Mar 28
Over the last 10 years Ireland has been abuzz with archaeological activity – a positive (and now sadly missed) benefit of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ construction boom. Dining and Dwelling is the sixth monograph to be published in this series by the National Roads Authority (NRA), and it must be also be a world first in that it firmly establishes a developer, albeit a semi-state body, as the foremost publisher of a nation’s archaeological work. Read more
Dear archaeologists:
I am writing on behalf of my fourteen-year-old daughter. Her goal for several years now has been to become an archaeologist when she grows up. At her middle school the students each have to attend one semester of a career-planning course and during her time in this course, her instructor has tried on many occasions to dissuade her from this profession. Read more
Given enough time, a hypothetical chimpanzee typing at random would, as part of its output, almost certainly produce all of Shakespeare’s plays. If you’ve not got that long to wait, this book is the next best thing. Immortal, and completely bananas.
Ignoring Captain Boner and the topsoil strippers for a moment, there’s something odd about this photo that I can’t quite put my finger on. It features this years winning entry to the ‘2009 Sexiest Field Crew’ competition – a global search led by sexyarchaeology.org to find the new vanguard of dirty pretty things destined to inherit the earth.
It’s a common misconception that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. In fact that’s a lie.The rain in Spain falls mainly in Ireland. Thanks a million Amigos!
And just as Eskimo’s have 17 thousand different words for snow, field archaeologists have at least double that number for rain. From the tundra-cold sideways strain, to the fine micro drizzle that gets you wetter than if you’d jumped headfirst into a lake, the archaeological palette is finely tuned to rain’s many qualities of wetness. Read more
There’s an enduring myth that archaeology is an ‘unrepeatable experiment’, a bit like loosing your virginity with a sheep. Or perhaps that description just applies to people with a speech impediment.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m an Archie… Acheu… I dig up old stuff.’ Read more
Obviously everyone here’s familiar with ‘The Rock’ and his great work ‘Doom’. You all know the story – a rooky Space Cop gets sent to a distant Martian colony (for crimes he didn’t commit) and finds that a team of hapless scientists have accidentally opened an inter-dimensional portal leading straight to the gates of hell. Some demons escape, people get eaten – it’s all very unsavoury. Read more
I once worked with a Project Manager whose stock response to all requests for more resources was uncompromising.
‘People live, people die, get over it,’ he’d grumble in his thick Scottish accent, like a Yorkshire man with all the generosity squeezed out of him. Read more
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know… Read more
Tiered from work, and not yet drunk enough to talk, we pondered the menu with the glazed expressions of the institutionalised. The marketing executives had ganged up on us with their cheap dinner-drinks promos and our nightly subsistence allowance left little room for manoeuvre.
- I think I’ll have… Read more
In olden days, if you wanted the latest statistical assessment based on predictive medical science as to how long you’d got left to live, there wasn’t any point logging on to http//:www.deathclock.com. A blank screen would have just flashed the obvious:
Nasty, Short and Brutish. Read more
Over the coming pages you may be fooled into thinking that when it comes to archaeology I know what I’m talking about. If that ever happens and god forbid, I want you to remember my brothers favourite ‘my brothers a total knob’ story. Read more
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