A Test of Revisionist Narratives of History in Pre- Famine Ireland
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“Well-Formed and Vigorous Bodies?” A Test of Revisionist Narratives of History in Pre- Famine Ireland DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Melissa Ann Clark Graduate Program in Anthropology The Ohio State University 2020 Dissertation Committee: Professor Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg, co-advisor Professor Mark Hubbe, co-advisor Professor Julie Field Professor Douglas E. Crews Copyrighted by Melissa Ann Clark 2020 Abstract Irish scholarship over the last 50 years has focused on the debate between revisionist and post-revisionist arguments. Revisionists have argued that the effects of British colonization have been overstated to fuel the Irish nationalist agenda in their quest to separate from England. They cite contemporaneous (c. AD 1600-1900) accounts of Irish health, in which the Irish are described as having ‘well-formed and vigorous bodies.’ Post-revisionists, conversely, argue that revisionists minimize the cultural and historical trauma of catastrophic events associated with British colonialism. The purpose of this dissertation is to test the veracity of contemporary accounts of superb Irish health, and in so doing, evaluate the foundational assumptions of. Health was assessed using two skeletal indicators, namely, age-at-death and linear enamel hypoplasia, a developmental defect of tooth enamel associated with systemic physiological stressors, such as malnutrition or febrile disease. Results show that there was no clear difference in survivorship between the late medieval and post-medieval period in the English Pale, the part of Ireland under intense colonial rule. However, people in the post-medieval period did have more LEH consistent with more childhood stressors than people in the late medieval period. Additionally, there was greater sub-group variation in the expression of skeletal health indicators during the post-medieval period, suggesting greater health disparities during this time period. Intersecting marginalized identities (i.e., age, class and gender) appear to have been key ii contributors to that variation. Women of childbearing age exhibited decreased survivorship in the post-medieval period, as did individuals from the poorest of the communities studied. These results show that the revisionist/post-revisionist debate needs to be contextualized within an intersectional framework. These results also show that the role of British colonization was not to have one uniform effect on health throughout the English Pale. Rather, British colonization produced extreme inequality by catalyzing industrialization and concentrating wealth into the hands of a few elite. This inequality granted people differing access to resources and exposed them to different types and degrees of stressors, depending on their gender and social class. Marginalized identities became embodied through decreased survivorship and increased number and width of linear enamel hypoplasia. This embodiment could have reinforced overarching ideologies of capitalism and racism by demonstrating to the primarily Anglo-Protestant upper class the perceived physical inferiority of the lower class. Future studies should continue to explore the role of embodiment of intersecting marginalized identities in the construction of beliefs about the deserving and underserving poor within the context of laissez faire capitalism. Second, scholars should continue to explore the revisionist/post-revisionist debate while applying intersectionality theory. In this case, applying intersectionality theory made it evident that the effect of British colonization was to increase inequality rather than uniformly affecting Irish health. Finally, researchers should also continue to explore the potential epigenetic effects of poverty that could have contributed to mass mortality during the Irish Famine. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dr. Guatelli-Steinberg and Dr. Mark Hubbe for their guidance, patience, and expertise, as well as the members of my committee, Dr. Julie Field and Dr. Doug Crews. I am grateful to the staff at the National Museum of Ireland, in particular Eimear Ashe and Dr. Nessa O’Connor for allowing me to access the skeletal remains, and to Dr. Rachel Scott for her ideas. I would also like to thank my mother, Catherine Clark, for encouraging me to pursue my goals and putting my education ahead of her needs. I am indebted to Chief Charles LoBello and Bluecoats, Inc. for providing my family with financial assistance for the last twenty years. I am especially grateful to Chief LoBello for paying to help my mother with transportation so that I could focus on school. Without his help, and the help of Bluecoats, Inc., I would not have been able to finish graduate school. Finally, I owe my career to my father, Detective Robert Clark, whose line-of-duty death gave my brother, sister, and me the chance to go to college and graduate school through state compensation. This is not a reality we take lightly. He valued humbleness and modesty, but I think he would be proud of what we have overcome and the people we grew up to be. iv Vita May 2009 ....................................................... Olmsted Falls High School 2013 ............................................................... B.A. Anthropology, B.A. International Studies, The Ohio State University 2015 ............................................................... M.Sc. Osteology and Paleopathology, University of Bradford 2015 to present ............................................. Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University Publications Clark, M.A., Simon, A., Hubbe, M. (2020) Aging methods and population structures: Does transition analysis call for a re-examination of bioarchaeological data? International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 30(2):206. Clark, M.A., Bargielski, R., Reich, D. (2019) Adult paleopathology as an indicator of childhood social roles: A case study of Perthes disease in a Native Ohio female. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 2019:1-9. v Clark, M.A., Guatelli-Steinberg, D. (2018) A third molar from Rathfarnham, Dublin and the patterning cascade model. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Clark, M.A., Guatelli-Steinberg, D, Hubbe, M., Stout, S. (2016) Quantification of maxillary dental arcade curvature and the estimation of biological ancestry in forensic anthropology. Journal of Forensic Sciences 61(1):141-146 Fields of Study Major Field: Anthropology vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iv Vita ...................................................................................................................................... v Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Theoretical Background ................................................................................... 10 Historical Overview ....................................................................................................... 10 Biocultural Political Economy ....................................................................................... 14 Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) Hypothesis .......................... 18 Chapter 3: Historical Background ..................................................................................... 33 Early Medieval Ireland .................................................................................................. 36 Late Medieval Ireland .................................................................................................... 41 Post-Medieval Ireland .................................................................................................... 49 Biocultural Political Economy of Irish History ............................................................. 67 Emergence of Irish Nationalism, Revisionism, and Post-Revisionism ......................... 69 Chapter 4: Methodological Background ........................................................................... 75 vii Health in Bioarchaeology .............................................................................................. 75 Teeth as Indicators of Past Health ................................................................................. 85 Chapter 5: Materials .......................................................................................................... 94 Ardreigh ......................................................................................................................... 95 Coombe/Cork St. ........................................................................................................... 97 Dominican Priory ......................................................................................................... 104 Upper Magdalene ......................................................................................................... 108 Essex St. West .............................................................................................................. 113 Graney East .................................................................................................................. 113 Hanbury Lane