Galway is a large and diverse county. In the west there are bare, rugged mountain ranges and a wild Atlantic coastline. But in the rural interior there are low-lying cattle pastures, dispersed rural dwellings and historic market towns. This is the quiet landscape of this book, now traversed by the M6 motorway, from the outskirts of Galway City to the town of Ballinasloe. Archaeological investigations along the motorway route have opened new windows on the early history and prehistory of this landscape. They are remarkable in their variety, especially in a county where there has been little previous archaeological fieldwork outside its historic towns. Some of these discoveries are of the first importance and a few are unique in the Irish archaeological record.

In The Quiet Landscape readers can rediscover for themselves a hunter-gatherer camp site at Ballynaclogh, a Bronze Age lead mine at Treanbaun, a great prehistoric hillfort at Rahally, early medieval farmsteads at Coolagh, Carnmore West, Loughbown and Mackney, an 18thcentury spade mill at Coollola and many other excavated archaeological sites, representing almost 300 generations of life between the River Suck and the Atlantic.

The investigations were conducted for Galway County Council, with funding from the NRA, by CRDS Ltd, Eachtra Archaeological Projects, Rubicon Heritage Services Ltd (formerly Headland Archaeology Ltd), the Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit at NUI Galway and Valerie J Keeley Ltd.

The Quiet Landscape is edited for the NRA by Dr Jim McKeon and Jerry O’Sullivan.

Dr Jim McKeon is a graduate of NUI Galway. His PhD research was on medieval walled towns and he has published several papers on architecture and society in the Norman Lordship of Connacht. Dr McKeon lives in Athenry but travels widely now, in Ireland and abroad, on fieldwork projects.

Jerry O’Sullivan is a graduate of NUI Cork. He has published on a wide range of subjects including medieval settlement and ecclesiastical archaeology, and practice and regulation in Irish archaeology. He is currently the NRA Archaeologist at the National Roads Project Office in Galway.