scholarly journals Ideas, Persons, and Objects in the History of Ideas

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Bennett Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Deep Foundation ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Abstract Ideas ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
And Behavior

Abstract The history of ideas is most prominently understood as a highly specialized group of methods for the study of abstract ideas, with both diachronic and synchronic aspects. While theorizing the field has focused on the methods of study, defining the object of study – ideas – has been neglected. But the development of the theories behind material culture studies poses a sharp challenge to these narrow approaches. It both challenges the integrity of the notion of abstract ideas and also offers possibilities for enlarging the scope of the ways in which we can study ideas historically. It is proposed here to regard ideas as mental relations deeply connected to human communication by both thinking and doing. This connection of ideational thought to human production and behavior is a deep foundation for the history of ideas as an interdisciplinary historiographic means of understanding moral life.

The Material‐Cultural Turn

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Cultural Turn

The terms ‘material culture’ and ‘material culture studies’ emerged, one after another, during the twentieth century in the disciplines of archaeology and socio-cultural anthropology, and especially in the place of intersection between the two: anthropological archaeology. The purpose of this article, however, is to excavate the idea of ‘material culture studies’, rather than to bury it. Excavation examines the remains of the past in the present and for the present. It proceeds down from the surface, but the archaeological convention is to reverse this sequence in writing: from the past to the present. In the discussion of the history of ideas and theories, a major risk of such a chronological framework is that new ideas are narrated progressively, as paradigm shifts. The main argument of the article relates to the distinctive form taken by the ‘cultural turn’ in British archaeology and anthropology during the 1980s and 1990s.

Rethinking numismatics. The archaeology of coins

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fleur Kemmers ◽  
Nanouschka Myrberg
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Organization ◽  
The 19Th Century

AbstractThis paper sets out to re-member coins into archaeological discourse. It is argued that coins, as part of material culture, need to be examined within the theoretical framework of historical archaeology and material-culture studies. Through several case studies we demonstrate how coins, through their integration of text, image and existence as material objects, offer profound insights not only into matters of economy and the ‘big history’ of issuers and state organization but also into ‘small histories’, cultural values and the agency of humans and objects. In the formative period of archaeology in the 19th century the study of coins played an important role in the development of new methods and concepts. Today, numismatics is viewed as a field apart. The mutual benefits of our approach to the fields of archaeology and numismatics highlight the need for a new and constructive dialogue between the disciplines.

Stone Tools

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Old World ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of

The focus of this article is stone tools. The history of stone tool research is linked integrally to the history of archaeology and the study of the human past, and many of the early developments in archaeology were connected with the study of stone artefacts. The identification of stone tools as objects of prehistoric human manufacture was central to the development of nineteenth-century models of prehistoric change, and especially the Three Age system for Old World prehistory. This article draws on concepts derived from interdisciplinary material culture studies to consider the role of the artefact after being discarded. It suggests that it is impossible to understand the meaning or efficacy of stone tools without understanding their ‘afterlives’ following abandonment. This article aims to complement contemporary metrical studies of the identification of stone tools and the description of their production. A brief history of the stone tools is explained and this concludes the article.

Words or Things in American History?

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Steven Conn
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchstone to examine the history of the relationship between material culture and the study of the past. Material culture studies promised access both to the history of those who left no written records and to a different kind of cognitive insight than could be gained from traditional historical sources. While this was of a piece with the development of the “new social history” in the 1960s, the chapter looks back to the early twentieth century to put Kouwenhoven’s call for the study of material culture in a longer historical context, and it traces what happened to material culture studies over the last half-century. The chapter suggests that despite its many accomplishments, the use of material culture remains on the edges of most historical work, especially after historians took the linguistic turn, which refocused their attention on texts rather than things.

Muck, Mummies and Medicine: Disgust in Early Modern Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-65
Author(s):  
Sarah-Maria Schober
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This essay shows that early modern practices that used human bodily matter cannot be – as hitherto – explained by the absence of the emotion of disgust nor as being conducted in spite of disgust. Instead, it proposes to read those practices’ changing history as part of the history of the ‘paradox of disgust’. Four case studies (on anatomy, excrement, mummies and skulls) demonstrate that disgust was highly productive: it attracted fascination, allowed physicians to fashion themselves, and was even believed capable of healing. Over time and for complex reasons, however, the productive side of disgust declined. Combining current approaches in the history of emotions and material culture studies, this essay sets out not only to propose a new narrative for the changing role of disgust in early modern science and societies, but also to explore how variations in settings and human intervention changed the way emotions were used and perceived.

Biography of a Hill: Novi Pazar in South-Western Serbia

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Staša Babić
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Spatial Dimension ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
World Heritage List ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Object Of Study

Archaeology is one of the academic disciplines whose aim is to make sense of the past. Among other things, we organize and classify the material culture of the past into distinctive units according to a number of scholarly established criteria. In the course of the history of the discipline, these criteria have changed, and some of the previously prevailing modes of classification have been severely criticized, above all the concept of archaeological culture (e.g. Jones 1997; Canuto and Yaeger 2000; Isbell 2000; Thomas 2000; Lucy 2005). These reconsiderations have brought forward that the past may not have been as orderly organized and readily packed into the units we have designed to manipulate and explain its material traces. Consequently, we have started investigating other possible paths of thinking about the lived experiences of the people whose actions we seek to understand (e.g. Díaz-Andreu et al. 2005; Insoll 2007). However, some of the archaeological practices of organizing our subject of study have remained largely unchanged from the very beginnings of our discipline to the present day, such as defining one of the very basic units of observation—an archaeological site. The archaeological process may be said to begin ‘at the trowel’s edge’ (Hodder 1999, 92ff.), by distinguishing the features in the soil indicative of past human activities and demarcating their spatial limits. This basic anchoring in the spatial dimension, regardless of subsequent procedures, that may vary significantly depending upon the theoretical and methodological inclinations of the researcher(s) in question (Jones 2002; Lucas 2001; 2012), renders the past tangible and manageable, transforming a patch of land into an object of study, further scrutinized according to a set of rules laid down by archaeologists. Once investigated in their physical form in the field, the sites are converted into a set of information, analysed, commented upon and valorized both by archaeologists and the general public. In the process, some are judged to be more important than the others and lists of particularly valuable sites are compiled, such as the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Reception of ancient Egypt

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Florian Ebeling
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
The West ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The history of reception of ancient Egypt deals with the perceptions and images of ancient Egypt in the West that emerged without direct access to ancient Egyptian sources, especially without proper knowledge of the hieroglyphs. It deals with texts, images and art as part of the history of ideas and with material culture as well. It is not about the question of whether these images and concepts correspond to the historical realities in ancient Egypt, but about the question of the way in which ancient Egypt was referred to, and about the relevance of this concept in the history of the West.

scholarly journals Wrangel Island Toponymy Motivated by Zoology Vocabulary

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Yuri S. Kostylev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Wrangel Island ◽  
Island State ◽  
State Nature Reserve ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specific Source ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Place Naming ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Animal World

The paper deals with the names of geographical objects of Wrangel Island motivated by zoology vocabulary. These lexical units may refer to various species and groups of animals, characteristic features of their appearance and behavior, or include notions and terms of material culture related to hunting, animal breeding, and nature conservation. The study builds on specialized toponymic guides, memoirs and essays, cartographic materials, as well as materials of an interview with the deputy director for environmental protection of the Wrangel Island State Nature Reserve, G. Fedorov. An analysis of the selected material allows us to trace several phases of the island’s development over the rather short (about 150 years) history of its exploration, captured in toponymy as a major element of spiritual culture. Interestingly enough, a relatively large number (19%) of toponyms are motivated by zoology vocabulary, which is explained by the importance of the animal world for Wrangel Island. Moreover, the choice of specific vocabulary from this sphere is associated with the nature of human activity on the island. The island history falls into three periods, each having specific source vocabulary for place naming: 1) discovery and initial inspection of the territory; 2) hunting and fishing development; 3) reserve foundation and environmental activities. The distributional prevalence of motivating tokens speaks not only of the time the name was created or of the nominator’s occupation but also points to the objective features of the island’s animal world and the diversity of its fauna. The analysis of the presented data leads to conclude that toponymy serves both as an illustration and as a direct source of unique historical information related to specific parts of the studied area.

scholarly journals Documentación arqueológica tridimensional de la cultura material en la terraza sureste de la necrópolis de Qubbet el-Hawa (Asuán): potencial y difusión pública de resultados

2019 ◽  
pp. 387-401
Author(s):  
Libertad Serrano Lara ◽  
◽  
Luisa María García González ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Virtual Museum ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Funerary Rituals ◽  
History Of ◽  
Digital Artefact

Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan): Potential and Public Dissemination of the Results The material culture found in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa stands out for its typological and chronological diversity and quality. It is possible to reconstruct different chapters of the history of the First Nome of Upper Egypt thanks to material culture studies. Furthermore, these studies allow us to detect changes in funerary rituals. Qubbet el-Hawa is an excellent archaeological site to be documented with the latest technologies, especially three-dimensional modelling. The updated work on the digital artefact collection from the Qubbet el-Hawa Project offers a three-dimensional open access library, which allows users to visit a virtual museum of the material culture recovered in the necropolis. This paper presents the methodology applied to maximize the potential of three-dimensional archaeological documentation for the public dissemination of the research results.

scholarly journals Delo Jovana Cvijića i Vladimira Dvornikovića kroz prizmu srpske arheologije

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 619
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Palavestra ◽  
Monika Milosavljević
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Archaeology ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
History Of

From the point of view of the fact-oriented history of archaeology, there is no reason to consider the works of Jovan Cvijić and Vladimir Dvorniković. However, if we consider the history of ideas that have fundamentally determined the course of Serbian archaeology, it is relevant to examine the contributions of other disciplines and their key representatives. In the case of Serbian archaeology, the estimation of interdisciplinary transfers of ideas must be approached critically and with great caution, due to the deeply rooted tradition of not explicating the theoretical and methodological base of research. In other words, well into the 20th century, archaeologists have very rarely referred to authors from other fields of research, especially when dealing with general social phenomena. Serbian archaeology has tended to be a-theoretical, and the ideas of social development, social dynamics, or the rules of social behaviour have been considered as “implicit knowledge”, that need not be explained. However, these knowledges are counted upon, and are still considered as indubitable; there lies the power of “common points”, whose origins and genesis are very hard to discern. In this case study, the aim is to: 1) reconsider the link between the culture-historical archaeology in Serbia and cultural belts of Jovan Cvijić; and then to 2) attempt to understand the genealogy of the idea of continuity in Serbian archaeology. In other words, we shall challenge the apparently very logical supposition that our culture-historical archaeology has used the foundations laid by Jovan Cvijić, both in the case of cultural belts and of continuity. It will be demonstrated that archaeologists have skipped the lesson of Cvijić’s anthropo-geographical school of cultural circles, as well as his rejection of deep continuity in the Balkans. This means that the source of the archaeological idea of the elements of (material) culture that may be preserved from prehistory to the present, must be sought for in another direction, outside the work of Cvijić. One possible solution is to acknowledge the worlds of ideas of Milan Budimir and Veselin Čajkanović, along with very explicit ideas of continuity of less known Niko Županić and more prominent Vladimir Dvorniković, who modified and widely disseminated the ideas of Županić.

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