What research do you do as an archaeologist?<\/p>\n
My work is a bit of a game of two halves. On one side, I do hands-on field archaeology and excavations. Then the other big part of what I do is zooarchaeology \u2013 studying animal bones found at archaeological sites to try to understand what life was like for the people who lived there.<\/p>\n
How do you go about identifying what animal the bones came from?<\/p>\n
First, I have to identify what type of bone it is, and then figure out what animal came from \u2013 a cow, sheep, pig, chicken or something else. I do this by comparing the shape and size of the bones to reference collections. <\/p>\n
What else can you learn from the bones?<\/p>\n
I look at things like butchery marks, breakage patterns and which parts of the animal\u2019s body are represented. That can tell me about their meat processing techniques \u2013 were they carefully jointing the carcass, or just hacking it up? And the relative abundance of different animal species gives clues about their overall diet and economy. We can also use more advanced techniques like radiocarbon dating, isotope analysis and even DNA testing to figure out things like the age of the bones, what the animals were eating and even trace the origins of livestock that were brought in from elsewhere. It\u2019s amazing what you can learn from these little fragments.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve worked on some really important archaeological sites in Ireland. Can you tell us about a few of those?<\/p>\n
One of the biggest sites I\u2019ve been involved with is Bective Abbey in Co Meath. It was a Cistercian monastery that was excavated by Geraldine and Matthew Stout, and the sheer volume of animal bones we found there was incredible. We also saw shifts over time as the abbey transitioned to more secular use. Suddenly there were more cattle, less sheep and less pigs, likely reflecting a change in economic priorities.<\/p>\n
Where else have you looked? <\/p>\n
Another site I\u2019m really passionate about is the early medieval monastic settlement at Disert in Donegal. It was supposedly founded by St Colmcille himself, and we\u2019ve been able to trace activity there from the 7th century right up to the present day. More recently, I started a new project at the 17th century Green Fort in Sligo, to better understand the daily life of the soldiers and civilians who would have inhabited this fortified site.<\/p>\n
What first sparked your interest in archaeology?<\/p>\n
I came to it in a bit of a roundabout way. I originally studied engineering, but over time I felt like I was spending too much time managing projects and people rather than actually getting to do the technical work. So I did a master\u2019s degree in archaeology at Queen\u2019s University Belfast, and then went on to complete my PhD at the University of Galway. <\/p>\n
Is there a question you are always asked?<\/p>\n
A lot of people ask if we are finding any dinosaurs, but the dinosaurs are in the fossil record, and we look at much more recent evidence, from the time that humans started to appear on the scene, which is in the Stone Age, right up to the 20th century. <\/p>\n