THE QUEST FOR
THE IRISH CELT
For Fiach and Aoife
THE QUEST FOR
THE IRISH CELT
THE HARVARD ARCHAEOLOGICAL MISSION
TO IRELAND, 1932–1936
MAIRÉAD CAREW
First published in 2018 by
Irish Academic Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© Mairéad Carew, 2018
9781788550093 (Cloth)
9781788550109 (Kindle)
9781788550116 (Epub)
9781788550123 (PDF)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the
above publisher of this book.
Interior design by www.jminfotechindia.com
Typeset in Minion Pro 11/14 pt
Cover design by edit+ www.stuartcoughlan.com
Jacket front: Harvard anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton standing with skulls used in his research, Life magazine, 1 January 1936.
Jacket back: top: Mesolithic site at Cushendun, Co. Antrim (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University); bottom left: Adolf Mahr (National Museum of Ireland); bottom right: Dr. Hugh O’Neill Hencken (centre) with unidentified American Anthropologists, 1933 (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University).
Contents
1. The Harvard Archaeological Mission in the Irish Cultural Republic
2. Adolf Mahr and the Possibilities of Harvard Archaeological Research
3. ‘Ireland belongs to the World’: Celtic Origins, Anthropology and Eugenics
4. Choosing Crannógs: Politics and Pragmatism
5. Lagore Crannóg: Archaeology in the Service of the State?
6. A United Ireland in Prehistory
7. A New Deal for Irish Archaeology
8. A Native School of Scientific Archaeology
9. ‘The Pageant of the Celt’: Archaeology, Media and the Diaspora
Appendix 1: Harvard Archaeological Mission Sites
Appendix 2: Unemployment Scheme Sites, 1934–7
Appendix 3: Contributors to Irish Archaeological Expedition
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Much of the research for this publication was carried out during the course of my PhD thesis, completed in 2011, under the supervision of Professor Mary Daly and funded by the Irish Research Council. I would like to thank the archivists and librarians of the following institutions who helped me with my research: the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; UCD Archives; the National Museum of Ireland; the Royal Irish Academy; the National Archives of Ireland; the National Library of Ireland and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.
I would also like to thank the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, for providing the space and beautiful surroundings in which I completed this book.
Introduction
This is the first full-length book on the history of the Harvard Archaeological Mission to Ireland, between the years 1932 and 1936. The Harvard Mission was one of the most important cultural undertakings in the history of the Irish Free State. It included three strands of study: excavations, physical anthropology and social anthropology. While the social anthropology strand has been explored in a comprehensive article by Anne Byrne,1 there have not been similar publications on the archaeological strand or the complementary physical examinations of thousands of Irish people during the thirties.
This eugenic anthropological survey was important in the context of Irish-American history. The Rockefeller Foundation, wealthy Irish Americans and the Irish Free State Government were involved in the funding of it as it was deemed politically and economically important to establish the identity of the Irish as white, Celtic and Northern European during this period. This book will explore why the American anthropologists came to Ireland at the time and why the project was considered to be important to Harvard University. It will place the Harvard Mission initiative in the context of the broader cultural regeneration projects driven by nationalism and Irish-Ireland ideology in the Irish Free State after independence. This study will explore what sites were excavated, who chose them and why, and how the disciplines of archaeology and physical anthropology were used to scientifically validate the identity of the Irish. The stereotype of Ireland as isolationist and culturally barren during the 1930s is challenged by this work. In the 1930s the study and celebration of native Celtic culture in a European and global context was both modernist and internationalist. The Harvard Mission can be considered as a cultural case study in the context of other cultural initiatives of the first two nationalist governments of the Irish Free State.
Chapter 1 places the Harvard Mission to Ireland in the context of the cultural republic of the 1920s and 1930s. The role of the Harvard Mission, as part of the revitalisation project of the Irish Free State which involved the institutionalisation of native culture and a repositioning of Ireland in terms of Europe and the diaspora, is examined. The role which archaeology, in particular, plays in this nation-building project is discussed. Themes of regeneration, anthropological modernism, race, nationalist cultural ideology and the writing of cultural history in Ireland are explored.