Many people will be aware of the handful of contentious Irish sites that made international headlines during the heady years of the Celtic Tiger for all the wrong reasons – Carrickmines Castle, Woodstown, and Lismullin on the Tara M3. These sites gained notoriety for either holding up the progress of a developing nation or being bulldozed to line the pockets of the profiteering political elite, and the archaeological story was often lost in the cross fire. Read more
London tales 1: the wrong way man
Walking to get my paper this morning, a car pulled up beside and asked for directions. Cheerfully (though completely unintentionally) I sent them the wrong way. They were long gone before I realized my mistake, and as I continued to the shop I pondered their fate with mounting concern. Where would they go? How long would it be before they realised? Would they have enough food to see them through the night? Read more
Few would consider the popular computer game Grand Theft Auto – notorious for its adult content and violent themes – to be a reliable witness to our daily lives. But 800 years from now, if all that survived of our modern world were scant archaeological remains and a copy of this controversial game, what conclusions would archaeologists of the future draw? Read more
Unfamiliar with the quaint customs of the south-east, when I first read the title of this monograph I assumed it had been written for the demented. Discrete enquiries subsequently revealed it’s actually based on the local saying that if you’re born to the east of the river Medway you’re a ‘Kentish Man,’ and west of the river you’re a ‘Man of Kent.’ Read more
