Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

The British Museum holds 10 items identified as coming from Co Carlow. The majority of these (10) are assigned to the Bronze Age. The most common object type represented are vases (3). The material types represented in this assemblage are Pottery (4), along with Stone, Bone, and Metal (2 each). < Table of Contents Neolithic/Bronze Age: Bone item Ballon Hill, tumulus pin 19201109.470 Bone pin fragment; looped head of pin; loop worn through; decorated http://britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=817987&partId=1 Neolithic/Bronze Age: Stone item Ballon Hill end scraper 19201109.140 Stone end scraper. http://britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1388469&partId=1 Neolithic (?)/Bronze Age (?)/Iron Age (?): Stone item Ardristan quarry, 2 miles from Ballon Hill bead 19201109.290 Stone bead (decorated). http://britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectI...

How many days has it been since the Keeper of Irish Antiquities claimed that I was trying to defraud the Irish State when I was merely looking to be paid for work they directed me to undertake? My count up Countup Backstory: In a letter dated February 17 2019  Maeve Sikora , Keeper of Irish Antiquities said that  “It is completely unacceptable for you to attempt to extract public monies for discharging duties to which you signed up under the terms of the excavation licence.” She appears to believe that I am held in perpetual indentured servitude to her on the basis of a licence application I signed almost two decades ago and that I must carry out her orders on my own time and at my own expense, without expectation of payment for my services. I have repeatedly asked for a retraction of her egregious and wounding words and to offer a full, unconditional apology. To date, this has not been forthcoming. On November 27 2019 I published my account of m...

Regular readers of this blog may just have an inkling that I have a tendency towards the controversial and downright provocative. I realise that it’s hard to believe such notions from a blog that has published posts on both swastikas and cock rings (though not at the same time … yet). Still, it may come as a surprise that a little piece I published on February 6 2019 called ‘ Archaeological Archives for Sale! Buy it or bin it! ’ ruffled a few feathers. While I would urge you to go back and read this minor masterpiece, the TL;DR version is that under the guise of putting all the archaeological archives I still hold (but have never been funded to completion) up for sale, I wanted to highlight a real issue in Irish field archaeology. Simply put, this is the well-known fact that many excavation directors are forced to hold onto excavation archives in their own homes and at their own expense for many years, even past the point of any hope for their eventual publication. Some of wha...

Over the course of 2017 I’ve published some 63 posts of varying kinds, that garnered just under 70,000 views. As the year is drawing to a close, I just wanted to thank everyone who has read, shared, and (hopefully) enjoyed some of the content along the way. For those who missed out and would like to catch up, here are the Top 10 posts from 2017, plus a final, end-of-year plug for two posts that I really enjoyed writing that, I think, should have been a bit more widely read than they were. Again, my thanks for reading in 2017 … I’m already working on a large number of posts for 2018, so I hope to catch your interest with some of those too! 10) Glendalough: St Saviour's Priory 9) Ain't talkin', justwalkin'. Carrying a dead man's shield 8) Bronze Age burials at The Mound of the Hostages, Tara 7) Spiral staircase. National Museum of Ireland, Dublin 6) Three Sides Live |Professor Etienne Rynne Lectures | October 1994 | Part III 5) D...