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 **] Session 5 of the Archaeology of Gatherings Conference, Sligo, October 2013 < Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part VI > Sunday 27th October was overcast and there had been rain in the night. I will admit to having been ever so slightly hungover from the festivities the night before and welcomed the lashings of hot, sweet coffee I was plied with by the excellent folk at The Glasshouse . On the positive side, at least I knew where I was going this morning and didn’t manage to get lost on the 2km drive to Sligo Institute of Technology. Edvard Munch's By the Deathbed, 1895 ( Source ) The session ...

[** 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 ...

In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day 2012, I posted a short piece on this blog about how the very beautiful gravestone of the Saint in the grounds of Downpatrick Cathedral is a recent fabrication, and not an ancient monument. The person behind this apparent deception was the rather larger than life character Francis Joseph Bigger (1863-1926) [see also: here | here ] and you can read about the whole thing in: St. Patrick’s Gravestone: A Bigger fake! Francis Joseph Bigger Schema of how the three cross fragments could have fit together In that post I wrote: “During the preparation of the ‘grave site’ three fragments of a broken cross were recovered. Although searches were carried out to recover further portions, they were in vain. Bigger notes that the fragments were placed in the cathedral for safe-keeping, until such time as more pieces could be located and a reconstruction attempted.” I’ll admit that a part of me suspected that these pieces would, most likely, be...