PREDICTIONS FOR 2013

Financially speaking, the last few New Years have given me a feeling akin to looking over the edge of a very high cliff.

Happy New Year Chums - most of my Irish readers will no doubt be familiar with Old Moore's Almanac, a stirring publication, filled with tidal tables, horoscopes and most importantly - predictions for the year ahead. Over the centuries congregations of single Irish farmers (living in peat-smoked cottages at the end of saturated bog tracks) greeted it's yearly arrival with relief, as it allowed them a brief respite from unpeeling the firmly cemented problem pages in their stockpiles of Woman's Weekly. It is as a tribute to these lonely bucolic gentlemen (and Old Moore himself) that I offer these few humble predictions for 2013 to archaeologists everywhere.
I should begin by saying that in hindsight, prediction is not an exact science, in foresight however, nobody knows the difference, so in the spirit of the latter allow me to begin:

*2013 will see the end of heated debates between Processualists and Post-Processualists - angry discussions will instead centre on whether it is apt to follow a main course of fondue with a cheese board.

*ALL OF US will learn to make do with less - so that there will be more for HIM.

*On site fun and frolics will abound with the following context sheets becoming de rigeur.

*Health and safety regulations will demand that archaeologists wear a half pound of raw mince under each armpit.

*Engineers will continue to decide how archaeologists conduct their excavations. Those engineery types do, after all is said and done, have their heads screwed on, everything else screwed down, and they know a thing or two about screwing the living bejeezuz out of archaeology too.

AND NOW A BRIEF INTERLUDE IN WHICH WE CONSIDER SOME COMPARATIVE TRANSATLANTIC NURSERY CHARACTER LINGUISTICS . . .

*Nameless E.U. officials will elect Robert Mugabe as European Minister for Heritage. Mugabe will follow a course of action much like he has done in Zimbabwe - this will cause a palpable improvement in Archaeology.

*In a bid to combat cancers caused by obesity the tobacco industry will introduce low fat cigarettes.

*Bookmakers worldwide will continue to run an extemely profitable business - proving Bayesian Inference to be a load of hooey flapdoodle.

*The Great Hoor of Babylon, arrayed in purple ski pants, will ride on a five legged squid (baked off its ass) - or thereabouts. - I must admit I'm wary about that one - but everything else is bang on the nail.

Bang, bang and bang again.
That's three bangs.
In case you weren't counting.

At least that's how they sing it in Nobber, Co. Meath.

'Til we meet again mud-muffins!