Working on the Margins of the Modern World and Within Archaeology: The Historical Archaeology of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentith-Century Ireland

Summary

In Ireland, historical, post-medieval, or modern world archaeology as a discipline is located on the margins. The time period and material comprising our research is argued by many to be relevant only to the pursuits of historians and folk studies. In this paper I discuss the importance and relevance of a discipline on the margins and the study of Ireland’s impoverished class during the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This marks one of the most dynamic periods in Ireland’s political, economic, and cultural history which includes the complexities of identity during struggle and conflict. The material culture from two archaeological sites associated with The Archaeology of Ireland’s Early Modern History research program in Skibbereen, County Cork structures this paper. The sites date from the early 1840s to the late 1920s and serve to illuminate the importance of historical archaeology to modern heritage formation, as well as the intricacies of this transformative period of Irish socio-economic and cultural history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Living at the Margins: Archaeological and Ethnographic Research on Post-Eighteenth-Century Irish and Scottish Rural Life

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17112