I Could Read the Sky and Make Nets: 19th Century Irish Taskscapes of Remembrance and Belonging

Summary

19th century Irish emigrates from coastal settings, including the islands of western Ireland, traveled to America to establish better lives for themselves, their relatives, and their future offspring, often in new and very challenging urban settings. These islanders left their homes, the seascapes that framed their lives, and entered into a new placelessness. To Irish islanders living and working in America, crafts such making fishing nets, provided a point of entry into the emotional landscape of memory and belonging. Nets were not just economic tools or objects; rather these practice helped islanders make their past meaningful through the repeated reenacting of crafts, and negotiate their place in the New World. Migration is, above all else, a dissociative event, one that fundamentally challenges an individuals sense of place, of home, and identity, and creates moments in which individuals reside in one place, but "belong" in another place. Combining oral history, folklore and documentary records, we discuss how the film Nets of Memory (Líonta na Cuimhne) explores how a 19th century Islander from Inishark, County Galway, Ireland, continued to make fishing nets for 40 years after emigrating to Clinton, MA.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22667