From Christchurch Place to Fishamble Street: Developments in archaeoentomology in Dublin, Ireland, since 1981 Eileen Reilly UCD School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland article info Article history: Available online xxx abstract From 1962 to 1981, the National Museum of Ireland carried out a series of excavations in Dublin that revealed the Viking Age and medieval core of the city. Collectively these are the most significant urban excavations of this period in Western Europe as the sheer number and preservation quality of houses and plots revealed is unparalleled elsewhere. A number of famous Quaternary scientists visited and sampled the sites, most notably Frank Mitchell and Russell Coope, whose small but significant analysis of insect remains from Christchurch Place was published in 1981. However, despite the fact that York had set the standard for environmental analysis of large urban sites during this same period, only limited further analysis took place. The second boom phase for urban archaeology in Dublin (from approximately 1994 e2008) saw an increased emphasis placed on environmental analysis, including insect studies, but has not necessarily resulted in increased publication or accessible results. More recently, however, insect analysis has been undertaken from Fishamble Street, ultimately inspired by Russell Coope’s earlier study, which gives fascinating insights into the urban landscape of early Dublin. The differentiation between subdivisions within houses and the influence of the Viking European trading network on Dublin is well attested in the results. This research will result in an increased opening up of this iconic group of ex- cavations to further study and extended bioarchaeological analysis. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction From 1962 to 1981 large parts of the city centre of Dublin, on the east coast of Ireland (Fig. 1a and b), were targeted for redevelop- ment. At this time, staff from the National Museum of Ireland, the Office of Public Works and local city councils primarily carried out pre-development excavations when they were required, especially within urban centres. An extraordinary wealth of archaeological remains was revealed in Dublin in an area south of the river Liffey during National Museum of Ireland excavations, most notably along Wood Quay, Fishamble Street, High Street, Christchurch Place and Winetavern Street (Fig. 2). Houses, streetscapes, revetments, quays, walls, ditches and pits were excavated, as well as an enormous quantity of artefacts (e.g. Ó Ríordáin, 1971; Wallace, 1992; McGrail, 1993; McCutcheon, 2006; Comey, 2010). The core of the Viking and Anglo-Norman town was essentially uncovered. Frank Mitchell, a botanist and Quaternary scientist, from Trinity College Dublin, had taken a keen interest in the excavations and visited the sites almost daily to take small samples (Mitchell, 1987). He involved many other interested colleagues from the natural sciences in the excavations, one of whom was Russell Coope. He was invited to visit the excavations at Christchurch Place in 1974. From among the structures and features excavated he selected samples for analysis (Coope, 1981). Later from 1979 to 1981 at Fishamble Street, large numbers of samples were taken, partly under the guidance of Mick Monk, an archaeobotanist, and Siobhan Geraghty, then a Masters student, from University College Cork. Monk was greatly influenced by what was happening on early ur- ban excavations in the UK at this time, especially York. Here the core of the Anglo-Scandinavian town was also being revealed and an emphasis was placed on analyzing not just the structures and the artefacts but the deposits in which they were found (Kenward, 1978; Hall et al., 1983; O’Connor, 1989; Hall and Kenward, 1990; Kenward and Hall, 1995). This paper outlines ‘what happened next’ in terms of the signif- icance of Coope’s findings from Christchurch Place and the results from other environmental analyses from these important excava- tions. The paper also examines the increased importance placed on such analyses, including archaeoentomology, during subsequent urban excavations in Dublin and the initial results from the author’s most recent research project, which re-visits Fishamble Street, thirty-three years after excavations there were completed. E-mail address: eileen.reilly@ucd.ie. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.01.021 Quaternary International xxx (2014) 1e9 Please cite this article in press as: Reilly, E., From Christchurch Place to Fishamble Street: Developments in archaeoentomology in Dublin, Ireland, since 1981, Quaternary International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.01.021