Materiality, Experience, and "Irishness": The Irish and Irish-American Experience through Time

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meagan Conway. Ian Kuijt.

This research explores colonial transformation of households and communities on the fringes of empire - the frontier. Often overlooked, these fluid spaces have revelatory potential regarding deeply situated cultural change and social dynamics in the face of catastrophic adjustment. This project focuses on the local processes as embodied by these individual households and rural communities on the coast of western Ireland in order to understand larger regional and national social and cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Couey. Ian Kuijt. Liam Murphy. Max Lopez.

This poster examines the use of ground-penetrating radar in combination with three-dimensional modeling to identify, examine, and virtually reconstruct the subsurface material remains of nineteenth century homes on the islands of Inishark and Inishbofin, Co. Galway, Ireland. In this research we employ a multi-stage research program starting with a ground-penetrating radar survey of multiple house sites and a digital scanning of the ground surface to develop a high-resolution topographical map,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Webster.

When working class European immigrants first arrived on American shores, they had a profound effect on American cities. Throughout the nineteenth century, the processes of industrialization coupled with Boston’s position as a shipping hub created an influx of low-income laborers in need of housing. The Clough House, a colonial home built around 1715, functioned as a single-family residence for a century before being converted into a tenement for the working class. This poster explores the impact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Chesson. Annmarie Lindzy.

Archaeologists have described and discussed households for decades, yet only recently have them made the theoretical leap from residential structures and coresidential units to peoples’ homes. Homes are built, embodied and enlivened by peoples’ actions, thoughts, relationships, experiences and aspirations. This poster presents the results of an ethnoarchaeoogical analysis of homemaking on the islands of Inishbofin and Inishark (co. Galway) as well as Inishturk (co. Mayo) in western Ireland....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Morrow. Ian Kuijt. Katie Shakour.

19th and 20th century Irish house wakes memorialized the dead in a spirit of remembrance, revelry, and community healing. A central aspect of the wake was the smoking of pipe tobacco, with funeral goers smoking in the house and at the burial ground often discarding their clay pipes after smoking. Archaeological excavations on Inishark Island, County Galway, Ireland, revealed complete and incomplete clay pipes in a deposit within building 8, a home dating to the late 19th century. By comparing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Lash. Terry O'Hagan. Elise Alonzi. Franc Myles. Anne Wildenhain.

Pilgrimage traditions on islands along the coast of Connemara in western Ireland provide a valuable context for exploring the relationship between ritual practice, identity, and political economic change from a long-term perspective. The island of Inishark, Co. Galway, contains a number of ritual remains dating from the 9th-13th centuries, including a church, a holy well, cross-slabs, one or more burial grounds, as well as a number of penitential stone platforms known as leachta. Islanders in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elise Alonzi. Ryan Lash. Terry O'Hagan. Anne Wildenhain. Ian Kuijt.

Many medieval and early modern villages and abbeys in County Galway, Ireland are situated directly on the coast. This study seeks to understand the pathways that marine resources follow as they enter diets of religious and lay Irish populations by using isotopic, ethnographic, and historical evidence. The isotopic portion of this study elucidates how marine-derived isotopes cycle through the coastal Irish landscape and are included in the diet. Ecological sampling on the Atlantic island,...