The islands of Inishkea, Co. Mayo from prehistory to the modern day.

Brian Dornan

• Tuesday February 9, 2027
• 10:30 – 12:30
• Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)

The talk will explore the archaeology of the islands from the Bronze Age through Early Christian and Viking times culminating in the modern permanent settlement that lasted to the 1930s.

Brian studied History, Geography and Archaeology in University College Dublin and also obtained a masters degree in Archaeology.  He worked on excavations at Glenulra (later Ceide Fields) and Belderrig in Co. Mayo with Seamas Caulfield and at Rathgall in Co. Wicklow, with the late Barry Raftery.

He first visited the Inishkeas as a student in the early seventies.  In the 1990s he undertook a Masters in Local History in Maynooth University and later made the islands the subject of his doctoral research, which he completed in 1998.  Based on this he wrote Mayo’s lost islands: the Inishkeas, published by Four Courts Press in 2000.  More recently he wrote a book on the archaeology of the islands entitled Mayo’s Wild Atlantic Islands the Inishkeas (Mayo Books Press, 2025).

He is currently Hon. Treasurer of the Royal Society of Antiquaries.