Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

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...

Celtic Caludron by lemonade8 on deviantart.com. Used with kind permission I’m never quite sure how universal my experience of academic life really is (or was). For me, at least, I finished a Master’s degree in archaeology with lots of good intentions to get down to business and convert individual chapters into publishable papers. I didn’t do too badly – I got a few decent publications of core ideas out to the wider world. On the other hand – and this is where I’ve no idea whether I’m alone or part of a larger group – there were a few ideas that I had wanted to write up, but never got around to it. Perhaps the world doesn’t need to know my theory that the modern road system in west Clare dates to the Early Christian period*. As some readers may be aware, my computer recently suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure. Although no data was lost, I’ve had to spend time going through various files and considering if I really need certain stuff on my new machine, or if it can’t b...