NATIONAL MONUMENTS SERVICE 6th ANNUAL ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE
Imirce: migration and Ireland through time
DATE: 07 October 2023
From the voyages of the first Mesolithic colonisers to the present day, the island of Ireland has seen many new arrivals coming for many different reasons. Archaeology can provide unique insights into how these people adapted to their new surroundings. Imirce: migration and Ireland through time investigated how identities were negotiated within these new contexts.
Imirce—migration, the overall theme of this programme—looked at the evidence for arrival in Ireland, alongside examples of Irish arrivals elsewhere, as a means of exploring and revealing the multiplicity of identities that have contributed—and continue to contribute—to Irish society through time. This evidence ranges from the growing body of ancient DNA evidence that is beginning to answer some lingering questions about Irish prehistoric populations to the legacy of new or introduced artefact, burial or settlement types that give us some insight into the lives of these new arrivals. Equally, such evidence has an important role in telling us about Ireland’s connections with the wider world. During the ages of exploration, colonisation and transplantations, ships crossed oceans to trade, raid or transport. Irish people were on board. The emigrations of the nineteenth century following the devastation of the Famine witnessed a population shift from Ireland to distant lands, where broader connections were forged and where the Irish diaspora expressed their identities in different contexts and emerging new communities.
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
To view the presentations click on the title
Opening address: Minister Malcolm Noonan T.D., Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform
SESSION ONE: Revealing movement through science
Raiders, Traders and Settlers in late Iron Age and early Medieval Ireland and Britain
Dr Jacqueline Cahill Wilson, Visiting Research Fellow at Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester
The Irish DNA Atlas: providing a map of Irish genetics in and out of Ireland
Dr Edmund Gilbert, Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland
SESSION TWO: Pursuing horizons
Encounters, stories and connections: hunter-gatherer Ireland
Prof. Graeme Warren, UCD School of Archaeology
Archaeological remains of coffee plantations: a history of pre-Famine Irish migration to Cuba
Giselle González García, Ph.D candidate, Concordia University, Quebec, Canada
SESSION THREE: Seeking identity in settlements
English Peasant Settlement in Anglo-Norman Ireland
Dr Kieran O’Conor, School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies, University of Galway
Under a southern sky: the Irish settlement of Baker’s Flat in colonial South Australia
Dr Susan Arthure, Flinders University, Australia
SESSION FOUR: Considering contributions
Structures of import - the buildings of Dublin’s historic immigrant communities
Paul Duffy, Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd
Beaubec: an alien cell in the Boyne Valley
Dr Geraldine Stout, Archaeologist in the National Monuments Service (retired)
