Landscapes of Catastrophe: archaeology, social-ecological and biological contexts for the Great Irish Famine (1845-52)

The Great Irish Famine (1845-52) is the major demographic and diasporic event of the last millennia on the island of Ireland. Known as An Gorta Mór, ‘the Great Hunger’ the long-term effects of this calamity still resonate in modern society, perceptions of belonging and identity on the island of Ireland, and in the character of diaspora communities globally. Recent estimates place the scale of this calamity at over 2 million people dying or emigrating, while the island of Ireland still has not surpassed the peak of pre-Famine population. Focusing particularly on the impact and legacy of the Famine, Landscapes of Catastrophe integrates innovative cross-disciplinary methods for addressing cultural landscape change in the recent past, applying these to the analysis and understanding of catastrophic events and their long-term socio-economic, ecological and biological contexts. Specifically, it harnesses recent advancements in palaeoecology, geochronology, geoforensics and bio-geochemistry to reframe understanding of the Famine as a formative event in Irish history, and the long-term impacts of catastrophe globally.
 


Despite the seminal character of the Famine as a catastrophic event with global significance, and the fact that it remains a highly studied and emotive topic in scholarship and popular culture, the archaeological and landscape dimensions of changes wrought by the Famine are not well understood and its ecological and biological contexts are poorly recognised. In part, this gap is a product of inherent disciplinary silos between the humanities and sciences, and due to difficulties surrounding the ability of archaeology to closely localise and date environmental and social change in the material record. To this end, this project proposes a highly impactful and novel methodology of global resonance for dating environmental change in the past 200 years. Moreover, a unique coalescence of source materials for nineteenth-century Ireland means that there is an exceedingly rich body of cultural and environmental evidence for localised impacts, including detailed cartographic, demographic and documentary sources, that are globally unique and highly relevant for broader understandings of the social, economic, and ecological effects of famine or other catastrophic events.
 


Landscapes of Catastrophe harnesses the island of Ireland’s rich empirical historical and archaeological resources and deploys novel approaches to build a benchmark dataset for the broader contexts of the Great Irish Famine, focusing on developing an evidence base for detailed understandings of ecological, biological and landscape change. Despite the fact that the character of demography and landscape in rural Ireland is widely attributed to the catastrophic impact of the Famine, this remains to be tested at localised scales and contextualised more widely within longer-term trends vis-a-vis agricultural, environmental and economic change in eighteenth to twentieth-century Ireland. Our project takes six case studies which cross-cut different landscape, environment, economic and agricultural areas to address these major lacunae and build a new narrative and understanding of the Famine and its impact, grounded in intersectional accounts of human experience, resilience and adaptation.
 


We realise a transformational opportunity to develop globally leading methodologies for dating environmental change in the recent past. Deploying these to re-frame analysis of a key and highly emotive catastrophe is equally transformative, global resonant and relevant. By deploying landscape-based survey and excavation, alongside multi-proxy palaeoecology and bio-geochemistry to track the archaeological and environmental transformation of Famine-era Ireland for the first time, we will present never-before-possible understandings of ecological contexts for catastrophe and demographic change.