EDITOR Grace O’Keeffe (editor@archaeologyireland.ie) EDITORIAL TEAM Emer Condit, Tom Condit, Michael Connolly, Gabriel Cooney, Chris Corlett, Paul Duffy, Sharon Greene, Una MacConville, Nicholas Maxwell, Aidan O’Sullivan, Maeve Tobin NEWS Maeve Tobin, news editor (news@archaeologyireland.ie) PUBLISHING MANAGER Nick Maxwell ADVERTISING AND HERITAGE GUIDE MANAGER Una MacConville (una@wordwell.ie) HERITAGE GUIDE EDITOR Tom Condit PRODUCTION Niamh Power SUBSCRIPTIONS & ADMINISTRATION Carol McManus & Helen Dunne (subs@archaeologyireland.ie) TYPESETTING AND LAYOUT © Wordwell Ltd Cover design: Ger Garland PRINTERS W&G Baird, Antrim PUBLISHERS Wordwell Ltd, Unit 9, 78 Furze Road, Sandyford Industrial Estate, Dublin 18. Tel: 01-2933568 Email: office@wordwellbooks.com PATRONS OF ARCHAEOLOGY IRELAND Isabel Bennett, Patrick V. Brown, James Butler, Pauline Coakley, Brendan Connors, John Cruse, George Cunningham, Richard Gem, Claire Gogarty, Christine Grant, Eoin Grogan, Amy Harris, Elizabeth Heckett, Patricia Kennedy, Seán Kirwan, Pamela Lewis, Don Lydon, Ian Magee, Jeremy Milln, Michael Moore, Harold Mytum, David M. Nolan, Micheal Ó Ciosáin, Gerry O'Leary, Celie O'Rahilly, Emer O'Sullivan, Eoin O'Connor, Bruce Proudfoot, Brian Scane, Christian Schaffalitzky, Conor Skehan, Miriam Tarbett, Máirin Uí Scolaidhe, John Waddell and Patrick Wallace. SUBSCRIPTION RATES See https://archaeologyireland.ie
Editorial
Autumn 2024 Volume 38 No. 3 Issue No.149
Welcome to the Autumn 2024 edition of Archaeology Ireland.
The beautiful cover photo of St Michan’s (with thanks to Edmond O’Donovan) belies the distress caused by the recent destructive targeting of the church and its mummified crypt-dwellers. This is not the place for discussion of these events but it can be the place to discuss how artefacts are to be kept safe, especially when stored in places with public access. The history of St Michan’s runs far deeper than simply its ‘crusader’ mummy, which is why I asked Emer Purcell, who has studied and researched the church at length, to give a short history of the church for those who might not be familiar with its Viking origins. Many thanks to Emer, who responded with her piece at very short notice. It is important to remember that St Michan’s is not simply a historical building but also a functioning parish church and, like many of Ireland’s medieval churches, it relies on tourism to keep the doors open. Put one on your list of places to visit and drop a couple of euro in the donation box.
One of the images that accompanies Emer’s piece is an image of open caskets in the crypt of the church. We had a discussion in-house about using pictures showing human remains and concluded that it was appropriate for the article. By coincidence, Audrey Horning’s ‘Hy Brasil’ piece landed in my inbox shortly after that, and it’s a discussion of the ethics of exactly these types of images. The use of human remains, in either actual physical or photographic form, is quite common in museums, although certainly more respect is now evident in how they are displayed, with signs alerting you to their presence so that you can choose to avoid seeing them, often accompanied by a ban on photographs. I’ve brought hundreds of students to see the bog bodies in the National Museum, always giving them the choice to skip that part of the Museum if they wish. We are always brought to silence once we turn the corner and see each body; this ancestor of ours makes an almost unimaginable time in the past into a real period of human existence for us. Where do we strike the balance between ethics and respect and the desire to find a tangible, physical connection with our past?
Several articles in this issue deal with the physical remnants of faith, either in marks left in stone or in small objects buried and carrying the hope of better times. These discussions take us from stone circles in Cork to apotropaic remains in Roscommon, and from burial mounds in Wexford to spirals on Tibradden Mountain. And beware of the mermaids in Sligo.
Happy reading!
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Autumn 2024
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