The National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology (, often known as the "NMI") is a branch of the National Museum of Ireland located on Kildare Street in Dublin, Ireland, that specialises in Irish and other antiquities dating from the Stone Age to the Late Middle Ages. The museum was established under the Science and Art Museum Act of 1877. Before, its collections had been divided between the Royal Dublin Society and the Natural History Museum on Merrion Street. The museum was built by the father and son architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Thomas Manly Deane. The NMI's collection contains artifacts from prehistoric Ireland including bog bodies, Iron and Bronze Age objects such as axe-heads, swords and shields in bronze, silver and gold, with the earliest dated to c. 7000 BC. It holds the world's most substantial collection of post-Roman era Irish medieval art (known as Insular art). In addition, it houses a substantial collection of medieval metalwork, Viking artefacts including swords and coins, and classical objects from Ancient Egypt, Cyprus and the Roman world. History The impetus for creating the museum was the 1877 Dublin Science and Art Museum Act, which combined the collections of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and Royal Dublin Society (RDS). This new law was enacted because the RIA recogonised it needed government funding to continue its acquisition program, and because becoming a state body allowed easier collaboration with the British Museum and National Museum of Scotland. The project was overseen by the palaeontologist Alexander Carte. Among other early sources for the museum’s collection were works held by Trinity College Dublin and the Geological Survey of Ireland. These included such major pieces as the Cross of Cong (which the RIA acquired from an Augustinian priory in County Mayo) and the Domnach Airgid (acquired in 1847). In the mid-nineteenth century, the museum also acquired the collections of academy members such as Henry Sirr and Petrie (who left some 1,500 artifacts, including 900 from pre-history, six crosiers, and a number of bells and bell-shrines). Many of these pieces had been found in the 19th century by agricultural labourers, when population expansion and new machinery led to cultivation of land that had not been touched since the Middle Ages. George Petrie of the RIA and others who were members of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland intervened to prevent these metalwork artifacts from being melted down and repurposed