When is an Artifact an 'Ethnic' Artifact? Case Studies from Ireland and Mexico

Summary

Given the impressive variety of objects produced and used by most ethnic groups, why do some forms of material culture--but not others--come to be identified as signs of ethnic identity? Who makes these identifications, and what sort of work do they do? This paper examines how particular historic artifacts (or representations of them) have come to signify an Irish or Mexican ethnic identity in the contemporary imagination, what role archaeologists have played in this process, and what this might mean for archaeological attempts to recover ethnicity in the material record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21390