"This book considers the way two great Anglo-Irish poets, W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney, have used archaeology in their work, and how it surfaced in their lives. As well as providing new insights on Yeats and Heaney, this study of their poetry and inter-disciplinary analysis provides a filter for an original reading of the history of archaeology as it emerged from the antiquarianism of the mid-nineteenth century." "Christine Finn draws on an array of data in a journey through childhood and adult landscapes, popular and little-known archaeological sites, tracing the path of the poets through museums and homes, drawing on classical statues and haunting bog bodies, from Ireland to England, and from Byzantine chapels in Italy to the gilded mosaics of Stockholm, where both Yeats and Heaney received the Nobel Prize."--BOOK JACKET.