Sieving. Sieving like mad loons.

Well, I would say trowelling but I had the joyous honour of being in the centre today, wet sieving with Kiki (I refuse to call him Mr Hopkins, as I am not, in fact, on this ship of insanity). I spent the day outside, drenched from head to foot because I have Issues with the hose. Every time I went inside, there were more mountains of sample bags on the floor and Treenie was sitting among them, sorting away merrily.

We were informed by our noble captain (dammit!! Ship references!!) that the crew (dammit again!) on site today were deprived of nutritious fruit in their lunchbox. *cough* Cursed sandwich making team. *cough*cough* I hasten to add, there was chocolate in there...

Slightly disappointing today that the stake hole fill didn't produce anything of interest when it was sieved. I think Kiki was praying for gold doubloons, he's always talking about them. I would have been satisfied with some charcoal. Rachel probably would have gone wild for fishbone.

Ah, life is hard. Backfilling the trench tomorrow.

*cry*

You think its bad this year?

Míoltóg Chéide (The Céide Midge)

For those of you reading this from safer climes this is a short description of the midges to be found all over Belderrig particularly, it seems, in the vicinity of archaeological excavations. The Céide Midge (more commonly known to Dublin students as the Céide Midget) is for want of more eloquent words the most infuriating, irrritating, evil, monstrous and above all pointless creature to inhabit the earth. The deep primeval hatred they are capable of provoking has even driven Lieutenant Gordon (a normally passive, even lazy man!) to call for the annihalation of the entire species.

The Museums of Mayo website describes the ultimate goal of Céide Midges:
"The female midge needs a blood meal to provide enough protein for all her eggs and if she can't get this she will have to use up some of her own flight muscle tissue".

Interestingly the website also lists the function of the midge: "N/A"

This is a useless creature whose sole goal in life
seems to be to cause severe physical and emotional problems to other creatures. While we have seen (and felt) the midges in Belderrig this year, we have not come close to the pain and suffering of the first years excavations. In the absence of proper protection people took to wearing Arab head scarfs for some unknown reason. Hopefully we won't have to resort to Sharia law this year

More photos of the 2004 excavation can be found here: http://belderrig2004.fotopic.net

Further reading:
http://www.ihatemidges.co.uk/
http://db.museumsofmayo.com/WebX?50@36.L2wJasXWI5L.0@.ee86f72

HMS Bemused, 15 June 1806.

Day 4 on the Belderrig dig.

My first contribution (of many) to the blog and I have exciting (to archaeologists) news! While exploring the wilds of Belderrig Bog today, scaling dangerous cliffs, rambling across treacherous terrain and avoiding psycopathic sheep I came across a completely new lithic scatter. To the non-archaeologists ("normal people") reading this I mean a pile of little white stones. While Graeme said it was 'potentially interesting' I personally believe that it will probably change Irish archaeology forever!

Anyway even if it doesn't i'm quite chuffed that I found my first new site and I also discovered a possible Neolithic roundhouse nearby. Clearly someone will have to pay me serious money to come back next year to dig it (I'm looking in your direction Graeme). So what else have I been up to today when I haven't been revolutionising the archaeological world?

The afternoon was spent surveying with the gentile and ladylike Sarah, a top notch worker if a little distracted occasionally, and sometimes downright dirty. Little does she know that while she trooped up and down the mountain side at my direction I was busy screwing up at the other end and I may (actually make that i will) have to redo some of the survey. Of course by 'I will have to' I really mean Sarah will have to.

I will leave you with a quote from that famous philosopher Homer Simpson:

"Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."

First Day Impression: Caitriona M. Curran - dig team

Today was the first day of the third year in Belderrig. Fortunately, this year we had the help of a JCB in the removal of the topsoil, which otherwise would surely have taken 3 to 4 days to remove by hand. It took about 4 hours for the group to remove the rest of the soil that couldn't be removed by the machine for fear of damaging the next layers, which we will begin to investigate tomorrow. It was hard physically but at least we had a strong wind and occasional showers to cool us down. There seems to be no damage to the undisturbed soil, and the different areas of interest from past years are still recognisable and familiar. We did come across scatterings of possibleworked quartz lying close to the cliff edge and these were also visible in the stratified layers of sod on the cliff edge where weather erosion has created jagged outcrops.

The start of the dig: Graeme Warren, Excavation Director

Today (Monday June 12th 2006) is the first day of the 2006 field-season at the archaeological site of Belderrig, Co. Mayo. The project, which is in its third year, is based in the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin and funded by the National Committee for Archaeology of the Royal Irish Academy. The site, or preferably landscape, includes later Mesolithic and Neolithic elements: a stone tool scatter, with associated fish bone and other organic materials seeming to date to the later Mesolithic, and fieldwalls and other stone tools assumedly of Neolithic date. More general information on the project can be found on the School of Archaeology web site. This year, we will try and provide a daily web update from the field: most of the entries will focus closely on describing the activity of the day, and the attempt to give a sense of the nature of an archaeological field project, both the research and all the other aspects of living in the field. I already realise the error I made in scheduling the field season to coincide with the World Cup J. My next task is to try and persuade our volunteers to write sections for the web site each day…

Some background info on who we are might be useful. I direct the project, which includes numerous researchers. I am a lecturer in archaeology at UCD, specialising in prehistory, landscapes and stone tools. Further details of my research interests, publications and the like can be found here. Our environmental programme is run by Rachel Parks, Fishlab, Dept of Archaeology, University of York, a specialist in Mesolithic fish bone in northern Britain and Ireland. We collaborate with 14Chrono at Queens University Belfast for dating programmes. Field supervision this year is provided by graduate students from the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin: Mark Gordon and Brian Dolan; I am particularly pleased to welcome Killian Driscoll to the team this year. Killian is currently in the final throes of an M Litt in the Dept of Archaeology, NUI Galway and has recently won a grant from the IRCHSS to undertake a PhD in the School of Archaeology, UCD analysing the stone tools from Belderrig. Domink Fuchs, an undergraduate student at Lampeter is conducting experimental work to provide the basis for a systematic use-wear analysis programme. Our excavation is staffed by volunteers from UCD and other universities. We stay in the village of Belderrig, and make use of the Belderrig Study and Research centre: a fully equipped archaeological laboratory and field station.

This field-season is scheduled to last 4 weeks, of which we aim to excavate for two, and spend two weeks processing samples gained from the site. We have two main aims for the season: to complete a large trench that we begun last year but could not finish, and to try and resolve several other outstanding questions from the work to date.




Today we mainly focused on re-opening last years’ Trench 1, a 30 x 2 m excavation. At the end of the last season trench one had been sealed by plastic and backfilled. The site at Belderrig is sealed by bog, in places over 1m deep: desodding to reach the archaeological layers that we are interested in is a substantial undertaking: approximately 60 cubic metres of bog is a lot of peat! In order to save time, the initial desodding was undertaken by machine, closely monitored by field supervisors. The machine left a thin layer of back fill, which was then removed by hand. Most of the morning was extremely bad weather – driving wind and rain; at least no midges were out. By the afternoon we could all work on site again, and by the close of the first day we are ready to lift the plastic, and pick up where we left off last year.