Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

In 2019 The Keeper of Irish Antiquities threatened to send both the Director of the National Museum of Ireland and the Chief Archaeologist after me, but neither had sufficient backbone to either approach me or reprimand their errant employee. Now it's the back end of 2024 and there's still no end in sight. So I'm thinking it's time to resolve this. For this reason, I'm calling on  Michael MacDonagh , Chief Archaeologist at the National Monuments Service of Ireland, and Lynn Scarff , Director of the National Museum of Ireland, as well as the entire Board of the NMI ( here ) to show some forlorn modicum of actual leadership and reach out to me with a workable solution. I would point out that such a solution must include a full apology and retraction of the curel, hurtful, and simply untrue remarks made by  The Keeper of Irish Antiquities; answers to the questions repeatedly posed but unanswered by The Keeper of Irish Antiquities; as well as payment for my time in do...

I’m giving up on this archaeology blog and from now on I’ll be using it to showcase my creative writing. Please read my latest piece of fiction: *             *             * Narrator: Let me take you back in time! The European: How far back? Narrator: All the way back! Well, back to the Bronze Age anyway … bump, click, whirr! Bang! And here we are in a place that will one day be known as Tullallen in the county that will eventually be called Louth.   We’re watching the digging of a ring ditch and the placement of a cremation burial at its centre. But we can’t stay here! … We have to go the couple of hundred metres to an area of land that will be called Mell. Here we see a rather strange, elongated ring ditch that is being filled up with burnt stone, and bone … so much bone! All of it burnt, but it includes both animal and human bone. Unfortunately...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button at the end. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. To help keep the site in operation, please use the amazon search portal at the end of the post - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue**] 'The Wilde Iresche' frontispiece from Borlase's  The dolmens of Ireland , Vol. 1 George Petrie was many things – a vastly talented musician, painter, and antiquarian. In the latter guise he’s chiefly remembered for The ecclesiastical architecture of Ireland, anterior to the Anglo-Norman invasion; comprising an essay on the origin and uses of the round towers of Ireland, which obtained the gold medal and prize of the Royal Irish Academy (1845). It was among the first papers to seriously examine the Irish round tower and put its study on the firm bases of logical discussion and rational observation. On a...