This dissertation explores the ways in which 19th-century Irish residents of the American Mining West created and maintained community by embracing the saloon as a site for the translation of the traditional Irish pub abroad. Research has been focused around archaeological excavations of the Hibernia Brewery, an Irish saloon in the mining boomtown of Virginia City, Nevada. To provide the necessary perspective and context for this investigation I draw upon archival descriptions of synchronic pub use in Ireland, as well as in-depth study of the overall saloon culture within Virginia City including documentary, spatial, and archaeological analysis of contemporaneous saloons in the town dating between 1860 and 1890. This research in turn reveals the vital role played by the Irish saloon in fostering the reification of a shared Irish identity amongst immigrants on the Comstock, an identity intimately linked to memories of community life in Ireland. As such, the saloon served as a source of social and economic status for Irish saloon keepers, as well as existing as a marker of proud Irish identity and aspiration amongst its working-class patrons. In addition, the Irish saloon supported the traditional Irish involvement of women and family within public drinking spaces. Finally, I establish the saloon as a space that facilitated the embodiment of Irish identity through the consumption of Irish food, drink and material culture as well as the performance of embodied Irish social drinking practices, encouraging an Irish identity that was built upon seemingly simple everyday experience. Not only does this research contribute to a more complete understanding of the immigrant experience in the American West, but it examines the place of the commensal consumption of food and drink in public social spaces in archaeological and historical perspective. Further, for the first time this dissertation addresses the translation of the Irish pub, the heart of community in 19th-century Ireland, into a parallel foundational institution of Irish-American community life, providing context for understanding the overall development of community in modern American culture.
Charest, Michelle A.,
"Emerald Pub to Silver Saloon: Building an Irish Saloon Community in the American Mining West"
(2012).
Anthropology Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0W0947B
