The Wood Quay – Fishamble Street archaeological excavations were a constant media story throughout the 1970s and ‘80s when the threat of official destruction brought thousands of protestors onto the streets of Dublin. Although this highly-publicised protest failed to “Save Wood Quay”, it did force the most extensive urban excavations ever undertaken in Europe that yielded more unprecedented data about town layout in Dublin 1000 years ago than about any other European Viking town of the time.

Dozens of often near intact building foundations, fences, yards, pathways, and quaysides, as well as thousands of artefacts and environmental samples were unearthed in the course of the campaign. Pat Wallace, the chief archaeologist who directed the Wood Quay and Fishamble Street excavations, provides a detailed examination of the implications of these discoveries for Viking-Age and Anglo-Norman Dublin by placing them in their national and international contexts.

Lavishly illustrated with over 500 colour images, maps, and drawings, and together with detailed descriptions and analyses of the artefacts, this pioneering study draws together all the finds and discusses them in the context of parallel discoveries in Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia and northern Europe with the historical, economic and cultural milieu of Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin in background focus.

Table of Contents

• Origins, evidence and sites
• Town layout – yards, neighbourhoods, successions, maps and reconstruction
• Buildings
• A wonder of Ireland – the Viking and Hiberno-Scandinavian port, defences, town wall, weapons of war and urban regulation
• The Hiberno-Norman port – revetments, engineering and ships
• Environment, hinterland and people
• Wood, leather and textiles
• Dress and personal ornament and related crafts
• Ferrous and non-ferrous metal
• ‘The wealth of barbarians’ – silver, coins, weights, commerce and commodities
• The archaeology of art, leisure, literacy and religion
• Archaeology, history and relative ethnicity
• The archaeology of early medieval Dublin – context and significance