Tag Archives: Archaeology

Environmental impact assessment and the demolition of national monuments

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The national monument at Lismullin, Co. Meath which was identified during road construction.

The national monument at Lismullin, Co. Meath which was identified and demolished during road construction.

New regulations introduce an important change in the way environmental impact assessment is carried out in Ireland in order to comply with a ruling of the European Court. In future environmental impact assessment will be the responsibility of the competent authority that will come to a decision after receiving an environmental impact statement from the developer. The change means that from now on the demolition of national monuments like Lismullin, Co. Meath (pictured) will be the subject of an environmental impact assessment carried out by the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

 

On the 9th of July 2012 the Minister for Arts Heritage and the Gaeltacht commenced the European Union (Environmental Impact Assessment of Proposed Demolition of National Monuments) Regulations 2012. The requirement for the regulations result from the decision of March 2011 of the European Court in case C-50/09 the European Commission vs. Ireland, that Ireland had failed to fulfil its obligations under the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive as it had (amongst other things) excluded demolition works from the scope of legislation transposing the Directive into Irish Law. In other words demolition of a significant heritage building or structure where the works would constitute a significant impact on cultural heritage should have required an environmental impact assessment.

 

The new regulations amend the National Monuments Act 1930 by introducing environmental impact assessment procedures in relation to the demolition of national monuments. The amendment adds a new section 14D and only applies in relation to consents under section 14 or directions under section 14A (as inserted by the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 2004) in relation to national monuments discovered in the course of construction of an approved road scheme under the Road Act 1993.

 

This new section requires the Minister, as the competent authority, before deciding to grant a consent or issue directions that would result in the demolition of a national monument to ensure that the proposed demolition has been the subject of an environmental impact assessment. Environmental impact assessment means an assessment, being an assessment which includes an examination, analysis and evaluation, by the Minister that identifies, describes and assesses in an appropriate manner, in light of each individual case and in accordance with Articles 4 to 11 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive, the direct and indirect effects which proposed demolition of a national monument would have on the following:

(a) human beings, fauna and flora;

(b) soil, water, air, climate and landscape;

(c) material assets and the cultural heritage;

(d) the interaction between the factors referred to in paragraphs (a)

to (c).

 

The Minister, as the competent authority will receive information from the applicant in the form of an environmental impact statement, and will then carry out the assessment of impact on the environment of the proposed development. Environmental impact statement means a written statement of the direct and indirect effects, if any, which the proposed demolition of a national monument, if carried out, would have on the environment and which contains the information which an environmental impact statement is required to contain under this section. The Minister may after consultation with the Director of the National Museum and the responsible local authority grant an exemption from these requirements in exceptional circumstances. Where an applicant is required to submit an environmental impact statement a notice of this intention must be published in the press two weeks before the submission of the statement. The Minster must circulate the environmental impact statement to the Director of the National Museum and the responsible local authority. If the Minister considers the environmental impact statement is inadequate he may request further information. The Minister will then carry out an environmental impact assessment of the proposal and decide whether or not to grant a consent or issue directions to demolish the national monument. Once the Minister has decided whether or not to grant consent or issue directions for the demolition of a national monument he shall publish a notice in the press and arrange for the environmental impact statement and information on the decision to be made publicly available.

 

I will be speaking about EIS practice for quarry developments at the Portobello Institute 10 August 2012.  See here

Cite this post as:

Mount, C. 2012. Environmental impact assessment and the demolition of national monuments. The Charles Mount Blog, 19 July 2012. http://charles-mount.ie/wp/?p=906

 

Indicators suggest that archaeological activity in Ireland continued to decline in the first half of 2012-revised. 9/07/12

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Indicators suggest that archaeological activity in Ireland continued to decline in the first half of 2012.Archaeological excavation licensing figures for the first half of 2012 suggest that archaeological activity in Ireland continued to decline.

As of 30 June 2012, 230 archaeological excavation licenses had been issued by the National Monuments Service. This represents just 41% of the 558 licenses issued in 2011. The quarterly results will not have analytical value until year on year comparisons can be made beginning in 2013, however early indications are that archaeological activity in Ireland is continuing to decline. Corroborating evidence of the continued decline in construction and development activity in Ireland has been gathered by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF). The CIF forecast that just 7,500-8,000 houses will be built in Ireland in 2012. This represents a reduction of 25% on the number of houses built in 2011 and a 93% reduction on the number of houses built in 2006. The Ulster Bank Construction Purchasing Manager’s Index fell to 42.5 in June from 46.3 in May. General weakness across the Irish economy is indicated by the Central Statistics Office Household Survey which shows that the number of people employed fell by 18,100 or 1% (seasonally adjusted to 0.4%) in the first quarter of 2012, with the second largest fall in the construction sector coming after the fall in employment in the hospitality sector. The construction sector has reduced from 267,000 employed in 2006 to just 103,100 employed today. The Central Statistics Office also notes that the unemployment rate has reached a new post-crash high of 14.9% in June.

Site this post as:

Mount, C. Indicators suggest that archaeological activity in Ireland continued to decline in the first half of 2012. The Charles Mount Blog, 9 July 2012. http://charles-mount.ie/wp/?p=862

 

Excavation Licenses indicate continued reduction in archaeological and construction activity in 2011

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Excavation licenses 2000-2011

Excavation licenses 2000-2011

Archaeological Licenses indicate that in 2011 archaeological activity in Ireland continued to contract for the fifth year.

Figures provided by the National Monuments Service indicate that the total number of archaeological excavation licenses issued for the year 2011 was 558. This is a reduction of 19.6% from the 694 licenses issued in 2010 and indicates that both archaeological investigations and the construction activity that they relate to have continued to decline. This represents a drop of 73% from the peak of archaeological activity in 2006. Continue reading →

Irish Peatland Archaeology in 2011: the Bord na Móna Archaeological Programme

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Bronze Age trackway under excavation in Killaderry bog, Co. Galway July 2011

Part of my professional work involves providing archaeological advice to Bord na Móna, where I act as Project Archaeologist. Bord na Móna is the commercial Semi-state body with responsibility for the development of the Irish national peat resource. Bord na Móna owns and manages more than 80,000 ha of lands, the majority of which are peatlands, that contain a wealth of preserved archaeological and palaeoenvironmental material. The archaeological survey of the peatlands in the ownership of Bord na Móna has been a huge task, carried out under the auspices of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland and funded by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. It has been continuing for two decades and has indentified thousands of archaeological sites that are not only near the bog surface but also quite deeply buried.

The Bord na Móna method of working is to harvest a few centimetres of peat each year from the top of the bogs that are in operation. This slowly reduces the height of the bog and as the work goes on, like an archaeological excavation that stretches across the landscape, the archaeological features close to the top are either excavated or a decision is made to preserve them in situ. Bord na Móna workers attend annual training seminars provided by the National Museum of Ireland and the National Monuments Service and are well aware of the types of features and finds that might be uncovered. The excavation of the archaeological features and the post-excavation and palaeoenvironmental work is funded by Bord na Móna, under a set of principles agreed with Government and is the subject of an annual excavation programme. Today the Bord na Móna archaeological programme is the largest ongoing archaeological excavation project in Ireland.

The Bord na Móna excavation project is let as a single Peatland Archaeological Services contract covering three years of operations. Archaeological Development Services (ADS) have been carrying out the programme since 1998, under the Direction of Operations Manager Jane Whitaker, and to date have carried out more than 250 excavations and surveyed more than 45,000 ha of bog lands.

The current programme, covering the years 2010-13, is focusing on the bogs of Littleton, Derryvella, and Longford Pass, Co. Tipperary; Cloonshanagh, Mountdillon and Edera, Co. Roscommon; and Castlegar, Killaderry and Gowla, Co. Galway. In 2011, investigations of the wooden trackways in Gowla, Killaderry and Castlegar bogs are taking place and ADS are joined by a group of students from the University of Florida at Gainesville lead by Prof. Florin Curta.

Google Earth image indicating the location of Gowla, Killaderry and Castlegar bogs. The River Suck, highlighted with a blue line, crosses the image from north to south.

Gowla, Killaderry and Castlegar bogs are situated just to the west of the River Suck, a tributary of the River Shannon, and in the past would have presented a barrier to anyone trying to cross the river over a substantial stretch between Ballyforan and Clooncoran. The trackways have a wide date range from the Bronze Age right through to the fifteenth century AD. The longer trackways tend to cross the bogs at their narrowest points linking areas of dryland. In a number of cases trackways follow the routes that were established at earlier periods. For example trackway 5 in Killaderry bog, which dates to the period 660-770 AD, probably allowed travel from the area of Ahascragh, Co. Galway to Ballyforan, Co. Roscommon by crossing Killaderry bog at its narrowest point between Killaderry and Cloonshee. The interesting thing is that Killaderry 5 runs parallel to Killaderry 3 which dates from 910-820 BC. An earlier trackway, Killaderry 13, dated to 1380-1210 BC, also runs in a parallel direction a little to the east. There are other alignments of trackway that are being investigated this season that will soon be dated and will provide more detail. At this stage the evidence indicates that this routeway through Killaderry bog was in use for at least two thousand years and is probably the preserved wetland part of an ancient road network that existed in this area. Investigation of the nearby River Suck has the potential to identify ancient fording points and possibly the remains of bridges associated with this ancient routeway.

In nearby Castlegar bog trackway 1 links the lands around the Late Medieval Carmelite Monastery at Eglish, Co. Galway, founded in 1376, to an island of land in Dalysgrove townland next to the River Suck. This trackway dates to the historic period 1410-40 AD and indicates that the construction of wooden trackways continued almost to the post-Medeival period.

The bogs not only contain archaeological features but preserve a wealth of stratified environmental data. This is an integrated archaeological and palaeoenvironmental project with the environmental sampling and analysis work carried out by QUEST and ArchaeoScape. QUEST Quaternary Scientific, is part of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences in the University of Reading under the Direction of Dr. Nicholas Branch. The palaeoenvironmental investigations involve taking samples for pollen, plant macrofossils, insects and peat humification. Dr. Branch’s work focuses on the relationships between human activities, vegetation history and climate change. ArchaeoScape is part of Royal Holloway Geography Department, University of London, and is an environmental archaeological (‘palaeoenvironmental’ and ‘palaeoeconomic’) interpretation facility.

The excavation programme wil be continuing in 2012 and will be followed by post-excavation and palaeoenvironmental analysis and eventual publication of results.

Cite this post as:

Mount, C. Irish Peatland Archaeology in 2011: the Bord na Móna Archaeological Programme. The Charles Mount Blog, July 14, 2011. http://charles-mount.ie/wp/?p=238

Creating distribution maps in the Irish National Monuments Map Viewer

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The National Monuments Map Viewer

 

If you’re anything like me the thoughts of producing a distribution map to illustrate a report or to test a new idea will fill you with dread at the thought of the hours of tedious work involved. I’ve often wished that someone would produce a software package that would make the whole task easier. Now the National Monuments Service has come to the rescue with the new National Monuments Database Map Viewer which is available at http://www.archaeology.ie/.

The Map Viewer can be used to create distribution maps of any monument site classification as long as there are less than 999 records and you don’t need a degree in a computer programming language to do it.

The monument class dropdown menu

The trick is in the use of the new database Query window that sites at the top right of the new Database screen. Maps can be created on a national level or a smaller area such as a county or townland can be selected by choosing a county, townland or town from one of the the drop-down menus in the query window.

Selection of Motte and Bailey Castles.

Once the area is chosen, go to the class drop-down menu and select the type of monument you want to map. In the example illustrated here I’ve selected Castle-motte and bailey because there are fewer than 999 of them. If you want to map a class like Ringfort with thousands of examples you’ll have to work at the county or townland level.

Click search and it generates the map.


Now simply click the search button and the Map Viewer automatically generates the distribution map for you on screen. Above is the distribution map of Motte and Bailey Castles!

Hover over a distribution point to get its details.

[/captionIf you hover over the distribution point with the cursor it will bring up a window with information on the site and highlight the site on the dropdown list in the query window, great. Currently there’s no way to output the distribution map to a printer or graphics package so you’ll have to resort to the trusty screen grab. All in all this is a huge leap forward in the ability to use the data held in the National Monuments Database. Thanks are due to everyone involved in making this available, especially Paul Walsh.

Geographica Blog

Geographica have an excellent follow-up to this post on

Opening Data with Google Fusion Tables

 

Cite this blog as:

Mount, C. Creating distribution maps in the Irish National Monuments Map Viewer. The Charles Mount Blog, July 5, 2011. http://charles-mount.ie/wp/?p=163

The four ways we know about the past

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An example of explicit knowledge communicated across space and time, a letter from Amarna in Akkadian Cuneiform.

 

 

 

 

There are two primary types of knowledge: explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is learning that can be expressed clearly in signs, words or numbers. Explicit knowledge, because it can be codified and stored in the form of books, computer records and archives, can be handed on from person to person without direct interpersonal communication. Explicit knowledge can also be communicated and shared across both space and time in the form of broadcasts, letters, emails, books and records. Some of these records, like Egyptian hieroglyphics or Sumerian Cuneiform, are very old and provide important insights into the past. Explicit knowledge is also be held by groups of people, for example, in the form of language or the knowledge of the rules of law held by lawyers. In these instances an individual may hold part or most of this knowledge, but the entire sum of this knowledge is only held by the group.
 
The concept of tacit knowledge was defined by Michael Polanyi as learning that is gained through direct experience and remains intangible. Tacit knowledge is often difficult or impossible to communicate through language or other coded processes and is difficult to successfully communicate across space and time. As tacit knowledge is gained through experience it tends to be specific to an individual and a particular context, and consists of insights and intuitions as well as technical abilities. Tacit knowledge held by an individual can be manifested as a set of complex skills. For example, an individual may be able to ride a bicycle but may have no explicit idea of how they do this; they are unable to explain the process. Learning how to ride consists of an iterative process of trial and error as one learns the complexities of coordination and balance. Most skills that require comprehension of information which is too complex to be verbalised, such as recognising subtle archaeological features, the ability to see and explain patterns in raw data or the ability to overtake on a race-circuit rely on tacit knowledge gained through experience.
 
Tacit knowledge is also held collectively by a group or community of practice. Groups hold common views of the world or belief systems that incorporate tacit assumptions. Within the research community professional groups, like archaeologists and historians, form informal social networks or communities of practice that share tacit assumptions about their fields of research and the wider world. As these tacit views mould the way in which group members view the world, the tacit knowledge of the group will influence the nature of the knowledge gained. For example, if we use Thomas Kuhn’s concept of the scientific paradigm to characterise tacit group knowledge, then the knowledge gained by the individual member will be influenced by and will often form part of and support the general tacit assumptions of the paradigm. In instances where the tacit assumptions of the group continued to be held in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence these paradigms are referred to as group think.

The objective of archaeology and history is to increase our knowledge of the past through the study of the material remains and documents left behind by people. As archaeologists and historians we know things about the past in four different ways. We have both explicit and tacit knowledge about the past, we have knowledge as individuals and we share knowledge as part of a group or community of practice.

The realisation that we have knowledge in four ways, as individuals, as members of groups and both explicitly and tacitly is important for the development of innovative thinking. It can often be an intellectual and social challenge for the individual to think outside of the tacit assumptions held by the group of which they are a member. As a result important new knowledge discoveries are often made by individuals operating outside of groups. In order to develop new insights we need to understand how our knowledge of the past has been formed, not only though explicit discourse, but through our tacit experiences and the tacit assumptions of the groups to which we belong.

 

Mount, C. The four ways we know about the past. The Charles Mount Blog, June 21, 2011.  http://charles-mount.ie/wp/?p=155

 
Further reading
Michael Polanyi 1966. The Tacit Dimension. Routledge and Keegan Paul.
Charles Mount 2004 Explicit data and tacit knowledge, exploring the dimensions of archaeological knowledge, in H. Roche et al. (Ed) From Megaliths to Metals. Oxbow Books
Thomas Kuhn 1996 The structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.

 

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There are a lot more archaeological sites in the Republic of Ireland than we thought

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Ringfort at Cam, Co. Roscommon

 

How many archaeological sites are there in the Republic of Ireland? This is an obvious question but not an easy one to answer. If we consult the statutory Record of Monuments and Places (RMP) established under the National Monuments Act (1930-2004) the answer is about 140,000 (http://www.archaeology.ie/ArchaeologicalSurveyofIreland). But we now know that the RMP only lists a fraction of the potential surviving sites. During the Celtic Tiger period (1995-2008) thousands of previously unknown sites were identified during the course of development. This is because archaeological remains may be buried beneath the ground or later structures and are not visible to the naked eye. Archaeological remains that are standing above ground may be obscured by overgrowth, may be covered by later structures or may have been partly removed or altered to make them unrecognisable. Archaeological remains that are standing above ground may be in plain view but may not have been recognized or mapped or noted in surveys or reports.

So how many sites are there? A quantitative approach would appear to be the most useful approach to answering the question. The land area of Ireland is 6,888,900 hectares (ha), dividing this by the roughly 140,000 sites included in the RMP results in a ratio of one site per 49 ha. Using this as a starting point the general number of potential sites can be estimated by using information now becoming available from the recent large-scale archaeological investigations of infrastructure projects like motorways and pipelines. All the large-scale infrastructure projects developed during the Celtic Tiger period have resulted in the discovery of large numbers of archaeological sites. For example the Bord Gáis “Pipeline to the west” construction corridor was 335 km long and impacted an area of 1,005 ha. During the course of the development 190 previously unknown archaeological sites were identified, one site per 5.3 ha (See Grogan et al. 2007, 5- 9). Similarly, during the construction of the Cork to Dublin gas pipeline 96 monuments were impacted over a distance of 222 km, an area of 489 ha, one site per 5 .1 ha (See McQuade et al. 2000, xiii). During the construction of the M8 Motorway from Ballycuddahy, Co. Laois to Dunkettle, Co. Cork 249 sites were indentified in an area of 1,494 ha, or one site per 5.6 ha (Also McQuade et al. xiii).

Using these figures we can calculate an average ratio of sites to hectares of one site per 5.6 ha. Scaling this up to the total land area of the Republic  suggests that as many as 1.23 million sites potentially remain to be identified. Of course the infrastructure projects tended to be situated in the fertile lowland areas, where sites cluster, and sites may be potentially less likely to be found in upland areas, so this figure should be adjusted a little. However, these comparisons suggest that the RMP represents somewhere around 11% of the total potential sites. These quantitative figures suggest on the one hand that almost any development has the potential to impact archaeology with those impacting 5.6 ha or more approaching an almost certainty. The risk of impacting archaeology cannot be ruled out without the deployment of field-based assessment methods such as archaeological testing or geophysical investigation. On the other hand acknowledging that there are probably more than a millions potential sites should cause archaeologists to question some of their assumptions about managing the resource.

References

Grogan et al. 2007. The Bronze Age landscapes of the pipeline to the west. Dublin, Wordwell.

McQuade et al. 2009. In the shadow of the Galtees: archaeological excavations along the N8 Cashel to Mitchelstown Road Scheme. Dublin. NRA Scheme Monographs 4.

Mount, C. There are a lot more archaeological sites in the Republic of Ireland than we thought. The Charles Mount Blog, May 18, 2011. http://charles-mount.ie/wp/?p=18