2
archaeology is challenging our accepted understanding and fleshing out regionalsequences in Ireland in a way that was unthinkable 10 years ago. As much as Ipushed the point to Dr Foyle, he wouldn’t accept it, particularly in relation to theconstruction of the M3 in the Tara environs. In fact in an interview with theObserver a few weeks later, in response to Seamus Heaney’s criticism of modern dayIreland’s pursuit of the secular above the sacred, Dr Foyle went further, and said theconstruction of the M3 was equivalent to the state‐backed destruction of theBamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. Strong words, but that one made me laugh – just the thought that Headland could all be a front, and I might actually be employed byTaliban Archaeology Services. TBAS.For those of us working at the ‘coal face’ of Irish archaeology these comments aredisheartening, but not unusual. Development‐led archaeology has come under firefrom both within and without the discipline in a way it never did when practiced asa purely academic activity. With regular headlines like this, many visitors to Irelandhere today could be forgiven for thinking that Irish archaeology is dominated byhigh profile controversies such as Tara, Carrickmines or Woodstown. I’ve always felt that the media storm is actually a sideshow, and the real story one of a seismic shift in our archaeological understanding. But perhaps the reason I don’t see eye to eyewith Dr Foyle is because while I’m justifying work in terms of its archaeologicalsignificance, he’s talking about archaeological value, about why we are choosing toexcavate in the first place. It’s a fair point. Can the significance of the archaeologicalmaterial – of this new resource ‐ be balanced against the social, political andeconomic arguments for development? More of this later.In this short contribution, I’d like to assess how these issues connect to work on theground, how these weighty arguments might be operationalised as strategies in thefield, reflecting on my own experience working at all levels in both Britain andIreland.
Two
Cultures
At the beginning of last year Richard Bradley presented an influential paper to ameeting of the Society of Antiquaries in London called
‘Bridging
the
Two
Cultures
–
Commercial
Archaeology
And
The
Study
of
Prehistoric
Britain’
.His premise was straightforward: in Britain and similarly in Ireland, there are twodifferent cultures of archaeology. On the one hand we have academic archaeology,committed to research and the pursuit of knowledge, and on the other hand we havecommercial archaeology, devoted to the ‘preservation by record’ of archaeologicalremains threatened with destruction. These two archaeologies are undertaken bydifferent people, paid for by different sponsors, and the results disseminated indifferent ways.
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