In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century a number of “Ideal” or “Utopian” type settlements were established across Ireland. These tended to be religious groupings or “model” communities associated with industry. In the southwest a number of short-lived cooperative communities were established along Owenite principles which continue to play an integral part in the radical histories of the country. This paper examines the archaeologies of these sites and analyses the role of individual in their formation and collapse and addresses the social archaeology of their construct and layout. It is suggested that contemporary hierarchical norms were actually reproduced in these communities and this segregation is reflected in the physical morphology of the settlements.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author thanks Charles Orser for his support, expertise, comments and the McGerr reference, Sarah Tarlow for her original seminal article and for her very constructive comments here, Darragh Breen and Eileen O'Brien for sourcing material relating to William Thompson and Thomas McErlean who read and commented on this text.
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Breen, C. Social Archaeologies of “Utopian” Settlements in Ireland. Int J Histor Archaeol 10, 35–48 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-006-0003-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-006-0003-5