Archaeology, Ethics and the Remembrance of Conflict on the Island of Ireland

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology on the Island of Ireland: New Perspectives" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Conflict characterises much of the history of early modern and modern Ireland, with sites associated with violence common on the landscape. The unresolved political legacies of these events, and by extension the potency of associated sites, translates into their differential treatment. Some locales are memorialised, some deliberately overlooked, with others are clearly territorialized or marketized in Ireland’s heritage economy. In considering a range of case studies from Ireland, north and south, the ethics of memorialization emerge as highly situational. Some efforts to mark past conflict serve more to justify contemporary division through one-sided explorations of the past, while other endeavours exhibit greater potential to ameliorate rather than exacerbate conflict. What is the appropriate role for archaeologists in cases where communities seek to memorialise exclusionary understandings of the past? How do we encourage inclusivity with our community partners while not lending support to narratives with potentially negative consequences in the present?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Historical Archaeology on the Island of Ireland: New Perspectives

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 902