Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation

6. A Case Study of Archaeology and the Practice of Race from Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Chapter 6 A Case Study of Archaeology and the Practice of Race from Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland The previous chapters have outlined one perspective that may be employed in the archaeological analysis of historic racialization. The chapters are intended to present overviews of the history of the archaeological analysis of race and to provide a coherent framework for conducting an archaeological interpretation of race that is both theoretically rigorous and practically possible. I have specifically identified Bourdieu's practice theory, linked with Lefebvre's understanding of the production ofsocial space, as one approach toward providing an archaeological analysis of race. The preceding chapters make it clear that the focus of attention here is the modern world. As such, the methodology is one that can include the combination of information that is archaeological (excavated and personally observed) and textual (written outside the analyst's perception ). The union of archaeological and textual sources also means that a multiscalar vision can be adopted, one that may include intra-site, extra-site, regional, national, and even international frames of reference . To present the kind ofinterpretation demanded by practice theory, it will be necessary to tack frequently, and perhaps not always linearly, between different geographic and temporal scales. This approach is required because history, though it appears from our vantage point to be completely linear, is in fact composed of constitutive tactics and strategies that occur every day (de Certeau 1988). It is the history of the everyday-the commonplace and the mundane practiced by millions of non-elites-that is often ignored, forgotten, or consciously misrepresented (see Parenti 1999; Trouillot 1995). The focus in this chapter is on one group of individuals who lived in the townland of Ballykilcline in north County Roscommon, in the Republic of Ireland (Figure 6.1). The men and women who lived at Ballykilcline A Case Study from Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland 197 during the 1800-1848 period were simultaneously different from and yet similar to thousands of rural individuals who lived throughout Ireland at the time. Ballykilcline provides an excellent arena for extended analysis because , in the early 1990s, historians forever linked the Irish with the process of becoming white (see, e.g., Allen 1994; Ignatiev 1995; Roediger 1991). The historical process in which the Irish were transmogrified from Figure 6.1. Location of Ballykilcline Townland in County Roscommon, Ireland 198 Chapter 6 Other to Citizen has typically been perceived as constituting a socially significant element of the Irish diaspora. Historians believe this process began in the mid- to late nineteenth century, though Allen (1994) proposes that the process had much longer roots, in effect beginning in Ireland with the appearance of the colonialist English during the twelfth century. Ballykilcline is also useful because archaeologists under my direction have excavated two cabin sites there. These excavations have provided a unique body of information that can be used in conjunction with the rather abundant textual sources compiled about the townland. To present an adequate account of the townland, however, we must often step outside its physical boundaries and explore the extra-townland social spaces within which the residents of Ballykilcline operated. The primary objective of this analysis is to examine the racial elements of life at Ballykilcline and to illustrate the residents' multilevel nexus of relationships and interactions inside the racialized social structure within which they found themselves. Conceptualized within Bourdieu's practice paradigm, the principal field of analysis will be the field of power organized around the parameters ofa consciously created and studiously maintained racialization of the Irish men, women, and children who inhabited Ballykilcline and over 60,000 similar places throughout the island. Before commencing the historical-archaeological investigation into the practice of daily life at Ballykilcline, we must return to Bonilla-Silva's (1997) outline of the structural nature of racialized social systems. Our first task must be to outline the epochal social space of rural Ireland as a backdrop to conceptualizing everyday life at Ballykilcline. The foundational understanding is that the early nineteenth-century residents of Ballykilcline did not operate within a social vacuum that was unique to their bounded settlement. Ballykilcline was a limited spatial representation to be sure, but it was also a lived, representational space as well. Tenants could have stepped over the boundaries of Ballykilcline and been conceptually aware that they had done so, but they did not become different men and women by performing this spatial act. Rather...