Continuing decline in Irish archaeological activity outstrips the decline in construction

Licences chart

Chart of the percentage decline in archaeological licences and building output by volume 2007-12.

In my last post I noted that archaeological excavation licences issued in the Republic of Ireland in 2012 had fallen by 18.6% from the number issued in 2011. I suggested that this indicated that both archaeological and related construction activity had continued to decline in 2012. This has now been confirmed by the publication by the Central Statistics Office of the provisional 2012 Seasonally Adjusted Indices of Production in all Building and Construction. This records a reduction of 7.8% in the volume of construction output for 2012. This indicates that while construction activity has declined for six consecutive years since 2006 the rate of decline is now slowing. A worrying trend is that the rate of decline in archaeological activity has barely slowed and is now running at more than twice the rate of the decline in construction activity. This may indicate that there are other factors causing the decline of archaeological activity other than just the aggregate decline in construction activity.

Next month I will be presenting the first results of the quarterly tracking of archaeological activity that was commenced in 2012. The current evidence is that these figures will indicate continuing decline in activity in the sector in the first quarter of 2013.

Cite this post as:

Mount, C. 2013. Continuing decline in Irish archaeological activity outstrips the decline in construction. The Charles Mount Blog, 22 March 2013. http://charles-mount.ie/wp/?p=990