Luxury and Material Culture at Court

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-78
Author(s):  
Hugh M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Court Life

Material goods, above all luxuries, abounded at court. This chapter describes some key luxury goods at court, including precious textiles, gold and silver plate, and jewellery, and analyses their importance. Precious goods, above all the heavily symbolic royal regalia, underscored royal power. A luxurious material culture emphasized both unity and hierarchy at court. Gifts of precious items helped the king build loyalty and enhanced his reputation for generosity. Yet pleasure too was crucial to the love of luxury at court. People made up the court but the influence of objects on shaping court life should not be underestimated.

Power and Pleasure

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Symbolic Communication ◽  
Sexual Activities ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Court Life

Power and Pleasure reconstructs life at the court of King John and explores how his court produced both pleasure and soft power. Much work exists on royal courts of the late medieval and early modern periods, but the jump in record keeping under John allows a detailed reconstruction of court life for an earlier period. Following an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 covers hunting and falconry. Material culture forms the subject of Chapter 3, with an emphasis on luxuries such as fine textiles and gold and silver plate. Chapter 4 explores aspects of court life for which less information survives, among them art and music, games and gambling, chivalry and marshal splendour, and sexual activities, including King John’s sometimes coercive pursuit of noblewomen. Chapter 5 concerns religious life at court and a deeply unsuccessful effort to project an image of sacral kingship. Food and feasting are the subjects of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 covers royal castles and other residences, the landscapes in which the court spent time, and ceremonial activities during the court’s rapid itineration around King John’s lands. Power and pleasure are discussed throughout the book, but Chapter 8 focuses on the former, analysing various forms of symbolic communication, gift exchange, and the interaction between new forms of bureaucracy and older forms of soft power. The chapter also addresses why John received so little political benefit from his magnificent court. Chapter 9 compares John’s court to others of his own time and those of previous and subsequent centuries.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-230
Author(s):  
Hugh M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Large Network ◽  
Court Culture ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
The Road ◽  
Hunting Dogs ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Food And Drink ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Court Life

The splendour of John’s court may have fallen short of those of the early modern French kings at Versailles or his own Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian successors, but he presided over an impressive establishment. He had an extraordinary hunting establishment, with scores of men; dozens of highly trained birds of prey; hundreds of hunting dogs; and a large network of hunting lodges, parks, and forests. His court boasted a luxurious material culture, with rich stores of gold and silver plate, hundreds of pieces of jewellery studded with gems, and exotic and costly textiles. Though some aspects of court culture left fewer traces in the surviving records, enough survives to show the patronage of art and music, entertainment and spectacle, and books and learning. John also sponsored chivalric practices such as heraldry, and though he was a notable sexual predator, the influence of new ideas about love and romance was not entirely absent from his court. Despite John’s reputation for impiety, he carried out the religious activities expected of a king, and religion was an integral part of court life. The royal records reveal the ongoing efforts to provide the court with good and often expensive food and wine throughout the year, and John was particularly admired for his generous distribution of robes, food, and drink at his feasts. A significant portion of the court’s time was spent on the road, but this too was an important cultural site for court life and display, particularly in formal processions and royal entries, in which peacock hats, lavish decoration on horses, and lances gilded with gold might make an appearance. The constant itineration of the court meant that there was no one great palace on which John lavished resources, but he still invested heavily in his castles, palaces, and hunting lodges, and on the landscapes around them. Court culture was already highly developed in the early thirteenth century and surviving sources from other realms show this was true not only of the Plantagenet dynasty....

The Political Machine

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Political Machine ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
The Bronze Age

This book investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, the book demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. The book looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and it considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. The book shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or “machines” sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortifies political power even in the contemporary world. The book provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, this book sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Material Culture in the 18th Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Van Horn
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Consumer Preferences ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Enslaved African Americans

Material culture refers to human-manufactured, human-altered, or human-used physical things of all sizes and materials, from houses to domestic artifacts to tools to landscapes. Material culture also refers to the study of artifacts and scholars’ use of objects as a form of evidence to ask and answer questions about the 18th century. Material culture studies is not limited to physical examination of artifacts. It also involves consideration of an array of documentary, literary, and visual sources that provide information about material life. In 18th-century colonial America, the meanings and uses of material goods changed radically. Anglo-American colonists obtained greater numbers and novel types of objects through transatlantic and global trade networks. The British manufactures that flooded the colonies fulfilled colonists’ desire to assert social status and to participate in social rituals that demonstrated refinement. Scholars have labeled these changes the “Consumer Revolution” and the system of “gentility.” Artifacts also built communities and buttressed political beliefs, particularly through non-importation or boycotts of British goods during the imperial crisis. Ideas of gender shaped how women’s growing activity of shopping was understood and critiqued, as well as the association of fashion with women. The importation of Asian and Indian goods, primarily textiles and porcelain, fulfilled fantasies of the exotic while enabling American consumers to demonstrate their worldliness and status. Material goods facilitated cultural exchange and trade between those of different races and ethnicities. At the same time, oppression and political and economic disenfranchisement shaped American material culture. Indigenous peoples expressed consumer preferences for manufactured goods during negotiations within the fur trade. They incorporated British manufactures into preexisting material practices. Enslaved African Americans entered the market as both commodities and consumers. Through their purchases and creative use of refined artifacts, bond people expressed individual identity despite their legal status as property.

Bach and Material Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
Stephen Rose
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Agency ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Material Artifacts

Bach’s music is often interpreted as transcending the material conditions of everyday life. This chapter, by contrast, argues that Bach scholarship could be enriched via approaches taken from the study of material culture. It places Bach within the vibrant consumer culture of early-eighteenth-century Leipzig, exploring his postmortem inventory and his keyboard publications in the context of how the town’s bourgeoisie used material goods to show their status and identity. It investigates Bach’s printed and manuscript music in terms of the social practices surrounding these material artifacts. Finally, the chapter relates Bach’s working practices to debates about the interplay of human and material agency. It discusses how he experimented with the material characteristics of instruments such as organs, and analyzes his compositional practice as an interaction between player-composer and contrapuntal materials.

Egypt’s Old Kingdom

2020 ◽  
pp. 459-530
Author(s):  
Richard Bussmann
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Visual Discourse ◽  
Long Run ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
High Degree

This chapter outlines the diachronic development of and exchanges between central and local milieus in third millennium BC Egypt. The community at court witnessed a gradual rapprochement between kings and high-ranking officials during the Old Kingdom, beginning in the Fifth Dynasty. Increasing explication of kingship in visual discourse hints at conflicting views on the position of the king. Burial arrangements differed widely across provincial Egypt and at court, revealing a high degree of social diversity. Funerary culture revolved around the establishment of social relationships and social memory, whereas ideas about life in the netherworld were rarely expressed. The majority of preserved settlements in the Old Kingdom were planned by the state. Urbanism was weakly developed compared to other early complex states. The spiritual center of provincial towns was community shrines. Their material culture exhibits a mixture of central and local features, typical of “little traditions.” The shrines served as power bases for courtiers, sent out in the late Old Kingdom by the government to establish royal power permanently in the hinterland. The history of shrines and local elites differed across the country. In the long run, local temples emerged as the economic and ideological interface between provincial communities and the crown. Temples and towns coevolved toward the New Kingdom, at which time Egyptian society had a more urban outlook.

Long-distance trade in ancient India: Evidence from Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Patrick Olivelle
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Regional Trade ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Significant Data

Much of the significant data for long-distance and maritime trade across South Asia in the ancient period comes from archaeological sources. Nevertheless, textual sources too have some significant things to say about material culture and trade in the ancient world. In a special way, texts give insights into what people thought about trans-regional trade, the globalisation of the ancient world, both the good and the bad that came with it, insights that cannot be culled solely from archaeological data. This article’s focus is on the Arthaśāstra, which Kauṭilya wrote around middle of the first century ce, drawing on sources that predate him by a century or more. The Arthaśāstra does not have a separate section on trade, but trade data are scattered over at least four areas: (a) the treasury and its need for luxury goods: pearls, gems, diamonds, coral, sandalwood, aloe, incense, skins and furs, and cloth; (b) military needs: horses and elephants; (c) developing and guarding land and water routes and shipping; and (d) duties and taxes on imported goods. Significant data on trade are also provided in Kauṭilya’s discussion of trade routes and their protection, as well as data on duties and taxes on imported goods.

scholarly journals Orientalia come strumenti di auto-rappresentazione delle élites cretesi in epoca alto-arcaica

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aluia Simona
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
High Status ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Local Material ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Reason

In this paper the phenomenon of circulation of orientalia in Crete during the Iron Age will be examined from a social point of view: what was the social reason of the demand and how did local communities react to the arrive of exotic artefacts? Orientalia were found mostly within contexts characterised by a local material culture, so they attest the demand for luxury goods, rather than the settling of foreign people in the island; it is suggested that orientalia probably had the main function of high status-symbol. Therefore, they could represent a key for the interpretation of some social aspects of the Iron Age Cretan communities.

scholarly journals Fatalist Luxuries

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tereza Kuldova
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Luxury Brands ◽  
Cultural Center ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Indian City ◽  
Fashion Designers

This article, grounded in long-term ethnographic research among producers of contemporary luxurious embroideries and fashions in Lucknow, a North Indian city famous for its golden age as a powerful cultural center of opulence and excess, shows how anthropological knowledge can enrich current critical discussions of luxury and inequality. Since the 1990s, anthropology has seen a boom in consumption and material culture studies coterminous with the rise of identity politics and its celebration of diversity. In anthropological theory, as well, linking consumption to identity has stolen the limelight. In the process, questions of production, inequality, and reproduction of social structures have been overshadowed. Critical reappraisal of luxury in anthropological theory can paradoxically show us a way out of this identity trap, since luxury, unlike other consumer goods, demands that we think about inequality. Luxury also forces us to think beyond luxury brands, goods, and commodified experiences, pushing us toward more fundamental questions about what constitutes a good life, morality, and social order. The ethnographic case presented here, which reveals how structural violence can go hand-in-hand with paradoxical luxuries facilitated by fatalist attitudes, points to what such an anthropology of luxury might look like. In a village near Lucknow, women embroider luxury pieces for fashion ramps and celebrities, while being fed meritocratic dreams of individual progress and success by fashion designers and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who try to convince them to work ever harder in the name of empowerment. But the women laugh at luxury goods, designers, and middle-class activists and, instead, insist on an antiwork ethic and a valorization of leisure—on wasting time over working; they prefer to “luxuriate” rather than indulge in luxury goods. However, this perception of luxury is connected to hierarchical inequality and a sense of social fatalism that has been reinvigorated through new experiences with competitive inequality, neoliberal pollution, and the false promises of meritocracy.

Symbols of Power

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Base Metal ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lower Status ◽  
Coats Of Arms ◽  
Made In

Medieval people who had authority acquired it through lineage and success in battle; they symbolized their social positions by display of costume, jewellery, gold and silver plate, weapons, buildings, and funeral monuments. Some of these represented portable wealth that could be used as gifts to create and confirm alliances, and as pledges against loans. Royal power was bestowed at coronations, for which appropriate regalia were needed. Heraldry and coats of arms became increasingly important for those high in the social structure or aspiring to it. Those of lower status might own things made in base metal, pottery, and stone, but whether any of those expressed symbols of resistance to the power of authority is debatable. The need to exercise that authority through the permanency of written documents led to increased use of seals for authentication.

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