Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

Following the publication of John O’Keeffe’s statement on the NIEA’s state of preparedness for dealing with archives from archaeological consultancies in Northern Ireland, I though it advisable to seek out a different perspective. To this end, I contacted Edward Bourke, Senior Archaeologist at the National Monuments Service, within the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. I posed him the same two questions I asked Dr O’Keefe: “I would be grateful if you could confirm what, if any, preparations have been made by the NMS: 1) To investigate the possibility of any of the archaeological consultancies no longer being able to continue in business? 2) To develop contingency plans for the safe retrieval, storage, and curation of the whole range of physical and digital cultural assets, from artefacts, soil samples, paper records, and computer files etc?” Excavation reports being loaded into the Tambour Units I received the following reply, published here in full: ...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button at the right. 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 right - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue **] Looking back on that time in my life where I attempted to make a living from archaeology, I see that I went through a regular cycle. About once a year, from when I was awarded my MA in 1998 up until I finally left field archaeology in 2011, I would convince myself that I was going to do a PhD. I’d get deeply entranced by a single subject and decide that – this time – finally – I was going to settle on a subject that I could work on for several years and emerge as the all-knowing expert on. That’s how it started. Invariably, something would happen along the way to put a halt to these grand plans. Sometimes it was my realisation tha...