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Middle-Class Ideologies and American Respectability: Archaeology and the Irish Immigrant Experience

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Abstract

This study illustrates the materialization of identity shifts through refined ceramic and glass forms recovered from working class Irish immigrant and Irish-American communities. The sites used in this article were chosen because of their spatio-temporal compatibility covering dynamic periods of Irish identity in the United States. Historians argue that 1880 marks the beginning of an identity shift from Irish immigrant to Irish-American. This research attempts to provide the necessary materials to begin a discourse bringing together material and historical evidence illuminating the conflict between competing ideologies of respectability and changing conceptions of Irish identity in America.

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Brighton, S.A. Middle-Class Ideologies and American Respectability: Archaeology and the Irish Immigrant Experience. Int J Histor Archaeol 15, 30–50 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-010-0128-4

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