Excavations carried out based on false reports

An archaeologist who worked for the National Roads Authority (NRA) on the M3 Tara motorway carrying out archaeological testing, has said that they edited her reports, she was not allowed to tell the truth and “was told to change an interpretation, which served to lessen the protection or number of sites”.

An archaeologist who worked for the National Roads Authority (NRA) on the M3 Tara motorway carrying out archaeological testing, has said that they edited her reports, she was not allowed to tell the truth and “was told to change an interpretation, which served to lessen the protection or number of sites”.

Jo Ronayne worked for an Irish archaeology company, Irish Archaeology Consultancy, carrying out test trenching on the M3 motorway for the NRA. Test trenching involves digging trenches to establish if there are any archaeological remains in that area. As part of this Jo Ronayne had to report back to the NRA on her findings.

She says that the NRA edited the reports to reflect their own views:  “Field archaeologists working on the site were not allowed to attend meetings where decisions were made by the NRA's own archaeologists about how to interpret and present what we were finding…A number of times I was told to change an interpretation, which served to lessen the protection or numbers of sites…they don't let you write the truth in the reports or give you enough time to do a proper report.” These edited reports were then sent to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local  Government by the NRA. Test trenching is a pre-phase to excavations.

 However, Ronayne says that they were told to excavate a large section into one type of site even though excavations are not supposed to happen in a test trenching phase. Ronayne was speaking in an interview featured in the summer edition of the archaeology journal Public Archaeology.
Ronayne now regrets working for the NRA: “I thought I and others could make a difference by showing the wealth of what was there, that it might stop the motorway. After a while I realised that the NRA would not let this happen.”
EMMA BROWNE