UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture

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

‘It belongs with the books of Kells and Durrow.’ Illuminated manuscripts back in Ireland for the first time in more than 1,000 years National Museum of Ireland's St Gallen exhibition highlights historical links between Irish missionary and Switzerland

‘It belongs with the books of Kells and Durrow.’
Illuminated manuscripts back in Ireland for the first time in more than 1,000 years
"Words on the Wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe" exhibition opens Friday, 30th May
www.irishtimes.com/culture/art/...

The front of the Lough Kinale Book-Shrine (National Museum of Ireland)

A medieval mystery resurfaces. The Lough Kinale Shrine, once lost in an Irish lake, is now conserved. Explore the story of this sacred artefact and its journey through time, then see it in person from 30th May, 2025, at the National Museum of Ireland. www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collec...

An Incipit (opening letter) with two birds from the St. Gallen manuscript Priscian Institutiones Grammaticae, Cod. Sang 904, p. 25. © Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen.

Vellum fragment from Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, CHN 64/2/88. With kind permission of l’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune.

The rich history and interwoven artistry of early medieval Ireland are revealed by the Manuscripts on display at the Words on the Wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe exhibition.
Opens May 30th
📍National Museum of Ireland, Kildare St
www.museum.ie/en-IE/Museum...

A preview of the new “Words on the Waves” Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe exhibition @nmireland.bsky.social

It’s magnificent - & has replica E-ware pottery made by UCD Archaeology’s Dr Brendan O’Neill & Elizabeth Ilgner, MSc student in Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture

A set of nine unevenly shaped biscuits arranged in a glass-lidded box. Each biscuit is curved and made to look like a fragent of ancient pottery. The base icing is in shades of orange, peach, and cream. Figures, swirls, repeating leaf patterns, and horses are painted onto the icing surface in black. The biscuits are aged with scratch marks and cracks.

Things are about to get a bit ancient.

I baked these biscuity sherds on a hemisphere cake tin in an attempt to recreate Ancient Greek pottery fragments in all three dimensions. The originals, dating from c.1600-435 BCE, can be found in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum.

Online Graduate Certificate in Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture (by Distance Learning) at UCD School of Archaeology, Dublin

Closing Date for 2025/2026 Applications is 30th June 2025.

(but this is an Irish deadline, so y'know...)

www.ucd.ie/archaeology/...

Hi Rebecca, happy to advise in full detail. If hazel rods to hand, takes 3-4 weeks to build this 5m diameter house. This house used c2,000 hazel rods. It was professionally thatched using oaten straw, so more time and cost. We’d advise starting smaller. You also have a range of other house options?

Building a bed (imda) using our own hazel in our early medieval roundhouse for UCD Festival on 7th June 2025, as part of our “Early Medieval People and Things (EMPAT)” project

1,800-Year-Old Roman Victory Goddess Relief Discovered Near Hadrian’s Wall at Vindolanda Fort - Arkeonews A rare and symbolically powerful Roman sandstone relief depicting Victoria, the goddess of Victory, has been unearthed at the Vindolanda Roma

This is such a stunner. And so happy for them volunteers at the Vindolanda dig.
arkeonews.net/1800-year-ol...