Professor Gabriel Cooney BA MA PhD
Research Interests:
My research interests are focused on prehistory, particularly the Neolithic, but also take a broader turn. In collaboration with Dr Stephen Mandal I direct the Irish Stone Axe Project, covering all aspects of stone axe studies, integrating archaeological and petrological approaches. Arising from this we identified and I led a research excavation of a stone axe production site on Lambay island. The cultural richness of this site has prompted two projects: to investigate the social role of prehistoric stone quarries and also the settlement history of Lambay. In turn this has sparked a research project on stone quarries on islands, focused on Rathlin, Co. Antrim and Shetland, where the first season of a new field project will take place in 2012. Issues of landscape definition were the focus of work carried out for the Heritage Council on approaches to defining archaeological landscapes and on the development of historic landscape characterisation in an Irish context. I am currently chairperson of the Research Committee of the Bru na Boinne World Heritage Site and an expert member of the ICOMOS International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management. I led a theme within the PRTLI funded Humanities Institute of Ireland (UCD) on ¿Engaging with the material world: working the past; making the self¿ which explored the issues of memory and identity using the strengths of a long-term historical perspective and a focus on material culture. I am the co-PrincipaI Investigator of the Footprints strand of the PRTLI-funded research programme of the Global Irish Institute in UCD, currently focused on the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition and the development of early medieval society in Ireland in comparative context. I delivered the Rhind Lectures in Edinburgh in 2007 on 'Living in an Age of Stone: Neolithic People and their worlds'. I am also currently completing a book about death in prehistoric Ireland. I was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2004. I was appointed by the Minister of Environment, Heritage and Local Government to serve on the Heritage Council in 2005 and was re-appointed in 2010. In January 2009 I was appointed chairman of the Historic Monuments Council, Northern Ireland but the Minister of the Environment, Northern Ireland and begin a second term as chair in 2012.
I am also a member of the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Archaeology. I was the founding editor of Archaeology Ireland (1987-97) and served on the editorial board of World Archaeology (2002-11), the latest of the four issues that I edited was volume (43.2, June 2011) on New Approaches to Stone Mines and Quarries: Materials and Materiality. I am of the series editors of the One World Archaeology monograph series (Springer).
I would welcome inquiries from prospective research students interested in any of the research areas outlined above or more broadly in interpretative approaches to archaeology in Ireland.