Stephen
A. Brighton (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University
of Maryland) has conducted archaeological fieldwork and historical
research into the material conditions of daily life in rural society
during the early modern history of Ireland from the seventeenth
to the late nineteenth-century. Dr. Brighton’s research in Ireland
seeks to identify and interpret the materialization of heritage
creation during stressful economic and social conditions due to
the injustices of colonialism, famine, and forced international
dispersal of a large percentage of the Irish population.
Click
here to read about Professor Brighton's new project in Texas,
MD.

The Irish Diaspora forms much of the modern history of Ireland.
The beginning of the seventeenth century marks the establishment
of English rule in Ireland and Protestant Ascendancy. As a colony,
the indigenous Irish Catholic majority was forced to be subordinate
to an immigrant Protestant minority. Forced resettlement of Irish
Catholics included both relocation to the barren bogs lands west
of the Shannon River and transportation to the West Indies. This
marked the first large-scale international movement that continued
throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century.
The Great Starvation (or An Ghorta Mor) (1845-1852) represents
the watershed for Irish dispersal. By the time of the Famine,
a minority of the population controlled the rural landscape. Access
to and control of land created a complex web of socio-economic
relations and social position. Members of the landowning class
were at the top of the socio-economic structure and controlled
most of the rural Irish landscape. The rural poor class formed
the largest numbers of the Irish population and held the least
amount of land. It was the class of rural poor that was affected
by the Great Famine. At that time between 1 and 1.5 million people
were compelled to leave because of famine, disease, and eviction.
Evictions of the rural poor were commonplace during the Famine.
Clearances were nation-wide. To the landowning class evictions
and assisted emigration schemes were a cheap alternative to rid
estates of what was considered a redundant population. The Famine
period and the decades following is time period in Irish history
mark the largest global dispersal within the totality of the Irish
Diaspora and had greatest impact on the creation of an Irish heritage
of injustice and exile.
Archaeological fieldwork includes work County Sligo and centered
on a single-component cabin site, probably occupied from c. 1790
to c. 1850. The collection of 2,320 domestic artifacts provides
a unique view of rural material culture in Sligo during the early
nineteenth century. Other excavations include demolished stone
cabins in the townland of Ballykilcline, County Roscommon. Entire
clusters of families were violently evicted from this area between
1847 and 1848. The collection includes sponge-decorated and transfer-printed
fine earthenware ceramics, several other kinds of ceramics, glass
fragments from bottles and tumblers, buttons, thimbles, white
clay smoking pipes, and iron agricultural tools. This collection
represents an important addition to the growing database of 19th-century
domestic material from rural Ireland.
The material culture from Ireland is analyzed and interpreted
in conjunction with the social histories and material culture
from Irish-immigrant communities in Manhattan, Paterson, New Jersey,
Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and San Francisco in order to understand
what impact the Irish diasporic experience had on the creation
and expression of an Irish, and subsequently Irish-America heritage.
At present, Stephen A. Brighton is currently studying the materialization
of a transnational Irish-American heritage. This transnational
heritage formed through inter-ethnic interaction of poor immigrant
neighborhoods, as well as the experience of being marginalized
as being the “foreign other.” The study of Irish Diaspora is vital
to understanding contemporary concepts of heritage both in Ireland
and throughout the world, as well as being used as a dynamic analytical
concept in understanding the processes of creating and recreating
heritage that seeks to move away from facile notions of assimilation
and develop narratives on experiences of racism, discrimination,
and prejudice in America.

Today, Irish historians debate whether the heritage of Irish
dispersal should be considered a diaspora. Arguments stem from
how Irish history should be interpreted in the present, because
it is profoundly embedded in contemporary social and political
issues, any overarching methodology to research what is obviously
a diasporic heritage is complicated by contemporary conflicts
and issues between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland,
and England. The lack of critical focus on the underpinnings of
modern Irish history creates a sterilized interpretation of a
contentious and dynamic time in Ireland’s history, as well as
its impact throughout the world. To further delineate the study
of the Irish Diaspora there is a need for a transnational study
acknowledging socio-cultural diversity in the Irish population
emigrating in concert with the concept of lived experiences of
colonialism and marginalization through time and space. Ireland’s
current social and political issues and entanglements have prevented
this type of research.
The vast amount of literature spanning four hundred years of
Irish migration demonstrates that there is no consensus as to
how to categorize, organize, or even approach the subject of Irish
dispersal worldwide. Stephen A. Brighton’s interest rests on creating
an overarching theoretical framework bringing together the complex
history of Irish colonialism and the international movement of
the diverse religious and economic groups as well as understanding
experiences of social and economic inequality, extreme poverty,
and of the lack of agency or choice various groups had in deciding
whether to stay or leave Ireland.