This book examines the history and archaeology of the Irish diaspora in the colony of South Australia. In the 1850s, a group of Irish people arrived at a copper mine in South Australia seeking work. They settled on a vacant area of land near the mine, known as Baker’s Flat, where they built Irish-style houses, danced and played hurling on Sundays, and retained a strong Catholic faith. All this occurred against a backdrop of antagonism in the broader community that painted Baker’s Flat as a place of filthy hovels, roaming cattle, alcohol-fuelled disorder, and disreputable Irish papists. This became the dominant narrative, fuelled by disputes and court cases over this contested land. 

There are hints in some of the court records, however, of a complexity to Baker’s Flat that has been overlooked until now, suggestions that the Irish may have adopted a traditional Irish way of managing land and community—the clachan-and-rundale system—characterised by clusters of houses and co-operative farming, a practice that was illegible to outsiders. 
This research set out to investigate Irishness on Baker’s Flat. Placing Irish social identity at the core, it is an exploration of how this diasporic community constructed itself and evolved in colonial South Australia, examining the clachan system in the broader context of capitalism and improvement, and the interplay between social identity, capitalism and traditional Irish practices. 

A geophysical survey, excavation program, artefact analysis, genealogical histories and archival data uncovered a complex settlement which included a potential field enclosure and two vernacular structures—one interpreted as a domestic dwelling and the other as a sweathouse. It concludes that, for close to a century, Baker’s Flat thrived as a clachan-and-rundale system, the first complete exemplar to be recognised outside of Ireland so far.

Susan Arthure was awarded her PhD in archaeology from Flinders University in 2023. She currently works as Research Fellow at the Southeast Asian Ceramics Archaeology Laboratory (SEACAL), Flinders University, where she oversees the conservation assessment of the collection. Her research also continues on the nature of Irishness and the Irish diaspora, with a focus on the Irish Australian experience. Susan grew up in Ireland but has been based in South Australia since the late 1980s.