Irish_Archaeology

UWM and Irish Archaeological Site Plan a New Multidisciplinary Field School

UWM students examine a megalith near Achill

A spring study tour by 20 students, faculty and staff members may lead to an extended partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and the Achill Archaeological Field School (AFS) in western Ireland.

If adopted, the plans would offer another field school option for UWM students completing their archaeological excavation training, says Associate Professor Robert Jeske, one of the faculty members who initiated the trip.

Jeske, along with Associate Professor Bettina Arnold and Associate Scientists John Richards and Patricia Richards, is designing a cooperative, multidisciplinary teaching and research project that centers on the archaeology of mortuary and secular landscapes on Achill Island, off the coast of County Mayo.

"There's no dearth of archaeological sites there," says Jeske. "The problem has been that it's an area that's developing, and they don't have enough archaeologists to excavate the sites before they are threatened by that development."

John Richards and Pat Richards are director and assistant director, respectively, of UWM's archaeological consulting program, overseeing extensive excavations in Wisconsin. Arnold is co-director of the UWM Celtic Studies Program and an expert in the Iron Age in Germany.

Potential research on or near Achill Island includes several sites that have not been professionally examined yet, spanning time periods from the Neolithic to the nineteenth century. One site is a megalithic tomb from the Neolithic or Bronze Age. Another site, on nearby Achillbeg Island includes cist burials from a medieval monastery. A third is a midden (refuse) site that may date back to the Iron and Bronze ages.

The UWM group is envisioning a regular six-week course at Achill that will accommodate 8 to 10 students at a time. Students will learn how archaeology is done in Ireland, where the methodology differs from that in the U.S. UWM and AFS hope to have the details worked out for next summer.

The AFS summer excavation program is currently focused at a deserted 19th century village, under the direction of Theresa McDonald, who is scheduled to give a series of lectures at UWM in October.

Working with the Celtic Studies program at UWM, the Achill program would offer an archaeology and prehistory component that other Celtic Studies programs do not have, he adds.

The Achill program also would complement the field school UWM already operates in Fort Atkinson in southeastern Wisconsin. Currently Jeske oversees students in an every-other-summer study of Native American sites. The primary field school site has been the Crescent Hunt Club, a large agricultural village site that dates from A.D. 1300.

Jeske, who has been on the UWM faculty for eight years, ordinarily focuses his academic research on late prehistoric Native American culture, especially around the Great Lakes. He studies economics of stone tool production and use, and changes in technology.

That makes his affiliation with Crescent Hunt Club a good match. His interest in Achill is a little more personal.

"I'm Irish, and as a teenager and a college student I was interested in the Irish Iron Age," he says.

The project is partially funded by the UWM Celtic Studies Program, the Center for International Education, and the UWM Archaeological Research Laboratory.

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