Following a protracted battle with illness, ArcPal’s Professor Emeritus Professor Mike Baillie passed away yesterday.
The news left us in a state of profound melancholy. Mike’s first job in the Archaeology Department of Queen’s University was in 1968, when he was hired to help construct an oak yearly tree-ring chronology for the island.
This was Mike’s first job in the field of archaeology. In the 1980s, this had evolved into what was known as the Belfast long oak chronology.
This chronology dates back approximately 7600 years and was a very useful tool for radiocarbon dating calibration. Mike was a pioneering player in the subject of dendrochronology. He published a number of books and articles in the field, including Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology (1982) and A Slice Through Time: Dendrochronology and Precision Dating (1995). He also contributed to the field of dendrochronology in an uncountable number of journal publications.
His later works, such as Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets (1999), The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology (2005; co-authored with Patrick McCafferty), and New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection (2006), delved into the world of catastrophes. He was an excellent educator and communicator of scientific information.
Mike was without a doubt an exceptionally gifted scholar, but he carried himself in a casual and, at times, irreverent way that made him an enormous source of motivation and made him more approachable. He was never one to take things too seriously and was extremely generous with his time. When Mike walked in, the atmosphere became more upbeat, and it was possible to rest assured that he would tell an interesting but varied story.
His topics ranged from the heady days of Irish archaeology and palaeoecology in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to information on the most recent cosmic encounters with our planet. His coworkers and friends in the field of archaeology and paleoecology will mourn Mike tremendously, and during this extremely difficult time, our thoughts are with Deborah and the rest of Mike’s family.
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