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Rathcroghan

Conference

Peeling Back the Layers April 12th - 14th 2013

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The Management and Staff of the Rathcroghan Visitor Centre and the members of the Tulsk Action Group would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Tulsk Inn, Country Ballroom, and Rathcroghan Conference 2013.

It is hoped that these talks and the conference ‘Peeling back the Layers’ will help you to think about Rathcroghan in a new light.

Over the weekend, we will peel back the layers on this pre-historic landscape, wrapped in a medieval sheet, etched upon by Christian scribes, with a coating of antiquarian exaggeration. Finally unwrapped by modern archaeology beginning with Knox (1914), improved upon by Waddell (1983) and Herity (1983). The ArchaeoGeophysical Imaging Project (Waddell et al, 1994-2009) amounted to probably the most forensic and complex geophysical and topographical surveys ever undertaken on an Irish archaeological monument, and this was further complimented by the extensive scientific excavations carried out by the Discovery Programme’s ‘Medieval Rural Settlement Project’ overseen by Dr. Niall Brady (2002-2010).

Friday 17:00 – 18:00

Registrations

18:00 - 18:10

Welcome - Gary Dempsey

18:10 – 18:30

Mark Kelly (Irish School of Archaeology) ‘The Irish School of Archaeology - What we do’ The Irish School of Archaeology was set up by Mark Kelly to bringing further education to schools at primary and secondary levels within Ireland, where a programme of archaeology is incorporated into the student’s curriculum.

18:30 – 19:10 Dr. Benjamin Hazard (University College Cork) ‘Florence Conry, c.1560-1629, native of the villa of Figh, civil parish of Tibohine, barony of Frenchpark, Co. Roscommon’ Dr. Hazard is a Research Fellow with the School of History at University College Cork. In September 2007, he was awarded the Louvain 400 Postdoctoral Fellowship and has contributed to the Corpus of Electronic Text (CELT) project at UCC. His paper this evening looks at Florence Conry, a member of one of Connacht’s, and Roscommon’s, greatest bardic families the Ó Maolconaire.

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Saturday 09:00 - Registration 10:00 – Anthony Corns (Discovery Programme) ‘The Discovery Programme - what we do’ Anthony is the Technology Manager at the Discovery Programme, Ireland’s independent archaeological research body who have carried out important studies such as the Medieval Rural Settlement Project undertaken at Tulsk and Carnfree.

The DP also promote the use of new technology in archaeology through projects like the 3D Icons and incorporate LiDAR and Aerial Images into their research.

10:40 – Kaaren Moffat (University College Cork) ‘The Grammar of Legibility: Examining Word Separation as Applied to the Irish Ogham Stones’ Kaaren is a PhD Candidate in the department of Archaeology, UCC. Her thesis focuses on Ogham Stones, which represent the earliest record of the Irish language and are a valuable asset in the quest to increase our knowledge of early medieval Ireland. Through her research, Kaaren hopes to be able to increase our understanding of the distribution, morphology, and purposes of the Ogham stones in Ireland 11:20 - Break 12:00 – Dr. Steve Davis (University College Dublin) ‘The Hill of Ward, Co. Meath: A multi-period archaeological complex’ Steve joined the UCD School of Archaeology in 2006, as part of a strategy to expand environmental archaeology. Developing an interest in remote sensing technologies, in particular LiDAR, he looked at the Hill of Ward, Co. Meath where a number of previously unknown features were identified. He will discuss the implications of these newly discovered sites in the context of other comparable sites, in Ireland and elsewhere.

12:40 – Sam Moore (Institute of Technology Sligo) ‘Movement and thresholds: architecture and landscape at the Carrowkeel Passage Tomb Complex, Co. Sligo.’

Sam is an assistant lecturer in Applied Archaeology at Sligo IT, and a PhD candidate at NUIG. He will discuss the Carrowkeel passage tomb complex, in relation to the physical and symbolic thresholds, examining the concepts of crossing liminal zones in the Irish Passage Tomb tradition and at a variety of other ritual sites. Much like their Neolithic forbearers, the later pre-historic sites such as Tara and Rathcroghan seem have enclosing elements that act as symbolic and physical thresholds.

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13:20 – Susan Curran (University College Dublin) ‘LiDAR Analysis and Early Medieval Settlement in Counties Roscommon and Leitrim’ Susan is a graduate of the School of Archaeology in UCD where she studied Landscape Archaeology, looking at the early medieval landscape of Roscommon and Leitrim. In 2012 she co-edited Trowel, Vol. XIII, a significant academic publication platform for postgraduate students in Ireland, published by UCD postgraduate students. Susan’s analysis of LiDAR data has identified new sites and monuments, thus challenging the perception and understanding of early medieval settlement landscapes.

14:00 – Lunch 15:00 – Brian Shanahan (National University of Ireland Galway) Brian Shanahan is a NUI Galway Hardiman Scholar undertaking PhD research on Landscape Archaeology with a particular focus on County Roscommon. He was Assistant Director of the Discovery Programme’s Medieval Rural Settlement Project between 2003-2011, during which time he led excavations and surveys of many sites in County Roscommon, including Carnfree.

15:40 – Kevin Barton (Landscape & Geophysical Services) {with Dr. Ralf Hesse - State Office for Cultural Heritage, Baden-Württemberg} ‘ Interpreting remote sensing data in a glaciated, karst lowland landscape; what lies around Rathcroghan Mound, Tulsk, Co Roscommon?’

Kevin has over 25 years’ experience in the public, commercial and academic worlds, working on many of the key research projects in the area of Rathcroghan, including the NUIG research project.

Kevin will discuss the advances in work carried out in partnership with Dr. Hesse which is helping to advance the understanding of Rathcroghan using LiDAR data provided by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.

Part of Ralf ’s work is the development and implementation of novel visualisation techniques to facilitate the interpretation of high-resolution digital elevation models.

16:20 – Dr. David McGuinness ‘Rathcroghan and the Ordnance Survey of Ireland’ The large scale mapping of Ireland in the early 19thC. at the scale of 6-inches has been well documented. This monumental endeavour left a lasting impression on the landscape of Ireland, cementing placenames and historical monuments in the ‘official record’. David will examine the Ordnance Survey documentation of Rathcroghan in 1827, in the context of a drive to record other monumental prehistoric landscapes around that time.

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Sunday

10:00 – Paul Gosling (Galway Mayo Institute of Technology) ‘From Crúachan to Findabair Cúalnge and back: the Study of Toponymy and Route in Táin Bó Cúailnge’ Paul Gosling lectures on Built Heritage in the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. His research interests are focused principally on archaeological survey, and his published work includes reports and papers on the field monuments of Galway and Clare Island, Co. Mayo, as well as the archaeology of a number of towns. His research on the toponymic aspects of the Táin is being published as a series of papers in the County Louth Archaeological & Historical Journal.

10:40 – Prof. Muiris Ó Sullivan (University College Dublin) ‘The Táin: a curious link in the Muirhevna region of County Louth’ Muiris is Associate Professor of Archaeology at UCD , his work on Prehistoric art and ritual is internationally recognised, and he has published extensively in this area.

His work has dealt with some of the more iconic complexes of prehistoric Ireland, notably the great passage tombs in the Boyne Valley and on the Loughcrew hills.

Other major interests include Irish archaeology in modern society and the state of the national archaeological resource. Prof. O’Suilleabhain is also co-author and long standing contributor to the ‘Know Your Monuments’ series in Archaeology Ireland.

11:20 - Break 12:10 – Ollamh Ruairí Ó hUiginn (National University of Ireland Maynooth) ‘Lebor na hUidre: Some Early Connacht Associations’ Ruairi is Professor of Modern Irish at NUI Maynooth, where he lectures on Folklore, Literature and Medieval Society, and placenames and personal names. Many of these elements have been incorporated into essays on the Ulster Cycle and the Táin, including one on Rathcroghan in an early edition of Emania (no. 5). In his talk today he will look at the Connacht associations of Lebor na hUidre, the repository of Recension I of the Táin.

12:50 – Eamonn (Ned) Kelly (National Museum of Ireland) ‘Kingship and Sacrifice: Irish Prehistoric Bog Bodies’.

Eamonn Kelly joined the Museum in 1975 and is the Keeper of the Irish Antiquities division. He is responsible for the Irish archaeological; Egyptian; Classical and Ethnographical Collections. He has written extensively on diverse aspects of Irish archaeology, and developed a new theory to explain the phenomena of Irish Iron Age bog bodies, which inspired the exhibition Kingship and Sacrifice.

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13.20 – Dr. Niall Brady (The Archaeological Diving Company Ltd) ‘A gateway to Cruachan, the role of Tuilsce (Tulsk) since early prehistory’ Niall is co-director of ADCO - The Archaeological Diving Company Ltd, Ireland’s premier consultancy in Underwater and Maritime Archaeology. Founded in 1999, ADCO offers a professional archaeological service in lake, river, intertidal and marine archaeology, and is committed to research and publication.

No stranger to Tulsk, as director of the Discovery Programme’s ‘Medieval Rural Settlement Project, 2002-10’, Dr. Brady and his staff helped to unravel the story of the settlement of Tulsk. The sites at Tulsk drew the attention of the project team, who were examining questions associated with later medieval settlement within Gaelic lordships between the 12th and the 16th centuries. Their excavations on the raised rath of Tulsk Fort revealed a sequence of five main horizons of activity, including the early medieval, later medieval and the early modern/ Elizabethan periods. In the present lecture, Niall will speak about the prehistoric strata, which lie underneath the ringfort, and include Iron Age and Neolithic levels. He will demonstrate the importance of Tulsk in this early period, and he will argue that the site served as the natural eastern gateway to the ancient royal and sacred landscape of Cruachan.

From Known Knowns to Unknown Unknowns Remotely Detecting the Past an ArchaeoLandscapes Europe Conference 9th - 10th May 2013 Wood Quay Venue, Civic Offices, Dublin

Register Online http://k2u2arcland.eventbrite.com

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