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 **] I'm being haunted ... and it's all the fault of modern technology. I've been dawdling, not knowing how to start this post. Here’s the problem: Just about everyone who has ever written anything – from a school days essay, or a peer reviewed paper, to a bodice-ripper novel – knows that you need to have three things to make it work: a beginning, a middle, and an end. The middle and end aren’t a problem – I’ve got them nailed! It’s the beginning that’s giving me trouble. I’m like the opposite of Mr Spiggott, the one legged actor, applying for the role of Tarzan – it’s not that I am missing a beginning, it’s that...

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...

[** 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.**] If you know me – either in real life or just through my activities online – you’ll be aware (possibly to the point of exasperation) that I’m obsessed with archaeology. You’ll probably also know that my main area of interest is Irish archaeology, especially prehistory, the Early Christian period, and post-Medieval gravestones – it’s just how I am! What fewer of you may know is that I’m also pretty obsessed with Egypt and Egyptology! What almost no one knows is that my family and I are the curators of a small collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts. I say curators, rather than owners, as we believe that we can never truly own such items – we are merely their custodians for the next generation. The collection was passed to me contained in a small Godfrey Phillips tobacco...