Sharing the teapot and the science: Challenges and Contributions in shaping 21st century island heritage in Ireland

Summary

Crucial to heritage management in the 21st century is developing and maintaining cooperative relationships among archaeologists, local community and decent communities. Different stakeholders have varied views of how to define the past, the cultural and historical relevance of people, places and objects and the extent to which this should be shared when creating multivocal histories. Focusing on the islands of Inishark and Inishbofin, Co. Galway, Ireland, located five miles into the Atlantic Ocean, the Cultural Landscape of the Irish Coast (CLIC) project provides an example of the active involvement of local descendant communities, and how this results in complex and sometimes contrasting bodies of knowledge. This project illustrates the collaborative yet challenging relationship between professional archaeologists, community members, local governmental agencies and the National Museum, all the while trying to understand daily life in post-18th century fishing villages. The combination of archaeological research with local histories produces a complex weaving of different knowledge universes, and results in a richer and more complex understanding of he past. This project also illustrates some of the challenges in managing heritage resources, including contested views of authority at different scales, long term research goals, and who has authority to speak about the past.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Managing Archaeological Heritage in the 21st Century

Keywords

Spatial Coverage