I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving break and are settling
into your time off for the New Year! We are busy planning the upcoming
year's field school activities and hope that we'll see some of you
here on Achill in 2008.

Something we've been considering is hosting an Alumni Reunion within
the next two years and would love some ideas on venue, events and
activities.

In recap of some of the upcoming dates and activities:

New this year we have decided to begin offering a yearly scholarship –
the McDonald Scholarship, a 500 Euro competitive essay based
scholarship. Prior to the beginning of the 2008 field season
prospective students are encouraged to submit a short essay on topics
to be announced each year. This year's topic is "Island Archaeology"
to coincide with our October 2008 conference "Archaeology on the
Periphery: Ireland's Island's". Full details can be found on our
website.

In March, we will be hosting a series of student-faculty Achill Spring
Break Archaeology Weeks featuring excavation in the Deserted Village
of Slievemore. These special event weeks can be arranged to fit your
spring break schedules and include accommodation in either our field
school house or in local cottages near the school. These offers are
filling fast, so if you're wondering what to do for spring break
consider a jaunt back to Achill! Just contact us directly if you'd
like to lead a group from your university to Achill and we'll set up a
wonderful week of digging fun.

In May, we will begin our summer programes with 4, 6 and 8 week field
school modules. These are very popular and are described in detail on
our website at www.achill-fieldschool.com. We will also run additional
4, 6 and 8 modules throughout the summer beginning in July. And, we
have decided to rearrange our program dates to more closely fit with
North American academic schedules.

That's it for now. We all here wish you a very happy rest of the
Holiday season and hope to see you in 2008.

All the very best from Achill,

Theresa McDonald