Reporting, publication & dissemination

A visitor to Irish archaeology might conclude that we live in the best of times, and this might appear especially so of archaeological publishing. True, the resources of Dúchas the Heritage Service are limited, yet it boasts some fine achievements in recent years, especially in the production of its county inventories and its database of excavation summaries on the Internet (at www.excavations.ie). From the academic community — in the widest definition of that group — there has been a steady flow of publications too, mostly in the form of regional, period or artefact studies. The Discovery Programme is now more or less established as a national research institute and is setting benchmarks with its monographs and annual reports. The Irish Wetlands Archaeology Unit has also begun to generate a valuable corpus of monographs and reports. The Irish Association of Professional Archaeologists has lately reinvented itself as the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland and proposes to launch or adopt a periodical of its own. In the field of popular publishing, the Irish Treasures series offers tasty appetisers to the curious reader dipping into archaeology for the first time (e.g. Manning 1995; Condit 1997; O’Sullivan 2000), while Archaeology Ireland magazine is a sparkling example of sustained success in popular publishing. Not least, the NRA itself is committed to archaeological publishing in a variety of media. Clearly, there is much to celebrate. Yet this is also the worst of times. We are starved of the raw data essential for new ideas and writing. This is an extraordinary situation, given that each year we investigate more and more new sites. Strict heritage legislation, rampant development and a burgeoning archaeological private sector have combined to produce a tenfold increase in licensed fieldwork in the last decade. Yet there has been no corresponding increase in published excavation reports. In fact, as a proportion of licensed work, the number of published excavations is in sharp decline. It must be conceded that much of the additional licensed work in recent years relates to monitoring or testing and would not warrant full publication. Also, larger projects can have a long period of gestation — sometimes several years — before they are brought to print. Yet whatever special pleading is allowed there can be no escape from the conclusion that fieldwork is outstripping publication at a dismaying rate. This situation is disheartening for Irish archaeology