Archaeological news about the Archaeology of Later Medieval Europe from the Archaeology in Europe web site

Monday 1 August 2016

American student finds 12th century Irish brooch on a Galway Beach


McKenna McFadden, an Irish American film and television major at New York University, is in Dublin for the summer with an NYU program. She was walking on the shore of Oney Island in Connemara in the west of Ireland this week when something sitting in the sand caught her eye.

Little did she think it would be a rare artifact from the 12th century.

The NYU Dublin group was being led on a tour of the island by the Connemara-based archaeologist Michael Gibbons.

As McFadden told IrishCentral, “I had been looking at some rabbit burrows with my friend while on a tour of the island lead by archaeologist Michael Gibbons. When stepping back from the burrows, I looked down and saw the back of the brooch and picked it up.

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