Issue 85
November/December 2005
Contents
news
Archaeologists find trowel - and other stories
Bid to list first commercial nuclear power station
Model views - arial photography on the cheap
Cave archaeologists find human remains
features
From Ashes to Dust: who cares about sports heritage?
Jason Wood thinks the historic environment is losing out to sport in
government spending - and this will worsen as the London Olympics approach.
He has a solution
Coast Survey special
Archaeology on the shores of Norfolk and the Isle of Wight
White Badges
Mike Pitts visits poignant wartime field art asking 'Will we remember them?'
Roads to the past: Ireland's archaeological revolution
It's a long road: Dàire O'Rourke reveals extraordinary Irish archaeology in danger from the expanding road network.
on the web
letters
CBA news
Headlines from the CBA office.
ISSN 1357-4442
Editor Mike Pitts
features
Routes
Ireland's road network is experiencing an astonishing development, with sometimes controversial implications for the country's rich and largely unexplored rural heritage. Dàire O'Rourke, senior archaeologist at the National Roads Authority, says a new code means everyone will benefit.
Ireland is currently undergoing a major development of its highways infrastructure. Many hundreds of miles of motorways and national roads are being newly built or upgraded. As the works are largely over greenfield areas they are having a major impact on the archaeological landscape. They are at times controversial as, for some, the pace of Ireland's development is too fast and the rate of archaeological discovery and excavation too great.
Ireland's National Roads Authority was established in 1994 as an independent body under the 1993 Roads Act. The authority's primary function is to ensure the provision of a safe and efficient network of national roads. The NRA is based in Dublin but it cooperates with local authorities through the countrywide National Roads Design Offices (NRDOs). These local offices undertake detailed design, prepare contract documents, tender procedures and supervise road developments on the authority's behalf, with funds allocated by the NRA.
Over 150,000 archaeological monuments are known or recorded in Ireland. Many more thousands are likely to lie hidden beneath the soil. In Irish law, all known monuments, and places where there are believed to be monuments, are listed for protection in the record of monuments and places. The RMP is kept by the National Monuments and Historic Properties Service of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
Sites in the list have statutory protection under the National Monuments Acts 1930-2004, and are marked on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps for each of the 26 counties in the Irish Republic. An accompanying index lists all known monuments and places where there are believed to be monuments, recorded to date in each county.
New scheme
In 2000, a code of practice for archaeology and national road schemes was agreed between the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands and the NRA. This code recognised that road development need not be a threat to the protection of the archaeological heritage: rather, proper management at the planning and mitigation stages gives works the potential to add much valuable new information about our past.
Before the code of practice there was little or no advance testing or resolution of archaeological sites. Known remains were avoided where possible, and new sites were almost exclusively uncovered during road construction. Earth moving machines were monitored by one or two archaeologists. When potential archaeological material was spotted, the work was stopped and hazard tape set out. Construction then continued all round the cordoned off archaeologists. The working environment was dangerous and unorthodox. With no proper time or resources for archaeology, the results were poor and largely unpublished.
Since the new code, the authority has sought to foster a consistent approach and best practice towards identifying and preserving sites of archaeological interest. The cornerstone of this policy is where possible to avoid known archaeological sites.
The authority now directly employs three archaeologists and, through the local authorities/NRDOs, a further 22 project and assistant archaeologists. It continues to develop properly thought out archaeological strategies devised by and for archaeologists.
The project archaeologists are integral to the road project team and are involved at every stage. Their role and position within the NRA have been key in developing that approach and ensuring that archaeological issues are considered at all stages of the design and development of road schemes. They manage the archaeological process on behalf of the NRA and the local authorities.
The primary initiatives have been to increase knowledge of potential archaeological impacts at the road planning stages, to quantify and assess the archaeological risk. Archaeological investigations and excavations are now carried out before construction. The aim is to ensure that little or no archaeological excavation remains to be completed when the main roads contractor takes possession of the scheme.
To ensure this it has been important to develop a risk assessment strategy for archaeology. This uses techniques previously reserved for research projects, such as geophysical survey. Investigation includes "blanket" test trenching, hitherto used only on smaller development sites and rarely on linear developments. Most importantly, the strategy pursues unknown archaeological sites so they can be excavated and recorded before any road construction commences.
Combining these techniques with the more traditional methods of desktop and field surveys, and greater authority funding, has achieved great success in identifying new archaeology and allowing properly managed and resourced excavation to take place. On occasion it has also enabled redesign of the road to avoid newly discovered archaeological sites.
Once a scheme has been approved, a specific testing brief is designed. Strategies include non-invasive and invasive techniques, and strategic and blanket use of geophysics and trial trenching. Such excavation means testing previously known sites, potential sites discovered during the planning stages, testing of geophysical anomalies and blanket testing.
For the latter, a 2m wide trench is mechanically excavated along the centreline of the route, and perpendicular trenches are laid out to the edge of the landtake every 10-20m. Topsoil is removed to expose the upper surface of archaeological features and the natural soil or rock. Once features are identified some hand excavation is conducted to assess the nature and extent of the remains.
The trench pattern is calculated to identify all or most concentrations of archaeological features. In other cases while the centreline is retained, offshoots may vary. This technique, together with others, is now used by the authority extensively on all road schemes.
Under this system, archaeological investigations and excavations can take place from six months to over a year in advance of construction, without pressure from a site contractor. Often works are carried out prior to compulsory purchase orders (CPO) being in place, with compensation being paid to affected landowners.
Legal challenge
Previously unknown major archaeological sites can now be excavated in a timely fashion, as occurred with the medieval doubleditched enclosure with associated burial ground at Johnstown, County Meath. This was discovered during advance work on the M4 Kilcock-Enfield-Kinnegad motorway.
There are many similar examples of such previously unknown large sites. The Hiberno-Scandinavian site at Woodstown, found during the advance testing of the n25 Waterford City bypass, was deemed to be of potential national and international significance. Only limited site investigations have been carried out, but Woodstown appears to consist of two contiguous ditched enclosures with associated occupation and industrial areas, with at least one Viking warrior burial. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the site was first occupied in the 5th-7th centuries ad and then later in the 9th century. The artefactual assemblage, which is substantial, indicates that the later occupation is Scandinavian in origin. The road has been moved because of the site's importance.
The NRA and archaeology are, however, no strangers to controversy. The national road-building programme and its unavoidable impact on the archaeological landscape has brought archaeology in Ireland very much to the forefront. This is nowhere more evident than at the M3 Clonee to Kells motorway.
This road was approved in 2003, after three years of planning. Sixty km of motorway are divided into five sections of roughly equal length for ease of management. Section 2, 15.5km long, curves to the east of the existing n3, over 2km from the Hill of Tara.
Today, the Hill of Tara consists of a complex of earthworks scattered along a low ridge, c2km long and .75km wide. The monuments include enclosures, burial mounds, a pair of linear earthworks and traces of possible ancient routeways, and are likely to date from the neolithic to the late iron age (4000BC-AD500). At its closest point the new road is 1.2km beyond Tara's recorded archaeological zone (RMP). The entire 60km route only impacts on two rmp sites (cropmarks, of which no trace appears to remain) and was moved to avoid three sites discovered during the geophysical survey of the section.
Advance archaeological investigations (carried out under licence from the National Monuments Section of the Department of the Environment Heritage and Local Government (DOEHLG), following consultation with the National Museum of Ireland) have located approximately 160 previously unknown archaeological sites on the M3, of which 38 lie within Section 2. These range from 18th/19th century vernacular houses to prehistoric occupation and burial sites. Archaeological excavation (following directions from the minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government) is currently underway on a number of sites along the line of the entire motorway.
Nonetheless, a legal challenge has been made which may impact upon the scheme. An M3 archaeology information pack has just been published and circulated to all archaeologists in Ireland and to a number of archaeologists abroad. This pack can be downloaded from a dedicated M3 website (www.m3motorway.ie).
Research framework
Guidelines will soon be launched to encourage a more standardised approach to archaeology. Two sets dealing with archaeology and roads are currently being finalised - one for archaeology and the planning phases of road schemes, the other for wetland archaeology during the on-site phases - and further guidelines for geophysical survey are proposed.
There are also plans to conduct a feasibility study on the excavation backlog dating from before the code of practice, when not all reports were completed or lodged with the DOEHLG. It is important to locate these reports and to establish a means of disseminating the information.
The extent of archaeological work currently being undertaken in Ireland is unprecedented. Until recently, the emphasis within the development sector, particularly infrastructural development, had been on excavating archaeological remains: there were few research frameworks. Now the authority is developing archaeological research frameworks for major road schemes.
The extensive investigations carried out on the M3 (as outlined above) have generated a significant corpus of new data. Excavation will take place within a research framework, which will look at the sites within their archaeological, historical and palaeoenvironmental contexts. The framework's objective is to make the most of the information generated. It is the first time in Ireland that such an archaeological research framework has been developed in relation to a road scheme.
The authority is funding a two-year post-doctoral Newman Fellowship in Landscape Archaeology in University College Dublin. Its purpose is to inform the authority's archaeological policy and to feed into the development of archaeological landscape studies in Ireland. The project will have two main research foci:
- assessing the effectiveness of the NRA's policies in providing knowledge about Ireland's past through its archaeological heritage
- assessing the character and significance of the wider archaeological landscapes impacted on by all NRA road projects.
Unique opportunity
Ireland's national road-building programme has given archaeologists a unique opportunity to develop archaeological policies, techniques and strategies. The pace of road building is hitherto unknown: it is Ireland's second Industrial Revolution, akin to the 18th/19th centuries when canals and railways were being built. Vast tracts of previously undeveloped land in the countryside are being opened up and used for roads.
Never before has Irish archaeology faced such a challenge, as thousands of new sites and different site types are uncovered. The new roads reveal tantalising glimpses of previously unknown or unseen archaeological landscapes, and give evidence of new site types and record site juxtapositions hitherto unimagined by archaeologists. What is being generated is largely a random sample of previously unknown archaeology. The onus is on the archaeology profession to work together in promoting best practice and to ensure that this great opportunity is not lost, to be decried by future generations.
See J O'Sullivan (ed) 2003 Archaeology & the National Roads Authority (NRA, Dublin, ISBN 0954595505) and J O'Sullivan & M Stanley (eds) 2005 Recent Archaeological Discoveries on National Road Schemes 2004 (NRA, in press). Further information and downloadable documents can be found at www.NRA.ie/Archaeology. Protest at the Tara valley M3 motorway is documented at www.nuigalway.ie/faculties_departments.
CBA web:
British Archaeology
February 2001
April 2001
June 2001
August 2001
October 2001
December 2001
February 2002
April 2002
June 2002
August 2002
October 2002
December 2002
March 2003
May 2003
July 2003
September 2003
November 2003
January 2004
March 2004
May 2004
July 2004
September 2004
November 2004
Jan/Feb 2005
Mar/Apr 2005
May/Jun 2005
Jul/Aug 2005
Sep/Oct 2005
Nov/Dec 2005
Jan/Feb 2006
Mar/Apr 2006
May/Jun 2006
Jul/Aug 2006
Sep/Oct 2006
Nov/Dec 2006
Jan/Feb 2007
Mar/Apr 2007
May/Jun 2007
Jul/Aug 2007
Sep/Oct 2007
Nov/Dec 2007
Jan/Feb 2008
Mar/Apr 2008
May/Jun 2008
Jul/Aug 2008
Sep/Oct 2008
Nov/Dec 2008
Jan/Feb 2009
Mar/Apr 2009
May/Jun 2009
Jul/Aug 2009
Sep/Oct 2009
Nov/Dec 2009
Jan/Feb 2010
Mar/Apr 2010
May/Jun 2010
Jul/Aug 2010
Sep/Oct 2010
CBA Briefing
Fieldwork
CBA Network
Conferences
Courses & lectures
Grants & awards
Noticeboard