Settlement archaeology and the contextualization of domestic artefacts

2020 ◽  
pp. 282-311
Author(s):  
Ian Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Settlement Archaeology ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Urban Contexts

This chapter explores the study of Egyptian settlements and the characteristic range of domestic architecture and artefacts found within living spaces and urban contexts. It will focus on the changing approaches to the material culture of sedentism, urbanism, and use of domestic artefacts in Egypt over the last 150 years. The main section, discussing settlement archaeology in Egypt, aims both to provide a summary of progress to date and to highlight areas of the topic that are neglected, controversial, or disputed. The final section discusses artefacts that derive from ancient Egyptian domestic contexts, with specific emphasis on the study of patterns of production and consumption and the physical locations in which these activities took place.

“Mummymania”:mummies,museums and popular culture

1970 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Day
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Museum Visitors ◽  
Archaeological Ethics ◽  
The Public ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Museum Displays ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Anthropological Study

This lecture presents the major findings of the first anthropological study of British and American “mummymania”, the public fascination with ancient Egyptian mummies, and its associated myth, the mummy’s curse: a belief that those who interfere with Egyptian tombs will be punished. The study incorporates museum-based field research, textual sources, film analysis and material culture studies. Originally lay critiques of archaeological ethics, curses were appropriated by the mass media, which reduced public sympathy for them by associating them with evil living mummy characters. Fictional mummies? abject traits later came to symbolise old age, decay, pollution, death and differencenegative concepts with which museum visitors now associate real mummies. Museum displays inadvertently remind visitors of stereotypes and museums may exploit stereotypes for profit or employ staff who elaborate curse myths. In my view, museums could do more to counter stereotyping by addressing visitors? predisposition to regard mummies with abhorrence and derision.

Pots on mats: mat-impressed salt-extraction pottery at Chalcolithic Provadia-Solnitsata, Bulgaria

Antiquity ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mila Andonova ◽  
Vassil Nikolov
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Salt Production ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Late Chalcolithic ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
The Relationship

Evidence for both basket weaving and salt production is often elusive in the prehistoric archaeological record. An assemblage of Middle–Late Chalcolithic pottery from Provadia-Solnitsata in Bulgaria provides insight into these two different technologies and the relationship between them. The authors analyse sherds from vessels used in large-scale salt production, the bases of which bear the impression of woven mats. This analysis reveals the possible raw materials used in mat weaving at Provadia-Solnitsata and allows interpretation of the role of these mats in salt production at the site. The results illustrate how it is possible to see the ‘invisible’ material culture of prehistoric south-eastern Europe and its importance for production and consumption.

scholarly journals American Wedding Albums: a Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa Catherina D’Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Popular Medium ◽  
Production Organization ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Wedding photography is an area of vernacular studies that receives surprisingly little scholarly attention. This thesis explores the material culture of wedding photography, with a specific focus on the analysis of the wedding album in terms of presentation and consumption by families from the 1950s to the 1980s. The main section of this thesis provides an examination of selected wedding album owners. This case study contains a collection of oral histories from seven individuals on their experiences with presenting and displaying their wedding photographs. The analysis provides qualitative research on the production, organization, and consumption of the wedding album as a popular medium for exhibiting wedding photographs. In addition, this thesis offers some social and historical context on the development of the wedding album and wedding photography.

scholarly journals The Nourishing Art

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Jane Lawrence ◽  
Rachel Hurst
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
First Year ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Basic Characteristics ◽  
Detailed Application

Cooking is regarded as one of the most basic characteristics of civilised existence, almost as critical as shelter in defining and reading the human condition. Frascari (2002) used cooking as an analogy for design suggesting that ‘to build and cook are a necessity, but to build and cook intelligently is the chief obligation of architecture and cuisine’ (p. 3). What is it about this ordinary activity that invites comparison? Is it that the everyday acts of cooking are primary generators of spatial practices and material culture? Or is it that the production of food bears numerous parallels with the production of built space – each following a recipe or plan to manipulate elements into an entity definitively judged by the physical senses? This paper builds upon a companion work titled, ‘Eating Australian Architecture’ (Hurst & Lawrence, 2003), which investigated a pedagogical approach based on parallels between food and design for teaching first year architectural students. In this paper, the focus is on a detailed application of this method to typological analyses of contemporary domestic architecture. It uses three examples of influential Australian design practices, selecting from each a paradigm with which they are associated. Food metaphors of raw, medium and well- done are used to explore emergent characteristics and experiential qualities within the current architectural climate. The apparent extremes between raw and cooked, like those between excess and austerity, are re-evaluated not as simple oppositions or measures of success, but as equally rich modes of approach to design. The argument is made for gastronomy as a persuasive interrogatory tool for the sensory and holistic examination of the built environment.

Egyptian Antiquity, Imperial Politics, and Modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-280
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Art Deco ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Politics Of Archaeology ◽  
First World

Chapter 8 draws the web of relations between Egypt’s antiquity, empire, modernity, and internationalism from the outbreak of the First World War to decolonization. It focuses on the era between Britain’s unilateral granting of formal independence to Egypt in 1922 and the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1936, and sets the imperial preoccupation with ancient Egypt in national and international contexts. The chapter fills a lacuna in the historiography of Egyptology and Egyptomania which has focused on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and has largely overlooked the internationalist angles of the interwar obsession with ancient Egypt. The chapter maps the expansion of interest in Egypt beyond the pharaonic past and considers its extension to prehistoric Egypt. It relates Egyptology to the modernization of travel and speed technologies, and to popular representations of Egypt as a centre of globalized travel in a connective empire. The chapter further considers the roles of the global media in mediating between discoveries and transnational audiences. Following on the theme of the internationalization of Egypt’s past, it considers the presence of Egypt in material culture, particularly in eclectic styles and design which were associated with modernity, such as Art Deco architecture and fashion. One main argument of the chapter is that the interwar discovery of Egypt’s multiple pasts was characterized by an internationalization apparent in the politics of archaeology, the spread of the new regime of antiquities and cooperation between Egyptian nationalists and internationalist bodies, and in the mass production and consumption of Egyptiana.

THE “LAND OF FISH”: RECONSTRUCTING THE ANCIENT AQUATIC LIFEWAY IN MICHOACÁN, WESTERN MEXICO

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Eduardo Williams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Aquatic Environments ◽  
Subsistence Strategies ◽  
Western Mexico ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Lake Patzcuaro Basin ◽  
Subsistence Activities ◽  
Aquatic Landscapes ◽  
Written Sources

Abstract This article deals with the cultural activities linked to subsistence in aquatic environments (fishing, hunting, gathering, and manufacture) in Michoacán from ca. a.d. 1540 to the present. First, I present an ethnohistorical account of aquatic landscapes and resources based on the major written sources from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Second, I discuss the extant ethnographic information about subsistence activities in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (Michoacán) during the twentieth century. Finally, I discuss the archaeological implications of all the information presented here, through an ethnoarchaeological analysis of the subsistence strategies and the material culture associated with the aquatic lifeway in the study area. The main goal of this study is to provide bridging arguments for the reconstruction and interpretation (through analogy) of the archaeological assemblages associated with production and consumption activities in aquatic landscapes within the Tarascan region and elsewhere in Mesoamerica.

Material Culture and the Dance of Agency

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Self ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
The Third ◽  
And Performance

This article revolves around the discovery of matter. The first section concerns science studies. It emphasizes the importance of a focus on practice and performance as a way of undoing the ‘linguistic turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. The key concept here is that of a dance of agency. The second section reviews a variety of examples of this dance in fields beyond the natural sciences — civil engineering, pig farming, and convivial relations with dogs, architecture, technologies of the self, biological computing, brainwave music, and certain hylozoist and Eastern spirituality. This article focuses on contrasting forms that dances of agency and their products can take, depending on the presence or absence of an organizing telos of self-extinction. The third and final section reflects on the significance of this contrast for a politics of theory. This article traces the discovery of matter followed by the concepts of method, time, and agency.

Pain in Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Eccleston ◽  
Bart Morlion ◽  
Christopher Wells
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Pain ◽  
Palliative Care ◽  
Pain Management ◽  
Cancer Pain ◽  
Final Section ◽  
International Association ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Cancer Pain Management ◽  
The World

There are over 740 million people living in the 37 countries who are members of the European Pain Federation of chapters of the International Association for the Study of Pain. The editors introduce the field of pain management, in particular the work of over 20,000 people in acute (largely injury related) pain, chronic pain including cancer pain management, and palliative care. We then describe how the book European Pain Management is structured. There are three sections: an introduction to the world of pain and the epidemiology of pain. The main section, which is 37 chapters long, reports describing the practice of pain management in each country, the challenges and innovations. And a final section looks at specific issues that cut across all nations, and ends with a concluding analysis of the statue of European Pain Management.

Global Energy Cultures of Speed and Lightness: Materials, Mobilities and Transnational Power

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 127-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mimi Sheller
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Power Grids ◽  
Figured Worlds ◽  
Aluminum Production ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military

Following aluminum as part of a material culture of speed and lightness, this article examines how assemblages of energy and metals connect built environments, ways of life, and ideologies of acceleration. Aluminum can be theorized as a circulatory matrix that forms an energy culture. Through a discussion of speed and social justice, the history of aluminium-based socioecologies reveals how the materiality of energy forms assemblages of objects, infrastructures, and practices. The article then traces the aluminum industry’s involvement in the production and distribution of energy itself both at the national scale of power grids and in the emergence of transnational transfers of energy, such as hydropowered smelters in Iceland. Finally, this analysis of deeply embedded energy cultures calls for a transnational approach to the accelerated socioecologies of aluminum production and consumption; and for energy transition theories to pay closer attention to the figured worlds and figuring work of the military-industrial complex.

scholarly journals American Wedding Albums: a Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa Catherina D’Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Popular Medium ◽  
Production Organization ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Wedding photography is an area of vernacular studies that receives surprisingly little scholarly attention. This thesis explores the material culture of wedding photography, with a specific focus on the analysis of the wedding album in terms of presentation and consumption by families from the 1950s to the 1980s. The main section of this thesis provides an examination of selected wedding album owners. This case study contains a collection of oral histories from seven individuals on their experiences with presenting and displaying their wedding photographs. The analysis provides qualitative research on the production, organization, and consumption of the wedding album as a popular medium for exhibiting wedding photographs. In addition, this thesis offers some social and historical context on the development of the wedding album and wedding photography.

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