Historical Archaeology Of The Irish Diaspora

Anthropologist Brighton (Maryland) offers a historical archaeological investigation of the diaspora of Ireland, reflecting the migration of Irish immigrants to the US during a turbulent period in Irish history from the mid-1840s to the 1850s. Brighton's work is the first to offer a study through an archaeological lens connecting Irish communities spanning two continents and covering four sites: two in Ireland, specifically, in County Roscommon, and two in the US, the Five Points section of Manhattan, New York, as well as the historically Irish community in Paterson, New Jersey. There have been some recent diasporic studies on Irish migrations of the 19th century, such as Catherine Nash's Of Irish Descent: Origin Stories, Genealogy, and the Politics of Belonging (2008). However, Brighton's technique is inspired from transnational investigations of the African diaspora to the Atlantic world. This volume can serve as an excellent research tool for students of Ireland as well as diasporic archaeology. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students of archaeology of the modern world." --B. C. Ryan, Syracuse University, Choice Between 1845 and 1852, a watershed event in Ireland's history--the Great Hunger--forced more than one million starved and dispossessed people, most of them poor tenant farmers, to leave their native country for the shores of the United States. Further weakened by the arduous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, many sought refuge in the harbor cities in which they landed. Not surprisingly, Irish immigrants counted as one quarter of New York City's population during the 1850s. In Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora, Stephen A. Brighton places Irish and Irish American material culture within a broad historical context, including the waves of immigration that preceded the Famine and the development of the Irish American communities that followed it. He meticulously details the archaeological research connected with excavations at two pre-Famine sites in County Roscommon, Ireland, and with several immigrant tenements located in the Five Points, Manhattan, and the Dublin section of nearby Paterson, New Jersey. Using this transnational approach to link artifacts and ceramics found in rural Ireland with those discovered in sites in the urban, northeastern United States, Brighton also employs contemporary diaspora studies to illustrate how various factions sustained a distinct homeland connection even as the Irish were first alienated from, and then gradually incorporated into, American society. With more than forty million Americans claiming Irish ancestry, fully understanding Ireland's traumatic history and its impact on the growth of the United States remains a vital task for researchers on both sides of the Atlantic. Brighton's study of lived experience follows a fascinating historical path that will aid scholars in a variety of disciplines. Stephen A. Brighton is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology and Historical Archaeology.

"An exploration of Western historical archaeologists' role in American regionalism and a call for creating archaeologies of the West as an alternative to the isolated archaeologists working in the West"--Provided by publisher.

This book examines the Japanese diaspora from the historical archaeology perspective—drawing from archaeological data, archival research, and often oral history—and explores current trends in archaeological scholarship while also looking at new methodological and theoretical directions. The chapters include research on pre-War rural labor camps or villages in the US, as well as research on western Canada (British Columbia), Peru, and the Pacific Islands (Hawai‘i and Tinian), incorporating work on understudied urban and cemetery sites. One of the main themes explored in the book is patterns of cultural persistence and change, whether couched in terms of maintenance of tradition, “Americanization,” or the formation of dual identities. Other themes emerging from these chapters include consumption, agency, stylistic analysis, community lifecycles, social networks, diaspora and transnationalism, gender, and sexuality. Also included are discussions of trauma, racialization, displacement, labor, heritage, and community engagement. Some are presented as fully formed interpretive frameworks with substantial supporting data, while others are works in progress or tentative attempts to push the boundaries of our field into innovative new territory. This book is of interest to students and researchers in historical archaeology, anthropology, sociology of migration, diaspora studies and historiography. Previously published in International Journal of Historical Archaeology Volume 25, issue 3, September 2021

""Slum" is among the most evocative and judgmental words of the modern world. It originated in the slang language of the world's then-largest city, London, early in the nineteenth century. Its use thereafter proliferated, and its original meanings unraveled as colonialism and urbanization transformed the world, and as prejudice against those disadvantaged by these transformations became entrenched. Cuckoo-like, "slum" overtook and transformed other local idioms: for example, bustee, favela, kampong, shack. "Slum" once justified heavy-handed redevelopment schemes that tore apart poor but viable neighborhoods. Now it underpins schemes of neighbourhood renewal that, seemingly benign in their intentions, nonetheless pay scant respect to the viewpoints of their inhabitants. This Oxford Handbook probes both present-day understandings of slums and their historical antecedents. It discusses the evolution of slum "improvement" policies globally from the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. It encompasses multiple perspectives: anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, history, politics, sociology, urban studies and urban planning. It emphasizes the influences of gender and race inequality, and the persistence of subaltern agency notwithstanding entrenched prejudice and unsympathetically-applied institutionalized power. Uniquely, it balances contributions from scholars who deny the legitimacy of "slum" in social and policy analysis, with those who accept its relevance as a measuring stick of social disadvantage and as a vehicle for social reform. This Handbook does not simply footnote the past; it critiques conventional understandings of urban social disadvantage and reform across time and place in the modern world. It suggests pathways for future research and for alleviative reform"--

Archaeologists are increasingly interested in studying the experiences of Chinese immigrants, yet this area of research is mired in long-standing interpretive models that essentialize race and identity. Showcasing the enormous amount of data available on the lives of Chinese people who migrated to North America in the nineteenth century, this volume charts new directions by providing fresh approaches to interpreting immigrant life. In this volume, leading scholars first tackle broad questions of how best to position and understand these populations. They then delve into a variety of site-based and topical case studies, providing new approaches to themes like Chinese immigrant foodways and highlighting understudied topics including entrepreneurialism, cross-cultural interactions, and conditions in the Jim Crow South. Pushing back against old colonial-based tropes, contributors call for an awareness of the transnational relationships created through migration, engagement with broader archaeological and anthropological debates, and the expansion of research into new contexts and topics. Contributors: Linda Bentz | Todd J. Braje | Kelly N. Fong | D. Ryan Gray | J. Ryan Kennedy | Christopher Merritt | Laura W. | Virginia S. Popper | Adrian Praetzellis | Mary Praetzellis | Chelsea Rose | Douglas E. Ross | Charlotte K. Sunseri | Barbara L. Voss | Priscilla Wegars | Henry Yu

"This book builds upon the myriad of cultural-resource studies mining historic New York City and its Irish immigrant communities. Meredith B. Linn presents a number of primary sources from working-class Irish immigrants, focusing on illness, injury, and health care in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. She presents a "visceral historical archaeology" by using interdisciplinary methods and theories to examine how these newcomers to the United States experienced and reacted to three ailments that arguably were their leading causes of mortality and morbidity: typhus, tuberculosis, and work-related injuries. Because of how physicians and the American public understood these impacts, typhus exacerbated the stereotype of the Irish as sanguine, hot-headed, and animalistic, while tuberculosis, or the "white death," instead helped to "whiten" and re-humanize the Irish. In using these ailments as a lens, this study also presents new perspectives about urban labor, housing, community building, and consumption of commodities in a context of Irish diaspora"--

This book presents research into the urban archaeology of 19th-century Australia. It focuses on the detailed archaeology of 20 cesspits in The Rocks area of Sydney and the Commonwealth Block site in Melbourne. It also includes discussions of a significant site in Sydney – First Government House. The book is anchored around a detailed comparison of contents of 20 cesspits created during the 19th century, and examines patterns of similarity and dissimilarity, presenting analyses that work towards an integration of historical and archaeological data and perspectives. The book also outlines a transnational framework of comparison that assists in the larger context related to building a truly global archaeology of the modern city. This framework is directly related a multi-scalar approach to urban archaeology. Historical archaeologists have been advocating the need to explore the archaeology of the modern city using several different scales or frames of reference. The most popular (and most basic) of these has been the household. However, it has also been acknowledged that interpreting the archaeology of households beyond the notion that every household and associated archaeological assemblage is unique requires archaeologists and historians to compare and contrast, and to establish patterns. These comparisons frequently occur at the level of the area or district in the same city, where archaeologists seek to derive patterns that might be explained as being the result of status, class, ethnicity, or ideology. Other less frequent comparisons occur at larger scales, for example between cities or countries, acknowledging that the archaeology of the modern western city is also the archaeology of modern global forces of production, consumption, trade, immigration and ideology formation. This book makes a contribution to that general literature

Presenting examples from the fields of critical race studies, cultural resource management, digital archaeology, environmental studies, and heritage studies, Trowels in the Trenches demonstrates the many different ways archaeology can be used to contest social injustice. This volume shows that activism in archaeology does not need to involve radical or explicitly political actions but can be practiced in subtler forms as a means of studying the past, informing the present, and creating a better future. In case studies that range from the Upper Paleolithic period to the modern era and span the globe, contributors show how contemporary economic, environmental, political, and social issues are manifestations of past injustices. These essays find legacies of marginalization in art, toys, houses, and other components of the material world. As they illuminate inequalities and forgotten histories, these case studies exemplify how even methods such as 3D modeling and database management can be activist when they are used to preserve artifacts and heritage sites and to safeguard knowledge over generations. While the archaeologists in this volume focus on different topics and time periods and use many different practices in their research, they all seek to expand their work beyond the networks and perspectives of modern capitalism in which the discipline developed. These studies support the argument that at its core, archaeology is an interdisciplinary research endeavor armed with a broad methodological and theoretical arsenal that should be used to benefit all members of society. Contributors: |Christopher P. Barton | Stephen A. Brighton | Tiffany Cain | Stacey L. Camp | Kasey Diserens Morgan | Yamoussa Fane | Daouda Keita | Nathan Klembara | Ora V. Marek-Martinez | Christopher N. Matthews | Bernard K. Means | Vinod Nautiyal | Kyle Somerville | Moussa dit Martin Tessougue | Kerry F. Thompson | Joe Watkins | Andrew J. Webster