ABSTRACT
The Bally Lough Archaeological Project (BLAP) began in the back of a pick-up truck on the road to Nanomi, B.C. in April 1979. The Waterford area derives its character from a gently rolling landscape of sandstone and volcanic hills, the coastline indented by small fjords with sandy beaches at their heads, and from the majestic presence of Waterford Harbour — the magnificent estuary for the Rivers Barrow and Suir. Initial reconnaissance of the area set out to discover whether there were sufficient fields for systematic survey in the project area, and pending that, whether assemblages were recoverable from these fields. A brief and simplified discussion of diagnostic typology for Mesolithic through the Bronze Age in the research area is provided in Green and Zvelebil; for Ireland as a whole, major publications on Irish prehistory provide the necessary information.
