• Woodstown Site
• Migrants, Merchants & Mariners
• From The Euphrates to The Suir
• The Ancient & The Modern
• Viking Age Weapons in Woodstown
• Cleansing Body & Soul
• From Timbertoes to Rice Bridge
• A Guide to NRA Archaeology

Minister for Transport Martin Cullen and Eamonn McEneaney, curator of the Waterford Museum of Treasures, at the opening of the Migrants, Mariners and Merchants exhibition (studiolab.ie).


Minister Cullen launching the exhibition (studiolab.ie).

Archaeology & History:

Migrants, Merchants & Mariners

'These discoveries are changing our knowledge of the history of our country in many ways and it’s due to the investment of the public and private sector that is happening through the Waterford City Bypass and myriad of other developments around Ireland.'

James Eogan, project archaeologist, Tramore House Regional Design Office.

An exhibition on the archaeological discoveries made on the route of the N25 Waterford City Bypass was officially opened in the Waterford Museum of Treasures on 6 October 2006 by Mr Martin Cullen TD, Minister for Transport, and Dr Patrick F Wallace, Director of the National Museum of Ireland..

The temporary exhibition, which ran until 1 December 2006, told the story of 7,000 years of human history in the area around Waterford City and the way in which archaeologists have uncovered and revealed this evidence. The displays were designed to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Extensive use was made of photographs of excavations in progress and reconstructions of the excavated sites as they would have appeared in the past. Video footage of excavations in progress at some of the sites gave a good sense of the way in which the archaeologists went about their work.

In all, about 90 objects from the 105 excavations carried out were on display. They included pottery and stone tools used by the first farmers and found in the remains of houses identified in Granny and Newrath, Co. Kilkenny. A highly decorated Vase Urn was the centrepiece of the section focusing on life and death in the Bronze Age. A scale model of a vertical watermill found at Killoteran, Co. Waterford, was specially commissioned for the exhibition. This vertical watermill is the earliest known example yet found in Ireland.

The exhibition placed the discovery of the internationally important Viking trading site at Woodstown in its local, national and international context. One of the objects on display was a fragment of a coin minted in the mid-eighth century in what is now Iraq. The gravegoods—sword, spearhead, axehead, shield boss, knife, ring-pin and whetstone—buried with a warrior just outside the enclosure at Woodstown were specially conserved for the exhibition. This was the first time that a complete set of Viking weaponry and armour had been found in Ireland, and these objects formed a spectacular and memorable display..

Umayyad dirhams were circulated widely in the Near East in the eighth century AD, and it is clear from finds of coins in hoards in eastern and northern Europe that the Vikings’ trade network extended as far south as the Black Sea and the eastern and western Mediterranean. It is likely that amber, furs and slaves were exchanged for silver. Looking at the distribution of hoards containing Islamic coins, it would seem that the main trade route was across the Caucuses (modern-day Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan) and up the river systems of western Russia, such as the Volga and Dneiper, to the Baltic. In the context of Viking trade it seems that these exotic coins were used according to their weight of silver. As a result, the coins were often cut into fragments; this is probably the reason why the Woodstown example is incomplete.

There was a large crowd in attendance and they heard Dr Wallace pay tribute to the NRA for its co-ordination of the archaeological excavations along the bypass route and its sponsorship of the exhibition. Minister Cullen thanked the three archaeological companies who carried out the excavations on behalf of Waterford City Council and the NRA—Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd, Archaeological Development Services Ltd and Headland Archaeology Ltd. The Minister reflected on the perception that there was a conflict between developing necessary infrastructure and preserving our archaeological heritage and pointed out that if it weren’t for the work of archaeologists in advance of construction of projects like the N25 Waterford City Bypass, these discoveries would not be made: