My name is Sarah and I am a graduate from California Polytechnic University, Pomona with a bachelors in Anthropology. I attended the Monastic Midlands Archaeological field school program in Ireland where I got to learn about Irish history, archaeology, and heritage. This photo essay will take you through a day in the life of being a field school student and walk you through my personal thoughts and experiences of being in the program.

This is a photo of me (bottom right) and my classmates taking a bus to Kilkenny from Birr. The bus would take around two hours and on the way there we would pass rolling green hills accompanied by livestock such as sheep and cattle. It was a peaceful ride over and everyone was eager to see what the day held ahead of us.

Once we got into the city, our first stop was the Medieval Mile Museum. This museum was previously a church known as St. Mary’s which dates back to the 13th century. The building was excavated and then recently turned into a museum. Here we would get a tour of the museum as well as the surrounding area.

The whole ground floor of the museum was archaeological and contained artifacts from the church itself as well as the surrounding city of Kilkenny. We viewed bioarchaeological remains of three individuals that were found in the church. Each individual had their own story and you could assess their health and lifestyle by looking at their bones. This was especially interesting to me.

This photo shows the second exhibition I viewed. These crosses are plaster reconstructions of high crosses that can be found in Ahenny. These crosses were erected by King Cearbhall during the 800s to demonstrate power over the lands. It was helpful to learn about the context behind high crosses since we had seen them in previous religious sites.

This is an image of the cemetery that was right outside of the museum/church. Here we learned about the positioning of Christian burials as well as why they are always positioned on the south side of the church. It was really interesting to see the difference in headstone and tomb shapes and sizes whose forms were predicated on wealth.

After the tour we got to explore the city. As you can see in the picture, cat imagery can be found all throughout Kilkenny due to a long standing conflict between the town of Kilkenny and outside Irish towns that claimed to “fight like cats.”

This is a photo of a bridge that spans over the River Nore. We spent the next leg of the day walking along the river and enjoying the scenery. It was a lot more peaceful here compared to the bustling streets that ran through the shopping areas.

Our last stop of the day before heading back to Birr was The Fig Tree restaurant. Here I got a delicious grilled chicken wrap and garden salad. My colleagues and I wrapped up our day with a discussion about everything we had learned and our favorite parts of the trip so far.