MATERIAL CULTURE IN DIASPORA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY …...During this pre-famine period, the emigration of the Irish to North America began, thus creating the roots of the Irish diaspora

MATERIAL CULTURE IN DIASPORA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY... http://www.soa.ilstu.edu/anthropology/theses/peterson/Thesis--Final.htm

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Material Culture in Diaspora: A Comparative Study of Ballykilcline, Ireland and Five Points, New

YorkAaron Peterson

Under the direction of Dr. Charles E. Orser Jr.

Table of Contents

AbstractIntroductionDiasporaThe Great MigrationThe Sites

Ballykilcline, County Roscommon, IrelandFive Points, New York City, USA

The Ceramics of the Irish DiasporaOrganizationWare TypesWare Functions

AnalysisType and FunctionDecorations

ConclusionReferences CitedAppendix


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Abstract

The famine of 1846-1852 added to other factors that created the enormous influx of Irish immigration to the

United States. With those immigrants came material culture and traditions in material culture. Through the

study of the ceramic assemblages of two sites, Ballykilcline, an Irish evicted tenant farmer village, and Five

Points, the infamous New York City

immigrant slum, the relationship between the immigrant in flux and material culture will be further explored

and discerned.

The study is conducted by comparing the presence or absence of ceramic ware types and decorations.


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Introduction

The potato crop failure of 1846-1852 was the final cause for the increase in Irish emigration. The

Great Migration that followed marked one of the largest single immigrations to the United States in history,

seeing nearly 2 million Irish arrive between 1840 and 1860 (Handlin 1951). This great influx into the nation

has been studied extensively and much is known about the Irish diaspora. Little, however, has been studied

concerning the material culture of that diaspora.

What can material culture tell us about the diaspora of the Irish? I propose we can learn much about

the relationship between people and their possessions through this study. The sentimental and emotional

attachment to objects are

very strong in people’s motivations and desires to obtain and maintain certain objects in their possession.

These motivations are combined with several outside factors, including economics and pressures from those

within and outside of one’s family or ethnic, religious, or socioeconomic group to produce a pattern of

consumer choice that is riddled with indicators of social status and group identity.

The study to follow will investigate and compare the ceramic assemblages of the famine-era Irish tenant

farmer and the newly arrived Irish immigrant.

This comparison of collections by ceramic ware types and decorations presents us with invaluable

information about the change from rural to urban and from famine-era Ireland to the United States in the

middle to late 18th Century.


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Diaspora

The study of diaspora is one that has risen in acceptance and prominence in historical studies in recent years.

The term diaspora comes from the biblical usage of the word to refer to the dispersion of Jews out of their

homeland and among those of other faiths.

The term diaspora has since been applied to the Jewish community throughout the world. Recently, however,

the term has been expanded to refer to any people that has been dispersed from other homelands throughout

the world.

The basis of diaspora theory is that the history of people who have been dispersed out of their homeland

needs to be studied as a whole.

The past tendency in historical research has been to study groups of people as sub-categories of a larger

national identity. An example of this approach would be a study of the Chinese-Americans. The flaw of this

approach, however, is that these groups of people are more readily and fully understood when placed in

context of their relationship to their homeland and the rest of their ethnic population scattered throughout the

globe.

This approach has been best described by Donald Akenson (1993:3-4) in his comparison of diaspora

study to the Fabergé egg. This creation of Russian craftsmen shows incredible detail and precision. It could

also be sliced apart and flattened so as to view the three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional format, as

we do with maps of the earth. This would not, however, do justice to the marvel that the Fabergé egg is. The

complexity of is must be viewed from all 360º to appreciate its beauty. The diaspora must also be studied as a

whole to understand the complexities of the patterns and the ethno-cultural patterns of the diasporas as a

whole (Akenson 1993:4).

In the rise of diaspora theory’s approach, many groups have been examined through the lens of diaspora. The

Jewish have always been identified in terms of diaspora studies as their dispersion and exile are the root of the


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word in question. Historians have also applied the term heavily to the Black, or African, diaspora (Lemelle

and Kelley 1994, Jalloh and Maizlish 1996, Segal 1995) and the Irish diaspora (Akenson 1993, Bielenberg

2000, Bishop 1999, Fanning 2000, McCaffrey 1976). Beyond these major contributors to the diaspora

literature, many other groups are growing in representation. Literature can be found on Cuban (Bonnin and

Brown 2002), Polish (Drzewiecka 2002), Chinese (Djao 2002, Hamilton 1999, Pan 1990, Ma and Cartier

2003), and Indian diasporas to name only a few (Rodenbeck 2002, Shukla 2001). This adoption and

expansion of diaspora theory and approach throughout the scholarly studies of virtually any group that has

transnationalized, further shows the effect and impact this approach has had on the way that history is studied

and presented.

There are isolated efforts, however, to disclude some groups from the realm of diaspora studies. The

effort to label some groups parts of “semi-diasporas” (Chaliand and Rageau 1995:xiii) or exclude them from

the term altogether, are political efforts to frame the movements of people outside of the imperialism of the

West. This effort, however, is somewhat outside the realm of anthropological literature.

The impact this has had on the field of archaeology is only in its infancy. Archaeologists have slowly

started to incorporate diaspora theory into their analysis of evidence as a way to adapt their traditional interest

in migration to an archaeology of a more modern world. The archaeological study of diaspora has lagged

behind the historians’ adoption and what is being done is mostly within the realm of the African diaspora

(Orser 1998b).

This does not, however, undermine the importance of diaspora in archaeology, both now and in the future.

Much of the gap formed between the two uses is due much to the infancy of historical archaeology as a

discipline. As the field grows and matures, especially outside of North America where it is most prominent,

diaspora archaeology will also undoubtedly find greater acceptance and importance to the scholarship of

identity.

Among the diaspora literature outside of archaeology there is little or no mention of material culture.

This does not, however, make a case that material culture plays an insignificant historical role. The tradition

of historical research and scholarship has always been to focus on the written accounts of events. Even

though there has been historical archaeology that has shown the written word to often be unreliable, there is

resistance to change.

This presents the challenge to the growing field of historical archaeology to move further into the arena of the


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historians to work together to construct a more accurate and honest depiction of our past in order that we may

more accurately learn from it.

This is also the reason why studies such as these and others must be conducted and brought into the historical

arena in order to contribute to the growing diasporic approach.


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The Great Migration

As previously stated, the Irish immigration to the United States was one of the single largest the

continent had ever seen.

This landing of new immigrants was the foundation for what would become an enormous and influential

diaspora. This diaspora would spread the globe and include growing Irish communities in Canada, New

Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and Great Britain (Akenson 1993).

The Great Migration to the United States by the people of Ireland was produced most famously by the potato

famine of 1846-1852, but there was a series of events and a set of conditions that played an enormous role in

producing the motivation for this people to leave their homeland. The idea of the people being forced from

Ireland is illustrated in the Gaelic word for the act of leaving Ireland, deoraí, which is translated as “exile”,

not “emigration” (Miller and Wagner 1994).

The Great Migration can be traced, in part, to the English-based land tenure system. The system of

Protestant Ascendancy in place in Ireland since 1690 granted the English and Scottish colonists vast tracts of

land on which thy constructed enormous estates and held the Catholic Irish to exorbitant leases (Foster 1992:

134-38).

If, or rather, when the tenants could not supply their rent or the landlords found the land more profitable when

used for grazing sheep or cattle, the farmers were evicted and their homes razed. The Catholic tenants were

in such need of cash they turned to subleasing some of their rented land to other Catholics, on which the

subtenants often could not feed their families on the small crop of potatoes they produced. During all of this,

the tenants were forced to pay tithes to the Protestant Church of Ireland, the established church of the

landlords (Miller and Wagner 1994).

During this pre-famine period, the emigration of the Irish to North America began, thus creating the roots of

the Irish diaspora. In the 1830s an estimated 433,000 Irish left for the United States and Canada, firmly

establishing the Irish population base that would encourage those that left the homeland to go across the

Atlantic (Akenson 1993: 258).

This system of oppressive rents and inability of the native Irish to maintain the lands of their ancestors in


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order to provide for their families lays the foundation for the struggles that arose when the famine swept the

Irish countryside.

The potato blight of 1846-1852 was not the first in the Irish crop history, during the 1830s the harvest failed

in eight out of ten years either locally or nationally (Bishop 1999). The famed blight, however, was the most

severe and had the most drastic effect on Irish emigration. Fueling the potential for disaster was the rapid

increase in the Irish population.

In spite of increasing emigration from the island, the population increased from about four million to

eight-and-a-half million people between 1781 and 1841 (Hachey, et al. 1996:55). This huge expansion set the

stage for disaster, as more and more were dependent on a single crop on the land with limited space.

The blight began in mid-1845 but was relatively mild until the summer of 1846 when the complete failure of

the crop took hold (Anbinder 2001:55). Phytophthora infestans was the disease that hit Ireland, thriving in

damp and mild conditions, it turned the leaves of the plant black and quickly left the plant lying in the fields

with the potatoes below black and rotten (Bishop 1999: 89). This failure left the peasants with no food to

feed their families, no money to pay the rent to their landlords, and too unhealthy to combat disease.

Much focus has been placed on the tragedy as function of the inadequacy in British aid and relief. The

popular belief of the Irish and the diasporates has continually been that the British accelerated, and in many

minds, caused, the Irish Famine.

This view is still held in much of the popular literature concerning the Irish diaspora and famine, but not in

most of the serious historical writing. British landowners offered some assistance, like offering passage to

North America, but most followed the British government’s refusal to fund Irish emigration (Miller and

Wagner 1994: 29).

Some food was imported from America but at the same time, the British continued to export cattle, butter

wheat, barley and vegetables out

of Ireland to Britain, leaving the hungry to flee to the city to beg for assistance (Bishop 1999: 93).

Landowners were encouraged by the London Times

to replace the Irish that were evicted with English and Scottish tenants who would be “thrifty, loyal, and

Protestant”; demonstrating the depth to which the deep-seated prejudices ran (Miller and Wagner 1994: 29).


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The criticism stemming from the lack of relief has itself been questioned by historical writers. Donald

Akenson argues that these views are much the result of desires to cast blame for the tragedy that occurred.

Those that advocate that the Irish over-population caused the Famine are suggesting that the lack of good

sense to limit the size of their families put themselves in position for the disaster (Akenson 1993: 19). The

Great Famine, however, is not alone in history.

The Chinese Famine of 1877-78 and the Bengal famine of 1940-43 each claimed ten million lives or more

(Akenson 1993:19).

The fact that famines of this magnitude have occurred in the twentieth century and smaller ones occurred and

continue in Africa in the 1990s and after indicates that these disasters will not go away with improvements in

social planning and better intentions from government and the international community (Akenson 1993: 19).

The greater blame-casting, however, has been conducted by those focused on the failed relief efforts. The

efforts to paint a picture of the helpless Irish peasant and the unsympathetic landowners and officials are

great.

In reality, however, “the Famine relief, inadequate though it was, more efficiently provided in Ireland in the

last century than at present the United Nations is able to provide in Eritrea and the Sudan” (Akenson 1993:

19).

The danger of these characterizations is the trivializing of such an enormous tragedy as mere ill social

planning or aristocratic conspiracy.

More important than the reality, however, is the perceived reality of the people involved. In the case

of the Famine, the Irish peasants were very much attached to the idea that the British were causing, or at least

perpetuating, the desperate situation.

This attitude and perception is best understood through the inscription on the memorial at the mass graves of

those who died of disease crossing the Atlantic, located on Grosse Isle in Canada. The memorial was erected

by the Ancient Order of Hibernians in 1909 and is translated from Gaelic to read:

Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of the foreign tyrants and

an artificial famine in the years 1847-48. God’s loyal blessing upon them. Let this monument be a token to

their name and honour from the Gaels of America. God Save Ireland. (Bishop 1999: 93)

In the end, the Famine would take a death toll of an estimated minimum of one million and a maximum of

one-and-a-half million of the Irish Population (Akenson 1993: 18).


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The Sites

To further examine the process of immigration and creation of diaspora, two sites were chosen that

were of periods instrumental in the process.

The Irish site of Ballykilcline in County Roscommon has been chosen as a source for a portrayal of tenant

farmer life at the onset of the Famine and the mass emigration. The other site that will be examined is the

Five Points site of New York City. The excavation of this notorious 19th century immigrant slum will offer a

portrayal of the life of the recent Irish immigrant.

Ballykilcline, County Roscommon, Ireland

The Ballykilcline site is located in a townland that is identified as one of three centers of the rent strike

leading up to the potato blight (Scally 1995: 79-80). The area excavated was rented by the Narry family;

Mark and his sons James, Edward and Luke (Orser 1998a: 6). The estate was managed by Maurice Mahon

beginning in 1800 and then was passed to his son Thomas in 1819 and then to his other son Maurice upon

Thomas’ death in 1835 (Orser 1998a:5). Finally it was passed to a tyrannical landlord in 1836, Major Denis

Mahon, upon the declaration of Maurice as mentally incompetent (Orser 1998a:5). The Crown actually took

back control of the land in 1834 as the lease had expired and Mahon had started negotiations for extension.

Beginning in 1834 many tenants of the area stopped paying rents. Each year the number of rents paid

decreased as the strike took hold.

Beginning in 1836, the Narrys joined 26 other tenants in not paying any rent and the Crown began its

attempts to collect (Orser 1998a: 7-10).

The decrease in rent payments from 1834 to 1842 was 97.5 percent (Orser 1998a: 6). Finally in 1847, after

years of demanding rent but taking no action, the Crown’s agents moved to evict the tenants unless rent could

be paid in full.

By this time the blight had taken hold in Country Roscommon and there was no way the Narrys or other

tenants could produce what the agents demanded (Orser 1998a: 10). The tenants left Ballykilcline and stated

their chain migration from Strokestown to Dublin and on to Liverpool (Orser 1998a:10). From Liverpool

they sailed to New York in 1848 (Orser 1998a: 10).


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The excavations at Ballykilcline were conducted in successive summer sessions from 1998 through 2002

under the direction of Dr. Orser, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University and

Adjunct Professor of Archaeology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. The project has been

conducted each summer as a field school with over 150 students from the United States and Canada

participating.

The seasons of excavation in Ireland have produced a wide range of artifactual evidence. The

collection includes nails and other metals, smoking pipes, and ceramics. The majority of the collection is

comprised of ceramic wares, as is typical in historical excavations. The results of the Ballykilcline

excavations are important to the image of the famine-era tenant farmer because there is very little

archaeological information from this period.

Five Points, New York City, USA

The New York City slum area of Five Points has been written about, depicted in drawings, and most recently,

centered as the subject for a major motion picture.

The Five Points excavation was an incredibly ambitious and well-funded project that has yielded countless

insights into the lives of the people who once inhabited this notorious slum. The neighborhood was centered

around the intersection of three streets—Orange

(now Baxter), Cross (now Park), and Anthony (now Worth) (Yamin 1997:46). The excavation was conducted

by Historic Conservation and Interpretation, a New Jersey consulting firm, and the analysis was conducted by

John Milner Associates of Philadelphia for the U.S. General Services Administration.

There was a wealth of artifacts recovered from the historic excavation, totaling nearly one million found in 22

cesspools and privies.

The terminus post quem dates for the analytical stratum fell in a ninety-year range from 1800 to 1890. The

artifacts found ranged from ceramic redware flowerpots to ornate smoking pipes (Yamin 1998). From this

study there were many conclusions made about the lives of the inhabitants. The historical accounts of the

period are riddled with generalizations and stereotypes made from a privileged position. These accounts

often make the people of Five Points out to be so impoverished and lawless that they obtain a status of

somewhat less than human.


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The archaeology of the site, however, portrays a group of working-class men and women that were making

every attempt to create a “civilized” and respectable life for themselves in the New World.


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The Ceramics of the Irish Diaspora

Organization

The effort of analyzing these two ceramic collections presented a challenge based on the sheer size of

the Five Points collection and the differences in categorization presented in the two sites’ reports. The

assemblages from the two sites were organized into large tables that were adapted from the organization and

design of the Five Points project.

The material from Five Points was organized into tables of ceramic assemblages based on each of the fourteen

privy features that were fully excavated (Yamin 1998, vol. 1:A21-A112). They were further divided into

separate tables for the eighteen different analytical strata that were identified to be within the project’s date

range based on Terminus Post Quem dates for each stratum.

The tables, when combined, organized the collection into 66 different wares based on type and

decoration.

The major ware types of Five Points were Bone China, Porcelain, Creamware, Pearlware, Redware,

Stoneware, White Granite, Whiteware, and Yellowware. The tables are also organized by vessel function.

The ten categories of vessel function are Teaware, Tableware, Serving Pieces, Preparation, Storage,

Multi-function, Unidentified, Miscellaneous, Hygiene, and Houseware (Table 1). The data from Ballykilcline

was then adapted to these tables.

Some extrapolation was necessary due to the difference in authorship of the reports. The organization and

categorization of the collection of Ballykilcline was inherently not identical to that of the New York material,

but was more or less easily adapted.

The Ballykilcline material was organized into fewer decorative categories, but the artifact inventory had the

specific decorations included in the description, enabling the comparison of these materials (Hull 2001, Hull

and Brighton 2002, Hull and Orser 2001, Orser 1998a, and Orser et al. 2000). This completed conversion

resulted in two identical tables featuring all the ceramic vessel counts from Five Points and Ballykilcline

(Table 2).

These tables, while uniform and clear, subdivide the collections into such small groups by ware decoration


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that they are very complex and difficult to draw conclusions from. It is for this reason that the simplified

tables were created (Tables 4 and 5). These tables break the collection down into manageable groups. Tables

4 and 5 present the collection broken down into the major ware types mentioned before, Bone China,

Porcelain, Creamware, Pearlware, Redware, Stoneware, White Granite, Whiteware, and Yellowware. Tables

5 and 6 are not the result of the removal of data, but merely the clear and concise presentation of the totals for

each function group.

The main tables were reduced to show only the functional categories, removing the ware types that

unnecessarily confused the analysis of the wares by function (Tables 7 and 8). These tables are also presented

in graphical form in Figures 1 and 2.

Ware Types

Porcelain

This extremely popular ware type was first developed in China and is found in three varieties. The

first porcelain developed in China is called “hard paste” or “true” porcelain and is made by mixing a fine clay

called “china clay” or “kaolin”, only found in deposits in China, east-central Germany, and southwest

England, with “petuntse” (Orser 2002:433-34).

Secondly, “soft paste” porcelain was developed in France by mixing a compound known as “frit” with water

and white clay.

This ware type was produced outside of France, particularly in England in the eighteenth century (Orser

2002:434).

Finally, “bone china” was first produced around 1800 and combined ash from burned animal bones with the

kaolin and petuntse (Orser 2002:434).

Creamware

Creamware was first produced in 1780 and was described as a “Lightweight thinly potted lead-glazed

cream-coloured earthenware, made with the same basic ingredients as the saltglaze body but fired at a lower

temperature” (Godden 1990:71).

The glaze was made of a mixture of flint, ground lead, and pipeclay (Godden 1990:71). Josiah Wedgwood

popularized the ware and labeled it “Queen’s Ware”, maintaining its popularity until the advent of pearlware

in the late eighteenth century (Hull 2001:27, Orser et al. 2000:35).


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Pearlware

First introduced by Wedgwood in the 1770s, pearlware improved upon creamware by adding cobalt oxide to

the glaze (Godden 1990:139), making the ware whiter but also producing the identifiable bluish or greenish

puddling in the crevices and in the foot rim (Hull 2001:27). This ware was eventually eclipsed by whiteware

in the 1820s (Orser et al. 2000:36).

Redware

Redware is a soft porous ware that was produced locally in Ireland and is the same material flowerpots were

made of in the 19th Century and are still made of today. The body is usually glazed to seal the ceramic from

absorbing and losing water (Orser et al. 2000:33).

In Ireland vessels of this material would be made and sold locally in markets and were used as milk pans,

large bowls, jugs and churns (Hull 2001:34).

Stoneware

This sand tempered ware was made of local riverbank clays and comprised the same vessels as did redware

(Rhead 1962:79, Fisher 1962:96).

Stoneware was often salt-glazed to seal the vessel, prevent chemical reaction, and for decoration (Smith

1994).

White Granite

White granite was first produced in the 1840s and was meant specifically for the export out of Britain

(Orser 2002:300). This accounts for the separation between its representation in Ireland and New York. This

pottery was designed to be a more cost-effective imitation of porcelain and was mostly press-moulded to

produce the relief designs around the rim and was left undecorated. This ware would become the most

significant north Staffordshire ceramic export to North America from 1850-80, remaining unused in Britain,

and is still produced today as hotel wares (Orser 2002:300-301).

Whiteware

This ware is the standard of white tableware that is still produced to this day. The glaze is truly white,

lacking the yellow of creamware or the blue-green of pearlware (Hull 2001:27). Whiteware is also extremely

receptive to a wide array of decorations, bolstering its popularity.


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Yellowware

This coarse earthenware is less coarse than redware and is usually finished with a cream or buff paste.

They are finished with clear lead or alkaline glazes or yellow slips that bring out the color of the clay, giving

the vessels, usually bowls, a pale to deep yellow color (Ramsey 1947:148, Hull 2001:34).

Ware Functions

The ware functions of the two sites had designations that varied slightly due to the inherent nature of the sites

and the fact that excavations and reports were not undertaken by the same researchers. This has led to some

extrapolation, as mentioned previously, but only in rare cases where the type of vessel was not identifiable

from the literature.


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Analysis

Type and Function

Analysis began with the examination of the simplified tables and corresponding charts. There are

many conclusions to be drawn from these initial observations and much they can tell us about the life-altering

transition the Irish immigrants were facing.

There is a drastic difference in the representation of some of the ware types, namely porcelain,

creamware, and redware. White granite, yellowware, and bone china are also completely absent in the

collection of Ballykilcline while they show some presence in the Five Points material. Yellowware makes up

a little more than two percent of the collection in Five Points while it is not represented at all in the Irish

assemblage. The yellowware may have replaced some of the redware that is used in Ireland but missing from

the New York collection. Yellowware

took on a number of functions, mostly representing preparation vessels and hygiene vessels. These uses

illustrate the low value of yellowware

as it was not used for purposes in which it would be displayed, but limited to behind-the-scenes preparation

vessels and chamberpots.

The creamware can be dismissed as merely a matter of period differential. The decline in creamware

in the late eighteenth century preceded the rise in population in the New York slum and preceded the mass

immigration of the Irish to the city.

The disparity in the makeup of the collection of redware is much a result of the transition from the

rural to urban setting. The redware of Ireland

was produced by small local potters and would be extremely inexpensive for storage vessels such as jugs and

crocks. In New York, the shift to the urban setting reduced the use of this inexpensive pottery, though it was

definitely still in use. The redware of Five Points is predominantly used in flowerpots. While these may have

been used for decoration, it has also been suggested that the tenants may have been growing traditional herbal

remedies to avoid costly medical treatment and further stigmatization of the immigrant as carrier of disease

(Yamin 1998, vol 1:B36). This retention of medicinal techniques is important to the study of diaspora as the

immigrants were actively holding on to aspects of their homeland for a number of social, personal, and


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economic reasons. Inherently there was no use for these flowerpots in the countryside of their homeland.

The examination of the lack of bone china can be related to the increase in porcelain of the Irish

following immigration. There is not a large portion of the Five Points collection that is made of the porcelain

varieties, however it does mark a large departure from the characteristics of the Ballykilcline assemblage. At

Five Points, porcelain makes up a total of almost ten percent of the collection when the hard-paste, soft-paste,

and bone china varieties are combined, compared with Ballykilcline where total porcelain only comprises one

percent. This clearly marks the increased availability of these fine wares in the urban setting of New York,

but also shows an apparent increase in the expendable income for the Irish immigrant. There were

opportunities for the immigrant to purchase wares at estate sales or second-hand shops (Yamin 1998,

vol.2:20), but the increase in such fine wares still indicates an ascension in at least economic wealth and

possibly social status for the newly arrived immigrant.

The lack of white granite present in Ireland

can be attributed to the fact that white granite was only exported to North America and was not marketed in

Britain or its immediate geographic sphere. It also did not rise in popularity until the 1840s and later. This

led to a realization that the data from Five Points had to be limited as to which features were included in the

analysis.

This limitation is necessary to be able to see the differences in the ceramics that are directly coming during

the period of the Great Migration and discard the differences attributed to technological change. This being

said, the features from Five Points that had terminus post quem dates later than 1860 were removed from the

totals, reducing the total vessel count from 2521 to 1690 (Tables 6 and 9). This reduction brought out more

relevant patterns to the analysis within the scope of this research.

After removing the later dated features, it was shown that whiteware was less prevalent than

previously thought in the Five Points collection, falling from about 32 percent to about 27 percent, pearlware

was more prevalent, rising to 31 percent from 22 percent, and white granite falls from nine percent to three

percent. The increase in whiteware and decrease in pearlware in later dates stems partly from the increase in

popularity of whiteware overall as it took over as the leading ware type over pearlware in the 1820s, the

change trickling down to the lowest classes over time.

The analysis of ceramic functional groups can also lead to conclusions about the lives of the Irish immigrant.

There was very little change in vessel function after removing the features dating post-1860, but those


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features were removed to maintain research consistency. There is some difference in the compositional

makeup that is attributed to all the fields, however multi-function and hygiene are categorically absent from

the Irish collection while they each make up more than five percent of the New York assemblage. This can be

attributed to the rural versus urban lifestyle.

While Five Points was certainly not the cleanliest place to live, one can assume that personal hygiene ceramic

ware was virtually unknown in famine-era rural Ireland as most of the vessels in this category were chamber

pots.

The lack of multifunction vessels can be attributed most likely to the difference in categorization between the

Five Points and Ballykilcline research teams.

Another notable difference is in percentage of the collection designated as storage vessels. About seven

percent of Five Points’ vessels were for storage while almost 13 percent of the Irish assemblage was

designated storage containers.

This can again be attributed to the change in environment, from rural to heavily urban. There was less need

for long term storage in the urban environment due to the higher availability of foodstuffs compared to the

countryside.

The similarities in teaware composition in the functional analysis also lead to interesting conclusions.

Even through these tenant farmers had come to America with virtually nothing they made efforts to assemble

teaware sets upon their establishment in New York City. This effort demonstrates the emotional attachment

to material goods and the need to re-establish the possessions of the homeland for the recent immigrant.

These goods would offer comfort in the connection to the land they left, even though that land was dominated

by religious and economic oppression and starvation, demonstrating the power of selective memory.

Decorations

The ware decorations were simplified for analysis by choosing the whiteware, being the largest

representation of ware types in the Irish collection and the ware type showing a wide range of decorative

variation, to examine further.

The wares of each site were categorized according to Miller’s system of classes according to expense

(Miller1980:3-4). The four classes are as follows: 1) undecorated; 2) shell edged, sponge decorated, banded,

and mocha; 3) hand-painted; and 4) transfer printed. These categories are arranged by cost, with class one


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wares being the least expensive.

Miller maintains that ware cost can be examined through this classification as undecorated wares maintained

a fairly constant price from the late eighteenth through middle nineteenth centuries (Miller 1980:6-9).

The totals for each class were compiled into tables (Tables 10 and 11, Figure 5) and compared through

these tables.

As in the analysis of the vessel ware types and functions, those features from Five Points with terminus post

quem

dates later than 1860 were removed from the totals to maintain consistency with the scope of this research.

The differences in these class representations are dramatic. The class one representation varies

slightly, Five Points having almost nine percent of the whiteware represented by class one while at

Ballykilcline about five percent of the whiteware was in class one.

Class two shows a dramatic separation between the New York and Irish collections. Five Points

shows far less class two whiteware than Ballykilcline (38 percent at Ballykilcline versus almost 14 percent at

Five Points). What Five Points lacks in class two whiteware, however, it makes up for in class three and

four. Five Points has almost 13 percent class three wares and over 64 percent in class four, compared with

Ballykilcline’s six percent and 51 percent respectively. These differences can clearly point to an increase in

wealth that the immigrants acquired following arrival and establishment in America. The class two wares that

were more represented in the Irish collection are of a lower expense class. These wares would have allowed

the tenant farmers to own decorated whiteware at the most minimal cost.

The dominance of class four wares in both collections should not be overlooked, however. This speaks as

testimony to both the popularity of transfer-printed wares and also the fact that the Irish tenant farmer did

have some available funds to spend on expensive tablewares. This points to the possibility presented by Hull

and Orser

that these wares were purchased from income from additional cash crops or from the funds that were saved by

not paying rent to the landowners (Hull and Orser 2001:43). The fact that printed whiteware is predominantly

composed of teaware

is also testimony to the importance of the tea ceremony in this time period, both in the United States and

Europe (Tables 1 and 2).


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Conclusion

There is a considerable difference in assemblage size with Five Points having a total of 2521 ceramic

vessels compared to Ballykilcline’s 206.

This total difference may account for some of the differences, especially in the wares that are absent in

Ireland.

Further investigation is needed on this data to establish more conclusions, especially on artifactual evidence

not covered in the scope of this study.

There is also a great need to compare findings in this study to other emigrant sites that will lend more

credibility to this study and shed light on possible cross-diaspora trends and patterns for contribution to

diaspora study and theory.

This extension will hopefully lead towards the ability of prediction of finds rather than the current limitation

to postdictive analysis.

This study does, however, succeed in identifying several aspects of the formation of diaspora that

indicate the maintenance of culture.

These factors are juxtaposed with the rapid and dramatic changes that the immigrants experienced in their

lives.

The formation of diaspora is an important cultural event in that it forever changes the history of a people. It is

for this reason that it is important to investigate the process through as many lines of evidence and techniques

of research that are available to us.

Historical archaeology offers us a new method for researching the development of diaspora and seeks to

correct and supplement the historical accounts with what was actually occurring in the lives of these

oft-forgotten people.


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Appendix

Table 1


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Table 2


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Table 3 (Five Points Wares fromfeatures with TPQ dates < 1860)


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Table 4 Table 5

Table 6


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Table 7Table 8

Table 9

Table 10 Table 11


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Figure1

Figure 2


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Figure 3


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Figure 4


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Figure 5—Whiteware Decoration by Miller’s Class System

Documents

MATERIAL CULTURE IN DIASPORA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY …...During this pre-famine period, the emigration of the Irish to North America began, thus creating the roots of the Irish diaspora