Meet the Athlone adventure archaeologist

 

Coosan native Bernard Guinan has travelled an adventurous route in almost 50 countries in his time as an archaeologist. He has spent more than 20 years investigating historical sites and exploring and mapping the natural landscape as an archaeological director with Mayo County Council, and he fondly remembers where it all began for him at the family farm outside Athlone.

“I grew up in a small farm at Meehan Quarter, sometimes watching the late Paddy Golden across the road whistling in the morning and taking cows back and forward,” said Bernard. 

Bernard is the eldest of eight of the family of Brigid and the late John Guinan. John was a stonemason, and farmer.

“He was a stonemason and extremely good at it, and had the skills of an engineer and from the age of 11, I spent many summers with him working on the buildings,” said Bernard. “It was great physical activity and training for work for me.”

Bernard has always had an enthusiasm about him and a love of adventure, and from young, he went travelling at every opportunity.

“I love nothing more than to go travelling and you can drop me in either an inner city and I’ll explore, or in mountainous areas,” said Bernard. “I’m never conflicted in that way and I’ve lived in cities and in absolute wilderness in different parts of the world.”

His mother Brigid bought encyclopaedias for the children in the family, and it was through that, that Bernard built up his interest in history, nature and animal life.

Bernard went to the Marist College, and made many friends there, as well as in his native Coosan whom he is still connected to today.

“The friendships endured through the early years of going to University, and you had to make an effort then to keep friendships, and we did all that without the benefit of social media,” he said.

Bernard studied at UCD with the idea of teaching. Archaeology was his third subject. “I really liked it, and got a real feel for it in the first year, and I decided to focus more on the subject, but there wasn’t an obvious career in Archaeology at that point,” he said.

“There was a romance about Archaeology and I liked the idea of being in a bleak place in the desert or mountain or whatever, exploring the past.” 

Bernard went on his first digs and found them very exciting and decided to spent time on research out of Ireland. In the mid-1990s, he moved to Nairobi, Kenya and then travelled to work in remote regions of Uganda and Zimbabwe.

He was going to be off the beaten track for so long; that he debated with himself whether to have his appendix removed beforehand. He also had to get many medical shots, because he would be away for so long.

“I am ok with hot and cold weather and I can adapt to either, but obviously you have to be careful. 

“The Ethiopian highlands and rift valley were fascinating, particularly the ancient settlements around Axum, Lalibela and the walled city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia.”

He was close to the Equator in 1994 when it took many jeeps to bring him a copy of the ‘Irish Times’, which was sent by his friends in Dublin.

Also that year, he was working on the Ugandan/Rwandan border, when the genocide occurred. “It was all a pre-Internet time and I managed to make my first phonecall home on an A and B phone to tell the family I was fine,” said Bernard.

“There was no way I could keep contact, other than writing letters.”

When in the bush, Bernard often had to buy live chickens from the local market and during the day, he would stuff his backpack with boiled eggs and bananas for the trail. 

“I worked through a variety of landscapes and did a lot of survey work in mountainous regions as well as sub-tropical regions dominated by elephant grass which could grow up to 30 feet high,” he said. “During one project on pre-colonial African society in Uganda, archaeological sites could be discovered through surveying un-tarred roads and thatched mud plastered houses. 

“If you looked carefully you could often see pre-historic pottery and stone tools in the ground or in the mud walls. On one occasion, I saw something white embedded in the ground, which upon exploration we found was part of somebody’s skull, part of a full human burial from the Iron Age.”

Bernard loved his time in the Sahara desert, where he camped in the heat and literally slept on the floor of the desert at night, and he has travelled all over Morocco including stopping in Casablanca and around the Algerian borders. 

Bernard helped fund his way through his Archaeological post-grad studies by working as an OPW guide, including working for a stint at Clonmacnoise. He maintains an interest in the archaeology of the Irish midlands.

“I would recommend anyone to visit the hill of Uisneach because it was one of the most important royal inauguration sites in Ireland, and was the pre-Christian geographic centre of the country,” he said.

Bernard also worked as a researcher and tutor in UCD and was curator/research and education officer in the medieval museum and heritage centre in Woodquay, Dublin known as ‘Dublinia’.

Bernard said there are as many as one million archaeological sites in Ireland, many undiscovered.

He spends time writing reports and he publishes what he works on, and has written some books and articles for the benefit of future academic research.

“Archaeology is now firmly part of the wider environment movement, and a fundamental part of most development projects,” he said. “Big jobs now have to have their own archaeological assessments done, including on any linear development over 1km in length. Archaeological work on civil engineering projects is guided by the polluter pays principal, which is embedded in EU legislation and this helps protect the irreplaceable heritage resources of Ireland.”

Bernard is spruced up one day in the office and the next day he is happily in the field.

“It’s the variety of life, and what I’ve learned about life is to never get bored and if people don’t get enough variety they get bored,” he said. “If you are tired of something, it’s because you are doing it too long.”