Divergent Ways of Relating to the Past in the Viking Age

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Lund ◽  
Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dynamic Part ◽  
Ancient Monuments

The flexibility of material culture encourages material phenomena to take a dynamic part in social life. An example of this is material citation, which can provide society with links to both the past and connections to contemporary features. In this article, we look at the diverging ways of relating to and reinventing the past in the Viking Age, exploring citations to ancient monuments in the landscape of Gammel Lejre on Zealand, Denmark. Complementing the placement of landscape monuments, attention is also brought to examples of mortuary citations related to bodily practices in Viking-age mortuary dramas, such as those visible at the mound of Skopintull on the island of Adelsö in Lake Mälaren, Sweden. Through these case studies, we explore the variability in citational strategies found across tenth-century Scandinavia.

Martin Folkes, Antiquary

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-236
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Past

Chapter six continues the intellectual connections between Folkes’s and his contemporaries’ work in natural philosophy, natural history and antiquarianism via two case studies involving Folkes’s work in numismatics and in the Egyptian Society. Just as Folkes promoted Newtonianism, his writing of his Table of Gold and Silver Coins reflected his allegiance to his mentor Newton, Master of the Royal Mint, as his editing did of Newton’s biblical chronologies. Royal Society Fellows were also deriving metrological standards and tables of specific gravities of metals, so these concerns dovetailed in Folkes’s work on the English coinage. Use of material culture to reconstruct the past was inherent to antiquarianism and to natural philosophy at the Royal Society. Fellows attended experimental demonstrations from which axiomatic principles were formulated via discursive practice; members could also access this material by the reading of reports of experiments. The Egyptian Society to which Folkes belonged (1741–3) had the same methodology, to discover principles of sociocultural and religious practices in Egypt, as well as to provide ‘object biographies’ of artefacts that belonged to members that they examined with speculations on their manufacture and use, for instance of ancient enamels and pigments, as well as the practice of mummification.

The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Things ◽  
Material Form ◽  
Huge Variety ◽  
Written Sources

The past has left a huge variety of traces in material form. If historians could figure out how to make use of them to create accounts of the past, a far greater range of histories would be available than if historians were to rely on written sources alone. People who do not appear in writings could come into focus; as could the concerns of people that have escaped writing but whose material things belie their desires and actions. This book explores various ways in which aspects of the past of peoples in many times and places otherwise inaccessible can come alive to the material culture historian. It is divided into five thematic sections that address history, material culture, and—respectively—cognition, technology, symbolism, social distinction, and memory. It does so by means of six individually authored case studies in each section that range from pins to pearls, Paleolithic to Punk.

scholarly journals Flying Daggers, Horse Whisperers and a Midwinter Sacrifice: Creating the Past during the Viking Age and Early Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-219
Author(s):  
Eva Stensköld
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This paper sets out to trace the life history of a horse skull found in a bog in Scania in the year 1900. A parallel is drawn between the find of the horse and the famous painting, "Midwinter Sacrifice" by Carl Larsson. The story of the horse has opened up a discussion on how material culture is created and recreated in time and space, resulting in completely new communicative fields. The manifestation of the past and the reuse of Stone Age places and artefacts are brought into focus when the author discusses the location where the horse skull was originally found.

scholarly journals ‘Particular Thanks and Obligations’: The Communications Made by Women to the Society of Antiquaries between 1776 and 1837, and their Significance

2006 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 254-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Catalani ◽  
Susan Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Material Consumption ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Period ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Distinct Field

This paper brings together the evidence bearing on the relationship between the Society of Antiquaries and the women who contributed to it during a significant period when archaeology, through the work of such men as Samuel Lysons and Richard Colt Hoare, was beginning to emerge as a distinct field with its own conceptual and technical systems. It takes its departure from the first substantial appearance by a woman in the Society's publications in 1776, and continues until the accession of a female monarch, Victoria, in 1837, a period of just over sixty years. It explores what women did and what reception they received and assesses the significance of this within the wider processes of the development of an understanding of the past and the shaping of gender relationships through the medium of material culture, in a period that saw fundamental changes in many areas of intellectual and social life, including levels of material consumption and the sentiments surrounding consumerism.

Translating Social and Material Culture: Sanditon in Spanish

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Isis Herrero López
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Translation Process

A plenitude of references to the institutions and conventions of contemporary social life and material culture presents challenges to all translators of Jane Austen. For this reason, the translation process needs to be based on a mastery of information about Regency England. The study of Spanish-language translations of Austen's Sanditon suggests they are not so based, because the translators frequently overlook the relevance of these references. References to the gentry class, to medical professionals, and to contemporary forms of transport, among other things, are examined in five translations from three different countries (Spain, Argentina, and Mexico). The translation choices made often obscure the implications which historico-cultural references bring to Austen's writings.

Trail-Blazer Dependency – A Roadmap for the Sustainability Revolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-337
Author(s):  
Jan Kunnas
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Pulp And Paper ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Electric Car ◽  
Major Benefit ◽  
Quality Movement

While geologists are still considering whether the Anthropocene should be accepted as a formal geological epoch, it is up to us humanists to search for ways making this human era a good one. In this article, I will examine how we can use historical research to provide such tracks based on past regularities or similarities. Positive success stories from the past can at least provide faith that we can do something about our current environmental problems. This investigation is based on two case studies: the Tesla Model S electric car, and the Swedish pulp and paper industry's transition to chlorine-free bleaching. It argues that the sustainability revolution doesn't just share similarities with the quality movement of the 1970s and 1980s, but is essentially a continuation of it. In concordance with previous megatrends, the major benefit of the sustainability revolution will be reaped by countries and companies running ahead of the curve. A new term, 'trail-blazer dependency' is introduced; by setting an example, the first-movers are opening a trail for late-comers to follow.

Syncretisms

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippa Adrych ◽  
Robert Bracey ◽  
Dominic Dalglish ◽  
Stefanie Lenk ◽  
Rachel Wood
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Ancient Religion

The Conclusion to this volume returns to the three main questions posed in the Introduction, examining how a shared name, alongside material culture, can affect our understanding of ancient religious practices. The first section explores the benefits of a collaborative and comparative endeavour, drawing out examples from the earlier chapters and showing how they informed our perceptions of what a name can mean. The second and third parts ask more theoretical questions about how we can use our case studies to explore broader problems of interpreting ancient religious practices, and the role of objects within them. Finally, we return to the main theme of the volume: the name Mithra, and the ideas, expectations, and traditions that have been attached to it in antiquity and in modern scholarship. We suggest a new way of approaching the phenomenon of the shared name, and what that can entail for those interested in ancient religion.

Mapping Logistical Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642199042
Author(s):  
Eugene Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Class Composition

This review article engages with a rich field of scholarship on logistics that has gathered momentum over the past decade, focusing on two new publications by Laleh Khalili and Martín Arboleda. It contextualizes how and why logistics is bound up with the militarization of contemporary political and social life. I argue that the later 20th century rise of logistics can be better understood as both a response to and symptom of capitalist crisis and I situate this scholarship on war and logistics in relationship to Giovanni Arrighi’s account of crisis and ‘unravelling hegemony’. I also show how logistics provides essential critical and visual resources that contribute to efforts to map global capitalism and to debates on totality and class composition in contemporary critical theory. Finally, contemporary events such as the ongoing Coronavirus crisis and the reemergence of Black Lives Matter are considered in light of this analysis with reference to the centrality of logistics to racial capitalism.

Grassroots Archive Collection at CDRCSL

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780042110146
Author(s):  
Yunxiang Yan ◽  
Tian Li ◽  
Yanjie Huang
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Special Collection ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Written Materials

This article aims to introduce the value of grassroots archives at the Center for Data and Research on Contemporary Social Life (CDRCSL) at Fudan University for qualitative research in social sciences and humanities. This special collection includes written materials on various aspects of social life that are left outside the official archive system. We first introduce the types and features of the grassroots archives collection and then briefly review the values of these primary sources, illustrated by two examples. We conclude with brief discussion on some case studies based on the primary data from the CDRCSL collection and our reflection on the tension between the protection of subject privacy and preservation of historical truth.

scholarly journals New Book Chronicle

Antiquity ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (359) ◽  
pp. 1401-1411
Author(s):  
Robert Witcher
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Technology Change ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transfer Of Technology ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
New Phase

Is the era of globalisation on the wane or on the cusp of a new phase of extraordinary expansion? US president Trump's abandonment of trade agreements and the rise of protectionism coincide with China's ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, an unprecedented investment in infrastructure across Asia, Europe and North Africa to improve the connectivity of China with its markets by both land and sea. The future is therefore anyone's guess, but what about the past? There has been much discussion by archaeologists about ancient globalisations (most recently, Hodos 2017), but archaeological studies have often typically been set within the looser framework of ‘connectivity’—the interconnectedness of people and places and the movement of material culture and ideas. The books reviewed here are concerned with various aspects of connectivity, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean and its European hinterland. All of the volumes are edited collections, each adopting a different unifying theme—the influence of Braudel, a single country as microcosm, the transfer of technology, changevstradition, and the effects of boundaries and frontiers. Do any wider insights into connectivity in the past emerge? And where might archaeological studies of connectivity go next?

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