Saturday 10 October 2026
Many of the sports and other activities we now consider hobbies have their roots in our past. Often their origins were not just for fun or a way to relax, they were a necessary craft, a means of finding subsistence, a way of honing an essential life skill. Games, then as now, could have an important social and even political aspect. This year’s conference aims to explore some of these activities, from hunting to handball, that represent skill sets and competition. It also asks what people in the past did for fun and looks at how using archaeology to learn from the past can be fun too.
The session themes for this year’s conference are: Cultural Games; Games and Game; Playing with the Past; and Leisure and Lifeways. The topics being covered will include textiles and experimental archaeology, archaeogaming, Aonach Tailteann (the Tailtean Games) and childhood in prehistory.Our speakers include falconry expert Hilary White and award-winning archaeologist Dr Jim Leary, whose popular book Footmarks: a journey into our restless past looks at what is now a popular pastime—walking.
Session 1: CULTURAL GAMES
Summer festivals and political assemblies: Óenach Tailten in the early Middle Ages
Dr Catherine Swift is a lecturer in medieval history at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. She is currently a Government of Ireland Scholar at the Loyola Institute in the School of Religion, Theology and Peace Studies in Trinity College Dublin.
The handball alley in the experienced Gaelic-Irish landscape
Áine Ryan is an architect and spatial planner. She has been documenting handball alleys since 2007 and completed doctoral research on their role in the Gaelic-Irish landscape at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2019–23). She works in urban regeneration in Berlin.
Session 2: GAMES AND GAME
Passing time in Bronze Age Ireland
Dr Mark Haughton is a prehistoric archaeologist at University College Dublin. His current research on wool production in Bronze Age Europe is funded by the European Union.
Falconry: a living heritage
Hilary White is a writer and conservationist. In 2021 he presented ‘Viking falconry—a new take on the raptor remains at Wood Quay’ at the Annual EAA conference. His City of hawks will be published next year by Penguin Sandycove.
Session 3: PLAYING WITH THE PAST
Silent fragments: dolls in the materiality of past recreation
Dolores Kearney is a Ph.D student at University College Dublin. Her research topic is the manufacture, use and discard of textiles in early medieval Ireland and beyond, AD 500–1100.
Archaeogaming: playing with the past in virtual worlds
Billy Sines is a senior archaeologist working in the commercial sector with Archaeological Consultancy Services Unit. His research focuses on early medieval production of bone and antler artefacts, specifically composite hair combs, and depictions of archaeology and the past in video games.
Session 4: LEISURE AND LIFEWAYS
The morality of bling at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
Antoine Giacometti is an archaeologist working in Dublin at Archaeology Plan, a commercial archaeological consultancy.
Orchestrated manoeuvres in the park: recreation, walking and archaeology
Dr Jim Leary is a senior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. His research focuses on prehistoric landscapes, monuments and mobility. He is the author of Footmarks: a journey into our restless past.