Modern archaeological survey launched in Londonderry

The Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group (IPMAG) launched Ireland and Britain in the Atlantic World, a 13-chapter publication which celebrates Ireland's post-medieval archaeology in an international context at the Tower Museum on Saturday, March 27.

Welcoming the publication, Mayor Paul Fleming said: "This excellent book is the outcome of a conference held in Derry in 2004, which Derry City Council supported at the time. We are delighted, now that these researches have come to fruition, that the archaeologists have returned to Derry to celebrate its launch."

IPMAG chairperson, Tracy Collins, said: "Many of the papers in this book focus on Irish post-medieval archaeology. Others are comparative, looking at Scotland, Virginia, Newfoundland, and Quebec.

"The subjects range in date from the Battle of the Yellow Ford, Co. Armagh, in 1598 to the quarantining of Irish immigrants during a typhus epidemic near Quebec in 1847."

She continued: "IPMAG is now 10 years old. When we founded the Group, our aims were, first, to hold well-attended, interesting conferences throughout Ireland, and secondly, to publish the results.

"Three books have already appeared, and we are delighted that we are maintaining our excellent publication record."

Ireland and Britain in the Atlantic World, published by (Dublin-based) Wordwell Ltd, with financial support from the Irish Heritage Council and the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, is co-edited by Dr Audrey Horning and Mr Nick Brannon.

Dr Horning is Reader in Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Mr Brannon was formerly a senior archaeologist with the Northern Ireland DoE and is currently President of the (UK] Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology.

Both have extensive experience of Irish archaeology and have excavated, and published on, the post-medieval archaeology of Co. Londonderry.

Dr Audrey Horning said: "The social, economic and political relationships between Ireland and Britain over the last 500 years are complex and still contested.

"But the two islands exhibit a common material heritage and a shared, if conflicted, experience of the broader Atlantic world that requires a global approach.

"This book brings together 13 substantive contributions by scholars working in Ireland, Britain and North America, and we trust that it will be well received as a contribution to Irish studies."