UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture

8th National Monuments Service annual archaeology conference Within|Without: the archaeology of partitions

"Within|Without: The Archaeology of Partitions", a conference exploring how partitions shape who we are. Join a day of dialogue on how we divide and connect across time.

🗓 Sat 18 Oct 2025, 9:15–17:30
📍 Edmund Burke Theatre, Trinity College Dublin

🌍 In-person and online: 👉 bit.ly/Within-Without

Speakers include Prof Aidan O'Sullivan, @ucdarchaeology.bsky.social, and other leading Irish and international researchers.

Meet our education team at the Ploughing Championship 2025

Put your questions to the Irish Antiquities division at the Ploughing 2025

Minister of Culture, Communications and Sport Patrick O'Donovan met the Irish Antiquities division, at the Ploughing Championship 2025.

Come and meet the team from the National Museum of Ireland at the National Ploughing Championships, Screggan, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, taking place from 16th to 18th September 2025.
www.museum.ie/en-IE/News/T...

UCD 2025/26 academic year is beginning!

First up, ARCH30500: Experimental Archaeology & Ancient Technologies led by Dr Brendan O’Neill

Our third years (and some MSc students) on a week long course making pottery, casting bronze, making huts in one day using hazel and natural ties, etc

Interested in experimental archaeology & material culture? This online graduate certificate at UCD is just the best fun - and you can do it from your own home!

hub.ucd.ie/usis/!W_HU_M...

Carving a stone with hammer and chisel

Dr Ryan Lash discusses the art and materiality of early medieval stone carving

Tuatha Members having a go at stone carving

Smelting copper in an open furnace

A wonderful day with Tuatha Members at @experimentarchaeol.bsky.social, where Dr Brendan O'Neill led a workshop on casting Bronze Age axes, and Dr Ryan Lash had us carving early medieval cross slabs and cursing stones.

A truly engaging, fun, and immersive day!

Looking forward to the next outing!

It was a fantastic experience for us to get hands-on with casting an Early Bronze Age axe at the @experimentarchaeol.bsky.social

Dr Brendan O'Neill and Tuatha Members went through the whole process, from creating the clay tuyere & crucible to using the bellows to the all-important pour at the end.

We offer an MSc, or Graduate Diploma (both on-campus) or Graduate Certificate (online, Distance Learning) in Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture programmes.

Lots of seminars, workshops, practicals every Friday or also options - if online -to travel to Ireland for a week’s crafts & making

Steve and Andrea White at a plaque in UCD School of Archaeology acknowledging their financial support

Steve and Andrea White at CEAMC

Delighted to welcome Steve and Andrea White to UCD School of Archaeology and to thank them for their generous philanthropic support of our UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture (CEAMC), through their Mary Agnes McDonnell LeBlanc donation. 👏🙏🙂

Only the future is unchangeable; the past is constantly changing.

How ongoing research and new methods continually change our image of the past, our images of the past in the truest sense of the word.

The shaman with many faces:

Shane Smith, filmmaker, & colleagues are filming a movie in the UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture today, “Stone Elegy”

“A mythic tale of connection and survival set against the vivid landscapes of ancient Ireland.”

You can support the film on Instagram @thinveil_pictures

Drop-In Manuscript Makers!
📍 National Museum of Ireland – Kildare Street
📅 Wed 30 July| 13:30–15:30
🎟️ Free | No booking needed
Step into the world of early medieval scribes! Try calligraphy, explore ancient pigments & learn how treasures like the Book of Kells were made
www.museum.ie/en-IE/Museum...

A photoshop reconstruction showing an early medieval thatched house and the Skehacreggaun stick in the doorway

The Skehacreggaun, Mungret, Co. Limerick stick, made of willow, dated to the 7th century AD

"Is this Ireland’s earliest hurley? A possible 7th century AD cammán from Skehacreggaun, Mungret, Co. Limerick"
earlymedievalarchaeologyproject.wordpress.com/2025/07/19/i...

#Hurling #Camogie #All-Ireland #Medieval #Ireland

A promotional image for our upcoming webinar The Early Medieval Origins of Hurling and Camogie – the main image features the reconstructed roundhouse at the Centre for Experimental Archaeology at UCD and a picture of the speaker Professor Aidan O Sullivan

Join us for our Tuatha Talk Webinar: The Early Medieval Origins of Hurling & Camogie with Professor Aidan O'Sullivan

In this richly illustrated lecture, Professor @aidanosullivan.bsky.social of @ucdarchaeology.bsky.social will explore the evidence for the origins of hurling and its development.

“Experimental archaeology: making, understanding, storytelling” www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress...

Scientists Retrace 30,000-Year-Old Sea Voyage, in a Hollowed-Out Log

Scientists Retrace 30,000-Year-Old Sea Voyage, in a Hollowed-Out Log
Japanese researchers turned to “experimental archaeology” to study how ancient humans navigated powerful ocean currents and migrated offshore

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/s...

Delighted to welcome the “Medieval and Later Pottery Research Group” (of Britain and Ireland) to UCD School of Archaeology/Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture today, for one day of their 50th Anniversary Conference 18-20 June 2025

Soooo tiny! (Anita Radini here) - looks a little bit annoyed - I hope he will survive

UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture busy for UCD Festival 2025

Early Medieval People and Things (EMPAT) Project at UCD Festival Saturday 7th June, 12-6pm!

We're hoping this session may be of interest to those involved in field-based teaching both inside and outside of the academy - if you think we might be the session for you this TAG, drop us a line! @experimentarchaeol.bsky.social @mafs-scot.bsky.social @archscot.bsky.social

If you are around Dublin, do go to the big mega Open Day at @ucddublin.bsky.social and visit the @experimentarchaeol.bsky.social section. Good folks, great archaeology :)

The mid-8th-century ‘Irish Gospels of St Gall’; the Evangelist Mark and the incipit/beginning of his Gospel. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 51, pp 78–9. Photo: Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen

Ancient Manuscripts, Modern Science!
What links medieval monks, secret ink recipes & ancient cow DNA?
Learn how Scientists used X-ray technology and genetic sequencing to uncover the secrets of 1,200-year-old Irish manuscripts in Switzerland
Read more: museum.ie/en-IE/Collec...
#NMIBlog #MuseumBlog

Early Medieval People and Things (EMPAT) project

Visit us at UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture at UCD Festival, 12-6pm, 7th June 2025

Walk in an early medieval roundhouse. You can also take a trip to an early medieval rath using a Virtual Reality Headset!
#UCDFestival

Delighted to see our early medieval roundhouse reconstruction at UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture gets a good write up in this key Archaeology textbook “Archaeological Investigation”

The #WordsOnTheWaves exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland is magnificent, get to it, it’ll be here until October 2025. Irish monks went out into Europe, inspired by their faith, to - as they saw it - save the world. Huge credit to Matt Seaver and everyone at @nmireland.bsky.social

20 years ago, myself and Conor McDermott sat down with 4 of my photographs - of crannog on Lough Derrvaragh, of reconstructions at Ferrycarrig, of boats, and swans, and tried to make a photoshop image of an early medieval crannog. Now Conor’s work is in an international exhibition #WordsOnTheWaves