Diasporic identifications: exile,nostalgia and the Famine past in Irish and Irish North-American popular fiction, 1871–1891

During the nineteenth century, “exile” became a key term to describe the Irish-diasporic community in North America. More recently, scholars in the fields of diaspora studies and Irish studies have described this community as a “victim diaspora” with connotations of forced expulsion, exile, and nostalgia for the homeland. Moreover, among scholars and within the Irish-American community, the notion exists that the Great Irish Famine (1845–1851) constitutes the Irish-American “charter myth”, that it was the starting point of an Irish-American identity. This article sheds a different light on these (self-)identifications by discussing the concepts of origin myth, exile and nostalgia and also considers the concept of diasporic belonging in the context of Irish and Irish North-American works of popular “Famine fiction” written between 1871 and 1891. Consequently, the impact of these late nineteenth-century literary considerations on present-day conceptualisations of the Irish-American community as a victim diaspora are discussed.     

Assembling the Austrasian Letters at Trier and Lorsch

This article is a reconsideration of the Epistulae Austrasicae. We critique the widespread notion that the constituent letters were compiled by a courtier in the late sixth century at Metz as a book of models for use in the Austrasian chancellery. We argue instead that a monk from the monastery of Lorsch assembled the letters in the early ninth century from individual exemplars and groupings that he found in archives at Trier. We conclude by outlining some implications of this rereading for the edition and interpretation of the letters as sources for the Merovingian period, and point out some avenues for future research on their reception in the Carolingian period.     

Bone weight,meat yield estimates and cod (Gadus morhua): A preliminary study of the weight method

Past approaches to the Weight Method (use of the weight of excavated bone assemblages to evaluate the relative potential meat yield of the animals from which they came) are critically reviewed. They do not account for both inter-taxon and intra-taxon variability in the relationship between bone weight and total body or soft tissue weight. Critics of the Weight Method have assumed that these problems are insurmountable. It is argued here that they can be overcome practically. Solutions lie in the integration of classic Weight Method approaches, which assume a consistent ratio of bone weight to body weight between different taxonomic and size groups, with the understanding of animal scaling provided by studies of skeletal mass allometry. Allometric equations derived from original data (regarding cod, Gadus morhua) and available from published sources (regarding mammals and birds) are used to illustrate this argument. Three practical approaches to the Weight Method are suggested and briefly explored, using bone weight data from Earls' Bu, a Norse site in Orkney, Scotland, as a case study.     

Challenging Orthodoxies: Understanding Poverty in Pastoral Areas of East Africa

Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable attention from a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities, academics, activists and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there is surprisingly little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of poverty among one of the continent's most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic remoteness, and market integration. It argues that current poverty debates ‘homogenize’ the concept of ‘pastoralist’ by failing to acknowledge the diverse livelihoods and wealth differentiation that fall under the term. The article concludes that what is not needed is another development label (stereotype) that equates pastoralism with poverty, thereby empowering outside interests to transform rather than strengthen pastoral livelihoods.     

Made in the Nene Valley? Identifying the origins of mortaria using ICP analysis

The Nene Valley, in eastern central England, was a major pottery production centre in the Roman period. Many kiln sites have been identified in the Lower Nene Valley region and, although comparatively less is known about production in the Upper Nene Valley, substantial amounts of mortaria and other coarse wares have been recovered during excavations at Roman sites in the area, and much of it is thought to be locally made. However mortaria made in the Upper and Lower Nene Valley can be difficult to tell apart, and many also have similar forms and fabrics to mortaria produced in Mancetter–Hartshill, Warwickshire. Therefore ICP analysis was used in an attempt to identify the products of different regions.     

Interpreting the expansion of sea fishing in medieval Europe using stable isotope analysis of archaeological cod bones

Archaeological fish bones reveal increases in marine fish utilisation in Northern and Western Europe beginning in the 10th and 11th centuries AD. We use stable isotope signatures from 300 archaeological cod (Gadus morhua) bones to determine whether this sea fishing revolution resulted from increased local fishing or the introduction of preserved fish transported from distant waters such as Arctic Norway, Iceland and/or the Northern Isles of Scotland (Orkney and Shetland). Results from 12 settlements in England and Flanders (Belgium) indicate that catches were initially local. Between the 9th and 12th centuries most bones represented fish from the southern North Sea. Conversely, by the 13th to 14th centuries demand was increasingly met through long distance transport – signalling the onset of the globalisation of commercial fisheries and suggesting that cities such as London quickly outgrew the capacity of local fish supplies.     

Municipal history and activities

The emergence of synthetic alkali production in Britain during the early nineteenth century was associated with pronounced regional growth. Three areas in particular developed an incipient soda industry: south‐west Lancashire, Tyneside and especially the central valley of Scotland. This paper sets out to evaluate the importance of raw materials and market structures as locational factors at a time when knowledge of this new technology was in the hands of the few and its diffusion was strongly channelled by an emerging chemical fraternity. In doing so some understanding of an industrial legacy which has proved difficult to change and impossible to obliterate is provided.