Viking Dublin: The Wood Quay Excavations

In Dublin, the Wood Quay-Fishamble Street archaeological excavations were a constant media story throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when the threat of official destruction brought thousands of protestors into the streets. Although this highly-publicized protest failed to Save Wood Quay, it did force the most extensive urban excavations ever undertaken in Europe that yielded more unprecedented data about town layout in Dublin 1,000 years ago than about any other European Viking town of the time. Dozens of often near intact building foundations, fences, yards, pathways, and quaysides, as well as thousands of artifacts and environmental samples, were unearthed in the course of the campaign. In this book, Dr. Pat Wallace, the chief archaeologist who directed the Wood Quay and Fishamble Street excavations, provides a detailed examination of the implications of these discoveries for Viking-Age and Anglo-Norman Dublin by placing them in their national and international contexts.Lavishly illustrated with over 500 color images, maps, and drawings, and together with detailed descriptions and analyses of the artifacts, this pioneering study draws together all the finds and discusses them in the context of parallel discoveries in Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia, and northern Europe, with the historical, economic, and cultural milieu of Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin in background focus.