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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abell, A. I. (1960). American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice, 1865–1950, Hanover House, Garden City.
Althusser, L. (1979). For Marx, Verso, London.
Anbinder, T. (2002). From famine to five points: Lord Landsdowne’s Irish tenants encounter North America’s most notorious slum. The American Historical Review 107: 1–24.
Beckett, J. C. (1980). The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603–1923, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Bodnar, J. (1985). The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Brighton, S. A. (2004). Symbolism, myth-making, and identity: The Red Hand of Ulster in nineteenth-century Paterson, New Jersey. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 8: 149–164.
Brighton, S. A. (2007). Ireland, America, and the Irish diaspora: An overview of Irish immigrant archaeology in the United States. In Orser, C. E. (ed.), Unearthing Hidden Ireland: Historical Archaeology in County Roscommon, Wordwell, Bray, pp. 193–216.
Brighton, S. A. (2010). An Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora: A Transitional Approach, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.
Brighton, S. A., and Orser, C. E. (2005). Archaeological Investigations at the Barlow’s Field Site, County Sligo, Center for the Study of Rural Ireland, Illinois State University, Normal.
Brighton, S. A., and Orser, C. E. (2006). Irish images on English goods in the American market: The materialization of a modern Irish heritage. In Russell, I. (ed.), Images, Representations, and Heritage: Moving Beyond Modern Approaches to Archaeology, Springer, New York, pp. 61–88.
Brundage, D. (1996). “In time of peace, prepare for war:” Key themes in the social thought of New York’s Irish nationalists, 1890–1916. In Bayor, R. H., and Meagher, T. J. (eds.), The New York Irish, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 321–334.
Burchell, R. A. (1980). The San Francisco Irish, 1848–1880, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Bushman, R. L. (1993). The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, Vintage, New York.
Castells, M. (1977). The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, Edward Arnold, London.
Chudacoff, H. P., and Smith, J. E. (2000). The Evolution of American Urban Society, 5th ed, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River.
Clark, D. J. (1986a). Hibernia America: The Irish and Regional Cultures, Greenwood, New York.
Clark, D. J. (1986b). Intrepid men: Three Philadelphia Irish leaders, 1880–1920. In Meagher, T. J. (ed.), From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880–1920, Greenwood, New York, pp. 93–115.
Clark, C. E. (1988). Domestic architecture as an index to social history: The Romantic Revival and the Cult of Domesticity in America, 1840–1870. In St. George, R. B. (ed.), Material Life in America, 1600–1860, Northeastern University Press, Boston, pp. 535–549.
Comerford, R. V. (1985). The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society, 1848–1882, Wolfhound, Dublin.
Cotz, J. A., Rutsch, M. J., and Wilson, C. (1980). Salvage Archaeology Project, Paterson, New Jersey,1973–1976, Volume III: Paterson’s Dublin, Report on file at the New Jersey Department of Transportation, Trenton.
De Cunzo, L. (1983). Economics and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Perspective on Nineteenth-Century Paterson, New Jersey, Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
de Nie, M. (2001). “A medley mob of Irish-American plotters and Irish dupes”: The British press and transatlantic Fenianism. Journal of British Studies 40: 213–240.
Diner, H. (1996). “The most Irish city in the union”: The era of the great migration, 1844–1877. In Bayor, R. H., and Meagher, T. J. (eds.), The New York Irish, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 87–106.
Donnelly, J. S. (2001). The Great Irish Potato Famine, Sutton, Gloucestershire.
Emmons, D. M. (1989). The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875–1925, University of Illinois Press, Chicago.
Everett, A. H. (1925). Difficulties of assimilation. In Abbot, E. (ed.), Historical Aspects of the Immigration Problem: Select Documents, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 440–448.
Fitts, R. K. (1999). The archaeology of middle-class domesticity and gentility in Victorian Brooklyn. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 39–62.
Fitts, R. K. (2000). The five points reformed, 1865–1900. In Yamin, R. (ed.), Tales of the Five Points: Working-Class Life in Nineteenth-Century New York, Volume 1, A Narrative History and Archaeology, John Milner Associates, West Chester, pp. 67–89.
Fitts, R. K., and Yamin, R. (1999). The Archaeology of Domesticity in Victorian Brooklyn, Report submitted to Atlantic Center Housing Associates, Brooklyn, New York.
Foner, E. (1980). Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War, Oxford University Press, New York.
Gallman, J. M. (2000). Receiving Erin’s Children: Philadelphia, Liverpool, and the Irish Famine Migration, 1845–1855, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Garvin, T. (1986). The anatomy of a nationalist revolution: Ireland, 1858–1928. Comparative Studies in Society and History 28: 468–501.
Geismar, J. H. (ed.) (1989). History and Archaeology of the Greenwich Mews Site, Greenwich Village, New York, Report submitted to the Greenwich Mews Associates, New York.
Goldberg, D. J. (1989). A Tale of Three Cities: Labor Organization and Protest in Paterson, Passaic, and Lawrence, 1916–1921, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.
Green, H. (1983). The Light of Home, An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victoria America, Pantheon, New York.
Grier, K. C. (1988). Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington.
Groover, M. D. (2003). An Archaeological Study of Rural Capitalism and Material Life: The Gibbs Farmstead in Southern Appalachia, 1790–1920, Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.
Gutman, H. (1977). Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, Vintage, New York.
Hull, K. L., and Brighton, S. A. (2002). A Report of Investigations for the Fifth Season of Archaeological Research at Ballykilcline Townland, Kilglass Parish, County Roscommon, Ireland, Center for the Study of Rural Ireland, Illinois State University Press, Normal.
Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish Became White, Routledge, New York.
Kasson, J. (1990). Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America, Hill and Wang, New York.
Kinealy, C. (1995). This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine, 1845–52, Roberts Rinehart, Boulder.
Kinealy, C. (1997). “Was the famine inevitable?” The response of the government to the Great Famine. In Ó Conaire, B. (ed.), The Famine Lectures, Roscommon Herald, Boyle, pp. 16–27.
Lee, J. J. (2006). Introduction: Interpreting Irish America. In Lee, J. J., and Casey, M. (eds.), Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States, New York University Press, New York, pp. 1–62.
Lefebvre, H. (1982). The Sociology of Marx. Guterman, N. (trans.), Columbia University Press, New York.
Leone, M. P. (1995). A historical archaeology of capitalism. American Anthropologist 47: 251–268.
Leone, M. P. (1999). Ceramics from Annapolis, Maryland: A measure of time routines and work discipline. In Leone, M. P., and Potter, P. B. (eds.), Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York, pp. 195–216.
Leone, M. P. (2003). Where is culture to be found by historical archaeologists? In Leone, M. P., and Potter, P. B. (eds.), The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, Percheron, Clinton Corners, pp. v–xxi.
Lodziak, C. (2002). The Myth of Consumerism, Pluto, London.
Lucas, M. T. (1994). A la Russe, á la pell-mell, or á la practical: Ideology and the compromise at the late nineteenth-century dinner table. Historical Archaeology 28(4): 80–93.
McCaffrey, L. J. (1997). The Irish-Catholic Diaspora in America, Catholic University Press, Washington.
McGuire, R. H. (1992). A Marxist Archaeology, Percheron Press/Eliot Werner Publications, Clinton Corners.
McKivigan, J. R., and Robertson, T. J. (1996). The Irish American worker in transition, 1877–1914. In Bayor, R. H., and Meagher, T. J. (eds.), The New York Irish, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 301–320.
McLoughlin, W. (1978). Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Meagher, T. J. (ed.) (1986a). From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880–1920, Greenwood, New York.
Meagher, T. J. (1986b). Introduction. In Meagher, T. J. (ed.), From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880–1920, Greenwood, New York, pp. 1–25.
Meagher, T. J. (2001). Inventing Irish America: Generation, Class, and Ethnic Identity in a New England City, 1880–1928, University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend.
Merrifield, A. (2002). Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City, Routledge, New York.
Miller, K. A. (1985). Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America, Oxford University Press, New York.
Mintz, S. (1996). Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions Into Eating, Culture, and the Past, Beacon, Boston.
Mitchell, B. C. (1986). “They do not differ greatly”: The pattern of community development among Irish in late nineteenth-century Lowell, Massachusetts. In Meagher, T. J. (ed.), From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880–1920, Greenwood, New York, pp. 53–73.
Modell, J. (1978). Patterns of consumption, acculturation, and family income strategies in late nineteenth-century America. In Hareven, T. K., and Vinovskis, M. A. (eds.), Family and Population in Nineteenth-Century America, Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp. 206–227.
Mokyr, J. (1980). Industrialization and poverty in Ireland and the Netherlands. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10: 429–458.
Mullins, P. (1996). Negotiating industrial capitalism: Mechanisms of change among agrarian potters. In De Cunzo, L., and Herman, B. L. (eds.), Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, pp. 151–184.
Mullins, P. R. (1999a). Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African-America and Consumer Culture, Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.
Mullins, P. R. (1999b). “A bold and gorgeous front”: The contradictions of African America and consumer culture. In Leone, M. P., and Potter, P. B. (eds.), Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York, pp. 169–193.
Mullins, P. R. (1999c). Race and the genteel consumer: Class and African-American consumption, 1850–1930. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 22–38.
Mullins, P. R. (2001). Racializing the parlor: Race and Victorian bric-a-brac consumption. In Orser, C. E. (ed.), Race and the Archaeology of Identity, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 158–176.
Mullins, P. R. (2004). Ideology, power, and capitalism: The historical archaeology of consumption. In Meskell, L., and Preucel, R. W. (eds.), A Companion to Social Archaeology, Blackwell, Malden, pp. 195–211.
Mushkat, J. (1981). Tammany: The Evolution of a Political Machine, 1789–1865, Syracuse University Press, NY.
Ó Gráda, C. (1988). Ireland Before and After the Famine: Explorations in Economic History, 1800–1930, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Ollman, B. (1971). Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, Cambridge University Press, NY.
O’Mahony, P., and Delanty, G. (1998). Rethinking Irish History: Nationalism, Identity, and Ideology, MacMillan, London.
“One of ‘Em.” (1925 [1855]). “America for Americans.” In the wide-awake gift: A know-nothing token for 1855. In Abbott, E. (ed.), Historical Aspects of the Immigration Problem: Select Documents, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 791–793.
Orser, C. E. (1996a). A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World, Plenum, New York.
Orser, C. E. (1996b). Artifacts, networks, and plantations: Toward a further understanding of the social aspects of material culture. In De Cunzo, L., and Herman, B. L. (eds.), Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, pp. 233–256.
Orser, C. E. (1997). Of dishes and drains: An archaeological perspective on Irish rural life in the Great Famine Era. New Hibernia Review 1: 120–135.
Orser, C. E. (1999). Archaeology and the challenges of capitalist farm tenancy in America. In Leone, M. P., and Potter, P. B. (eds.), Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, Kluwer Academic Press, New York, pp. 143–167.
Orser, C. E. (2000). Why is there no archaeology in Irish Studies? Irish Studies Review 8: 157–165.
Orser, C. E. (2001). Vessels of honor and dishonor: The symbolic character of Irish earthenware. New Hibernia Review 5: 83–100.
Orser, C. E. (2003). Toward a theory of power for historical archaeology: Plantations and space. In Leone, M. P., and Potter, P. B. (eds.), The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, Percheron, Clinton Corners, pp. 313–343.
Orser, C. E. (2004). Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Orser, C. E. (2007). The Archaeology of Race and Racialization in Historic America, University of Florida Press, Gainesville.
Paynter, R. (2003). Steps to an archaeology of capitalism: Material change and class analysis. In Leone, M. P., and Potter, P. B. (eds.), The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, Percheron, Clinton Corners, pp. 407–433.
Praetzellis, A., and Praetzellis, M. (1992). Faces and facades: Victorian ideology in early Sacramento. In Yentsch, A. E., and Beaudry, M. C. (eds.), The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz, CRC, Boca Raton, pp. 75–99.
Praetzellis, M., Praetzellis, A., and Brown, M. (1988). What happened to the silent majority? Research strategies for studying dominant group material culture in the late 19th century. In Beaudry, M. C. (ed.), New Directions in Archaeology: Documentary Archaeology in the New World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 192–202.
Putman’s Monthly: A Magazine of American Literature, Science, and Art. (1925 [1855]). Who are Americans? In Abbott, E. (ed.), Historical Aspects of the Immigration Problem: Select Documents, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 793–799.
Quinn, D. (2004). The Irish in New Jersey: Four Centuries of American Life, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.
Rosenberg, C. S. (1971). Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York Mission Movement, 1812–1830, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Ryan, M. P. (1981). Cradle of Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Shackel, P. A. (1996). Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era, Plenum, New York.
Shackel, P. A. (1998). Classical and liberal republicanism and the new consumer culture. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 2: 1–20.
Shannon, W. (1963). The American Irish: A Political and Social Portrait, MacMillan, New York.
Shelley, T. J. (2006). Twentieth-century American Catholicism and Irish Americans. In Lee, J. J., and Casey, M. R. (eds.), Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States, New York University Press, New York, pp. 574–608.
Skerret, E. (1986). The development of Catholic identity among Irish Americans in Chicago, 1880–1920. In Meagher, T. J. (ed.), From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880–1920, Greenwood, New York, pp. 117–138.
Spann, E. K. (1996). Union green: The Irish community and the Civil War. In Bayor, R. H., and Meagher, T. J. (eds.), The New York Irish, John Hopkins Press University, Baltimore, pp. 193–209.
Thernstrom, S. (1964). Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Towey, M. G. (1986). Kerry Patch revisited: Irish Americans in St. Louis in the turn of the century. In Meagher, T. J. (ed.), From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880–1920, Greenwood, New York, pp. 139–159.
Vinyard, J. (1976). The Irish on the Urban Frontier: Nineteenth-Century Detroit, 1850–1880, Arno, New York.
Voss, K. (1993). The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Wall, D. (1994). The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban America, Plenum, New York.
Wall, D. (2001). Family meals and evening parties: Constructing domesticity in nineteenth-century middle-class New York. In Delle, J. A., Mrozowski, S. A., and Paynter, R. (eds.), Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, pp. 109–141.
Whelan, I. (2006). Religious rivalry and the making of Irish-American identity. In Lee, J. J., and Casey, M. (eds.), Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States, New York University Press, New York, pp. 271–285.
Yamin, R. (ed.) (1999). With Hope and Labor: Everyday Life in Paterson’s Dublin Neighborhood Volume 1: Data Recovery on Blocks 863 and 866 within the Route 19 Connector Corridor in Paterson, New Jersey, Report submitted to New Jersey Department of Transportation, Trenton, New Jersey.
Yamin, R. (ed.) (2000). Tales of the Five Points: Working-Class Life in Nineteenth-Century New York, Volume 1, A Narrative History and Archaeology, John Milner Associates, West Chester, PA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-010-0128-4