Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

[** 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 **] Part II | Part III >   Prof. Etienne Rynne leading a UCG Arch Soc group on Scattery Island , Co. Clare, in 1996 (© Chapple Collection) Prof. Etienne Rynne passed away on the 22nd of June 2012. Since that time I’ve wanted to write something about him for this blog. And herein lies the difficulty: Etienne and I had – to put it mildly – a tempestuous relationship … at times we were the best of friends … and at other times … less so. In the aftermath of his death I thought about putting pen to paper … but what could I write? The appreciation that appeared, from Terry Barry , in Antiquity is fine insofar as it ...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button in the column on 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 on the right - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue**] If you hang about this blog for long enough you could easily come away with the impression that I’m engaged in something of a bromance with Wordwell Books . I do seem to review and promote an awful lot of their wares [ here | here | here | here | here | here | here | here | here ] ... OK that is a lot! The simple reason for this is that they are the major publisher of archaeological books in Ireland. They – or, more accurately, their books – have been constant companions since I first started studying archaeology and encountered the first few issues of Archaeology Ireland magazine in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end. If you think the review is useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. **] Preface: I am delighted to again welcome Rena Maguire to the blog. Rena is an undergraduate student at QUB, in her final year. She is currently working on her undergraduate thesis: Iron Age horse harness Y pieces: function, manufacture and typologies . Robert M Chapple *          *          * School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology: Past Cultural Change lunchtime seminar, 4th December 2012 There were no spare seats left in G43 seminar room. Instead, stellar IQs perched on the edges of benches beside microscopes, on tables - anywhere they could get a place to sit. If there’s such a thing as a rock star in Northern Irish archaeology, Richard Warner probably is it. And on December 4th 2012, he arrived in QUB...

John Waddell. Wordwell, Dublin, 2010. 435pp. Black & White illustrations and plates throughout. ISBN 978-1-905569-47-5. €40 ( via Wordwell ) or £40 ( via Amazon ). [** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end.  If you think the review is useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc.**] This 2010 volume describes itself as the ‘Revised Edition’, building on the 1998 first edition (published by Galway University Press ), and the 2000 second edition (published by Wordwell ). Inevitably, it is already known within the Irish archaeological world as the third edition. Before I began this review, I went back and re-read Tom Condit’s (1998) assessment of the first edition in Archaeology Ireland . I wanted to get a feeling for how the work was perceived at the time and how this latest edition either continues those initial observations, or deviates from them. In the first instance, Condit sees th...

With the passing of Billy Dunlop, on the 15th of September 2011, Irish archaeology lost one of it great promoters and enthusiasts. I cannot claim to have known Billy longest or best, but, like many field archaeologists working in Northern Ireland, I owe him a vast debt of gratitude for his kindness and generosity. For those stories shared over cups of tea on site or for the books lent to me from his personal collection I was, and remain, grateful. In time, I trust, appropriate obituaries and appreciations will appear from the pens of others better acquainted with more aspects of his life. My intention here is to set down a general outline of his life along with some of my memories of this energetic and charismatic man, who I am privileged to have known and been able to call both a mentor and a friend. Billy was born in 1920 in Court Street, Newtownards, and grew up on Deleware St, off the Ravenhill Road, Belfast. At the age of 14 he joined The Post Office as a telegraph mess...