of Irish life long since gone. I've linked to a few here but I'd recommend having a good browse through the thousands of clips on the site. 

WEST COAST OF IRELAND

There is a nice selection of Irish related material here if you want to skip to the popular stuff. 
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I spent yesterday researching and organising things for Smelt 2010 which is fast creeping up on me. One of the fancy things I'd like to do for the smelt is some time-lapse photography so I devoted a bit of time to figuring out how my still relatively new digital slr works; familiarising myself a bit more with terms like apeture, shutter-speed and ISO. The result is a test video of me working for a couple of hours in my little home office: 
It reveals a weird tendency to play with my beard (shared by all bearded men i'd imagine) and a dangerous sedentism that reminds me how much exercise I don't do. 

Besides that, preparations are coming along and the Smelt will go ahead on the 6th and 7th of March. The one big thing I need to sort out is a bellows system, which I will make if need s be but I would be more than happy to borrow if someone would like to donate!

For people who would like to come to see the smelt (taking place in the Irish National Heritage Park in Co. Wexford) the schedule will hopefully run as follows: 

Friday 5th - I'll be there prepping and setting up the smelting area and probably starting construction of the furnace
Saturday 6th - Completion of furnace and pre-firing with wood. Ore preparation and roasting. 
Sunday 7th - The smelt (volunteers needed!)
Monday 8th - Clean up

All are welcome to come but if you can't make it I will be putting up videos and images from the smelt on the project's website.
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I just received a press release about a recent exhibition of archaeological material in the Dundalk County Museum. I haven't seen it myself unfortunately but if the very professional (and potentially copyright infringing) poster is anything to go by then a lot of creativity, thought and a bit of fun have gone into the exhibition.

I love seeing archaeology presented in interesting ways like this, the public likes to be entertained and there is nothing wrong with giving them what they want, as long as the substance is there under the pleasant gloss of shiny graphics!

Down with woolly jumper archaeology (but up with woolly jumpers in general, its bleedin' cold out!) and up with sexy, slick, and hopefully popular archaeology. Forget disseminating (snore), lets entertain!
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Yesterday, myself and some obliging volunteers (Conor McDermott, Angela Wallace and Niall Kenny) went to a Bord na Móna bog in Offaly (with their permission of course!) looking for bog iron ore.
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Large orange splodges in this Bord na Mona bog indicate the presence of bog iron ore. Photo: OSI Online Mapviewer
Bog iron ore is referred to in much of the archaeological literature on iron smelting in Ireland. It is often suggested as the primary source of iron in prehistory and medieval times but this assertion is rarely supported with scientific analysis (although this has changed in recent times and there are many sites now where chemical analysis of iron slag has indicated a bog source for the smelted ore). 
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A large orange spread of probable bog ore

The assertion is a logical one, considering the lack of large, high quality mineral ore deposits in Ireland on the scale of those in Britain. Also, bog ore is supposed to be a renewable resource, replenishing over a few decades according to Tylecote, and thus providing a very useful source for small scale iron smelters.
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Troweled patch of potential bog ore
Unfortunately very little is known about where and to what extent it occurs in Ireland (more is known about American, Canadian and Scandinavian bog ores). Discussions with Conor McDermott, a colleague of mine in the UCD School of Archaeology who had worked extensively in Irish bogs led to a plan to go collecting some of the 'bog iron' he had frequently observed in the field: with the goal of checking its iron content to test if it really is a viable ore and, if it is, of smelting it.
Our expedition was very successful, collecting almost 40KG of orange material from the bog (presumed bog ore pending XRF analysis). The material varied from a clay-like consistency to hard agglomerations similar in morphology to iron slag. All of it was very orange, presumably derived from oxidised iron. 
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Slag-like agglomerations of probable bog ore
All of this is part of the SMELT 2010 project which will culminate in an experimental iron smelt in the National Heritage Park, Ferrycarrig, Co. Wexford.
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