imirce

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 people adapted to their new surroundings. Imirce: migration and Ireland through time will investigate how identities were negotiated within these new contexts.

Imirce—migration, the overall theme of this programme—looks 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 new worlds, where broader connections were forged and where the Irish diaspora expressed their identities in different contexts and emerging new communities.