Continuing our series of old posts (to mark our 10th year in business), ones we feel were good, prescient or elicited some good conversation or debate, this post was first published in July 2008. Posted at the height of the Tara controversy, it was a bit snarky and did elicit some discussion. We also,  in our blogging naivety, edited and removed some comments. Now they’re deep in some email archive. I’ve appended the remaining comments at the end of the post. The nature of the archaeology industry has changed somewhat since and I don’t think that we could be accused of being corrupt or cajoling anymore (but given the opportunity I’m sure our core principles could be once again undermined).

I was going to introduce this blog post with the following, somewhat facetious, opener:

While we were busy brewing beer in UCD, in deep conversation with our very good pal ‘Don’ Rumsfeld, it seems that field archaeologists were exposed as the corrupt and evil rabble that they are, in thrall to our evil paymasters, the National Roads Authority (NRA). Despite the vociferous denials of the NRA that they merely copy-edited archaeologists reports on the M3 motorway and that they in no way changed the interpretations, no-one is buying their SMERSH-like manipulations. It’s clear that they misled the field archaeologists into thinking that archaeological testing in advance of construction of a road is merely flirting with the proposed route – that when the archaeologists find a site the road will be gracefully moved aside – that the whole route selection and EIS process is merely a prelude to the real negotiations for the road, and that roads are merely to facilitate the discovery of archaeology.

But, in the interest of public relations (and in the forlorn hope that the Jim Corr conspiracy theorists who think its all the work of Opus Dei or the Knights Templar wouldn’t come and troll) we decided against it. Instead this is how we’ll start:

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