and the Creation of Archaeological Knowledge
Adolf Mahr, in his role at the National Museum, presided over the selection and display of artefacts. This invention of the nation through selective museum display was conditioned by the climate and thought of the day and was in turn influenced by social, political and ideological factors. Museums can be used as ‘instruments of state regulation’.76 For example, many totalitarian governments have sought to control the interpretation of archaeological data.77 This was the case with Germany and Italy, but democratic nation-states like Ireland were also involved in this process. The notion of studying archaeology as a way of gaining information about human history was accompanied by the development of modern nationalism.78 Nationalism influences the interpretation of culture and ‘sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures’.79
The commissioning of the Lithberg Report in 1927 was the first step in the direction of the control of interpretation of artefact assemblages.80 The focus of the Harvard Mission and the Unemployment Scheme archaeologists, under advice from Adolf Mahr, was to recover objects dating to the Early Christian Period and the Bronze Age, the two ‘Golden Ages’ of Irish History. The focus of the collections was Ireland’s important place in the history of Europe. This was to be reflected in the display of European comparative material.
British comparative material was not suggested in the Lithberg Report despite the geographical and cultural proximity of Britain to Ireland. With regard to the subject of political perspective in relation to the Irish past, Macalister commented with insight in 1925:
The Anglophile looks back to the dim ages of the past […] and he can describe nothing but hordes of naked savages, living mere animal lives, and expending their whole time and energies in devastating tribal wars: a savagery from which England has raised us. The Anglophobe scans the same horizon and sees the cloud-clapped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, of a cast and imposing civilisation, devoted to letters and learning: a civilisation which England has destroyed.81
This provenancing of Irish material culture within a European context set the scene for future interpretations of archaeological sites, artefacts, the writing of archaeology and, therefore, the writing of cultural history. Lithberg also recommended the removal of casts of non-Irish architectural monuments and copies of objects to storage.
The partition of Ireland came with the passing of the Government of Ireland Act (1920). However, the collections of the National Gallery and the National Museum were not divided. Therefore, the National Museum collections represented the past of all of the island of Ireland and not just the Irish Free State. This was cultural aspiration reflecting political aspiration of a united Ireland, the past in essence becoming an aspirational future. The political nation-state, considered incomplete by those aspiring to a United Ireland, was identified with the cultural nation-state which encompassed the whole island. The Museum exhibitions, therefore, no longer reflected the greatness of the British Empire and Ireland’s place within it. Instead, the artefacts symbolising the greatness of an ancient independent nation with roots deep within a broad European Celtic culture were displayed. The work of the Harvard Mission contributed on a grand scale to this nationalist project.
The arrangement of artefacts can serve to visually articulate the power, identity and tradition of the ruling elite, and the creation of archaeological knowledge in the process. This is because ‘all archaeology is interpretation’.82 For as long as it is acceptable to view Ireland’s past as heroic, independent, creative, prehistoric and Celtic, it is acceptable to have items which visualise these concepts on prominent display. This is based on the premise that culture is political and a conduit for change, often reflecting or even foreshadowing political change. The establishing of a unique, utopian culture associated with a defined territorial space is the essence of nationalism. The interpretative process within the museum reflected the shifting paradigm of historical, political and cultural forces outside it.
Collections, exhibitions and individual displays of artefacts cannot be isolated from the larger cultural contexts of national identity formation. Artefacts can be appropriated as symbols of specific group identities which become fixed through the National Museum’s handling of them. In the Western model of national identity, nations were seen as ‘culture communities, whose members were united, if not made homogeneous, by common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions’.83 The National Museum acted as a mirror of the nation-state with its assumptions of ethnic, linguistic and cultural hegemony, and became a microcosm of the culture community. Trigger explains that the main function of nationalist archaeology is ‘to bolster the pride and morale of nations or ethnic groups’.84 Museums serve as a repository for visual expressions of memory. They act as an aid to remembering an agreed-upon past.85 The National Museum of Ireland became the powerhouse of nationalist archaeology after 1922, the act of appropriation of the past being a political one. Cultural and political nationalism were interwoven and political ideas were embedded in cultural ideology.86 As a cultural tentacle of the independent Irish Free State Government, the National Museum was in the privileged position of being able not only to reflect change but to act as an agent or catalyst for it. The Lithberg Report resulted in the National Museum of Ireland being effectively transformed into a strong state-sponsored visual statement about national aspirations and became an important symbol of the independent state.
American Reconnaissance Trip, 1931
The American academics believed that Ireland played a leading role in the cultural development of Northern and Western Europe. Reasons for choosing the Irish Free State included the ‘extremely meagre’ knowledge of Stone Age peoples and the ‘comparatively ill-known’ archaeology of Ireland.87 The Harvard anthropologist L. Lloyd Warner made the relevant contacts in Ireland to pave the way for the work of the Harvard Mission anthropologists and archaeologists. He directed the work in social anthropology but was also responsible for all three strands in Ireland until the work was complete. In 1931, Hencken and Warner arrived on a reconnaissance trip to determine what sites they would excavate and where they would carry out their anthropological surveys. They also made a second visit. A preliminary survey of the country was carried out to see if the proposed research was practical. They met with Cardinal MacRory, Catholic Primate of all Ireland; Eoin MacNeill and his brother, the Governor-General, James MacNeill (served 1928–32); Professor George O’Brien, Professor of National Economics and Professor of Political Economy at UCD; Séamus Ó Duillearga, then lecturer at University College Dublin and editor of Béaloideas, the journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society; and Adolf Mahr. Hooton noted in his manuscript that all of these people approved of his proposed project and some helped with the preliminary survey.88
In 1931, Mahr was first approached about the Harvard Archaeological Mission and agreed to meet Hencken on 3 July 1931, where Mahr extended ‘a most cordial and enthusiastic welcome’ to him’.89 They spent the day discussing the proposed project and the only difficulty which Mahr foresaw was the attitude of Macalister. Hencken assessed Mahr as ‘a thoroughly up-to-date archaeologist in the very best sense, and, except when he lapses into his feud with Macalister, is a man of the broadest vision’. He believed that the antagonism between Mahr and Macalister was because ‘each feels that by virtue of his position he is State Archaeologist of Saorstát Éireann’.90 It would seem that the Irish Free State Government also wanted to sideline Macalister and place the National Museum at the centre of cultural endeavour. It was Mahr and not Macalister who was commissioned by the state to write a book to coincide with the hosting of the thirty-first International Eucharistic Congress, which took place in Dublin in June 1932.91 However, Hencken was pragmatic enough to remember that the point of view of both Mahr and Macalister had to be respected when dealing with Irish archaeology, as Macalister was Chairman and Mahr Secretary of the Standing Committee of the influential National Monuments Advisory Council (NMAC), established under the National Monuments Act, 1930.
On the morning of 3 July 1931, Macalister came to the National Museum to speak to Hencken. Before their meeting Macalister had a private meeting with Mahr. Mahr later told
