Rising majestically above Dublin’s busiest street, the Georgian façade of the General Post Office still contains bullet holes – grim reminders of Easter Monday 1916, when Padraic Pearse read a declaration that signalled the start of the Easter Rising and the beginning of Irish Independence. ‘In the name of God,’ he began, ‘and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.’

A line can be drawn between those bullet holes and the development and implementation of some of the strongest and most enviable national monuments legislation in the world.Comparing Ireland with the fast growing ‘tiger’ economies of the Far East, economists coined the term ‘Celtic Tiger’; the irony is that evidence for ‘Celtic’ Ireland is almost as rare as evidence for an indigenous species of Irish tiger. Has a decade of development-led excavations altered this picture?

In the third of our special articles on the top ten sites of the Celtic Tiger, recently nominated for ‘Current Archaeology Rescue Dig of the Year,’ we assess the new evidence emerging for the Irish Iron Age.

Download the article here…

Vote for this work as ‘Research Dig of the Year’ on the Current Archaeology website here…