Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

There’s something of an inevitability about it … if I start talking about Killogilleen [ here ], you can be sure that I’ll soon get around to blathering on about Killora. So, as I was pottering about east Galway with my 3D 360 Vuze camera, it was no surprise that I’d follow up my visit to Killogilleen with one to Killora. What I say about one I repeat about the other … there’s noting ostensibly special about these sites – to a greater or lesser degree they’re pretty much typical of rural west of Ireland church sites. Both Killora & Killogilleen have standing church ruins dating from around the late 15 th century, with tantalizing hints of earlier activity, possibly going back to the 13 th century. What sets them apart from others is that fact that they’ve been the focus of (sporadic) research for nearly 30 years. I’m reminded of an episode of the TV show QI that asked the question ‘Where Is the Best Place to Discover A New Species?’ [ here ]. In amongst answers both comedic and ...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end.  If you like this post, please consider re-sharing this post via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc.**] Preface In Part I of this post, I outlined the background to the original project run in conjunction with Craughwell Community Council and FÁS to ‘clean-up’ and document the graveyards of Killora and Killogilleen. I also described a relatively coherent group of six vocational gravestones, belonging to blacksmiths, farmers, a shepherd and a carpenter. In this post I want to look at a number of other stones from the two graveyards. To be honest, there is little that binds them together other than the fact that I think that they are interesting and deserve to be better known.   Fig. 17. Overview of Cloonan stone. A resurrection scene In Killora graveyard there is a large (1.40m high x 1.85m wide), upstanding headstone with elaborate stepped and concave shoulde...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end.  If you like this post, please consider re-sharing this post via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. **] Preface I think I originally started work on this paper around 1996. I certainly remember working on it around 2000 to 2001. By that time I felt that the paper was not coming together very well. In part, this was due to my attempt to shoehorn together some rather traditional concepts of gravestone art with my somewhat more unusual (read: crazier) take on a statistical approach to the subject (See Chapple 2000). Part of the reason I abandoned this piece was that while I felt that either approach worked well on their own, the two together did not quite fit. Attendant to that, I began to wonder what the audience would be for something like this – perhaps a bit too technical for a genealogical or art-focused reader, but a bit too pedestrian for a professional archaeological aud...