Best Site You've Came Across

Shane-1

This could be a good thread, if a slight bit geeky!!

What is the best site any of ye have come across? Maybe you worked on it, visited, studied etc.

I'll put the ball rolling, mine would be a tie between two, a ring barrow I worked on near Waterford city, we had three urn burials and several cremations all within a ring barrow with evidence for an earlier house beneath. Fantastic archaeology and the team we had was fantastic. The company was Daniel Noonan Archaeology, if ye ever have the chance to get on with them do!! Pay is great and the owner is spot on.

Second site I enjoyed because it was different from all the others I came across - a nineteenth century cottage with outbuildings and a cobbled yard. Usually you wouldnt see them sites being excavated. Fantastic archaeology and quite humbling when you would begin finding finds that you knew exactly what importance they held for the people that lived here, eg rosary beads, religious medals etc even a little statue of St Patrick. Again the team was fantastic, which makes such a difference doesnt it?

r3nu4l

boards.ie is without a doubt the best site I've visited!


er, no, actually it has to be Herculaneum simply because it's better preserved that Pompeii but Pompeii would come first if we were talking sheer size! The Roman Baths in Bath, England is also very well preserved but Stonhenge I thought was dreadful and actually felt ashamed of having participated in visiting there once I'd been

EDIT: I'm totally talking from a 'tourist that is interested in history and archeological history' perspective here. I'm no archeologist!

Fletch123

The Cahermacnaghten townland (Burren, Co. Clare) and all the archaeology in it- one giant site. Wonderful to work on and absolutely fascinating.

catbear

worked on a famine burial site. really interesting and humbling when like the OP said you come across things that you know meant something, especially when they are in the burial.

i love all of Rome, it's magic. walk down any street in the centre and you come across something Roman that's incorporated into the modern/mediaeval stuff.

the hypogeum in Malta is well worth a look, spooky in the most primal way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypogeum_of_Ħal-Saflieni

then the temples of Ankor in cambodia and the temple complex of Bagan in Burma (although a lot has been rebuilt without oversight). the shawadagan in Rangoon is the best living site i've been to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shwedagon_Pagoda

i'd love to visit the americas and also walk Hadrians Wall.
i love knockroe in south county kilkenny too.

Shane-1

famine burial site sounds fantastic, we thought thats what we had on one site, we revised the theory after a week without a single find, we decided that in fact it was a bulldozed cashel, we revised this theory after another week with no finds, four weeks into site (without a single find, save a bit of a wall) we gave up, supervisor reckoned something terrible must have happened in that field at some stage!- twas an awful month haha

for some reason I never get as excited about archaeology in other countries as I would do about whats here in Ireland, I would place crumbly bits of an old tower house above the colosseum, freak that I am :pac: