scholarly journals 'GILDED CARRIAGES AND LIVERIED SERVANTS': Thackeray, Bourdieu, and Material Culture

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Miller
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Spatial Relationships ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Economic Experience ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Representation Of Space ◽  
Commodity Form

The writings of William Thackeray (1811-1863) are dominated by his experience of the commodity form; his apprehension not only of objects and material reality, but also of his own literary productions emerges from economic experience. Working from Pierre Bourdieu's materialist analysis of spatial relationships, the following paper first examines the consequences of commodification on Thackeray's representation of space and material culture, and then briefly analyzes that representation as a product of Thackeray's habitus, understood as the dialectical product of his position within a series of social transformations in mid-Victorian England.

scholarly journals Re-survey and spatial analysis of landscape developments during the first millennium BC on Cyprus

Antiquity ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 90 (353) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Kearns
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
South Central ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Millennium Bc ◽  
Community Spaces

The narrative of socio-political development on the semi-arid island of Cyprus during the early first millennium BC (c. 1100–500) has focused largely on the institutions, practices and material culture of major centres and their interrelationships with growing maritime networks. Less studied are the landscapes surrounding these coastal and inland towns, which helped condition the increasing wealth and power of authorities through the management of agropastoral and metal goods, and through the creation of new mortuary, ritual and community spaces (Iacovou 2014). These regional contexts, whose settlements and land-use practices have now been recorded through several survey projects, provide a rich yet under-used source of material for investigating social transformations during this period. Ongoing interdisciplinary work in the Vasilikos and Maroni Valleys of south-central Cyprus has begun systematic analysis of these landscape changes and their long-term contexts. The project is focused on a 150km2 research area situated 20km east of the ancient polity of Amathus, extending from the central Troodos massif down to the coast (Figure 1).

scholarly journals Cultura material y cultura visual de las villae en el ager de Olisipo = Material culture and visual culture of the villae in the ager of Olisipo

2018 ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Jorge Tomás García
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Mechanisms Of Action ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Roman Province ◽  
Different Parts

Resumen: La cultura material en el contexto agrario caracteriza de manera definitiva la cosmovisión de la provincia romana de Lusitania. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la realidad material de los distintos asentamientos rurales reconocidos como villae en el ager de Olisipo –actual Lisboa-. La riqueza geográfica de la zona (a través del contraste ager-litoral), la variedad económica de los intercambios comerciales (especialmente las factorías de pescado), las influencias artísticas de distintas partes del Imperio (norte de África y península Itálica), y la idiosincrasia propia de Lusitania, conforman un caso de estudio paradigmático para definir los mecanismos de actuación de la cultura material en la zona de Olisipo y su ager.Abstract: Material culture in the agrarian context characterizes the worldview of the Roman province of Lusitania. This article aims to analyze the material reality of the different rural settlements recognized as villae in the ager of Olisipo –Lisbon today-. The geographic richness of the area (contrast ager-littoral), the economic variety of commercial exchanges (especially fish factories), the artistic influences of different parts of the Empire (North Africa and Italian peninsula), and idiosyncrasy of Lusitania, constitute a paradigmatic case study to define the mechanisms of action of the material culture in the area of Olisipio and its ager.

scholarly journals Finding Archaeological Relevance during a Pandemic and What Comes After

2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-22
Author(s):  
Lynn H. Gamble ◽  
Cheryl Claassen ◽  
Jelmer W. Eerkens ◽  
Douglas J. Kennett ◽  
Patricia M. Lambert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Disease Vectors ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Global Pandemic

This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease, archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, and effects of disease in both the Americas and Afro-Eurasian contexts. Recognizing that human populations most severely impacted by COVID-19 are typically descendants of marginalized groups, we investigate pre- and postcontact disease vectors among Indigenous and Black communities in North America, outlining the systemic impacts of diseases and the conditions that exacerbate their spread. We look at how material culture both reflects and changes as a result of social transformations brought about by disease, the insights that paleopathology provides about the ancient human condition, and the impacts of ancient globalization on the spread of disease worldwide. By understanding the differential effects of past epidemics on diverse communities and contributing to more equitable sociopolitical agendas, archaeology can play a key role in helping to pursue a more just future.

Northern Greece and the central Balkans

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanos Gimatzidis
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Buffer Zone ◽  
Northern Greece ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Cultural Innovation ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This chapter deals with the cultural and social history of an area encompassing ancient Epirus, Illyria, Macedonia, and Thrace. In the past, these historical landscapes were usually perceived as cultural or ethnic entities, and were used as arguments for past and modern ethnogenesis in the Balkans. The material culture of single micro-regions shows that these landscapes are culturally neither homogeneous nor consistent, and instead show an impressive diversity in settlement patterns, mortuary ideology, and other cultural attributes. Indeed, cultural affinities between micro-regions of different historical landscapes further challenge perceptions of ethnicity and other forms of social identity as reflecting cultural variability. Conceptualization of northern Greece and the central Balkans as a buffer zone between the Aegean world and continental Europe is another bias that reduces local social agents to recipients of cultural innovation from north and especially south, and overlooks the dynamic processes inherent in local social transformations.

The Archaeology of Social Transformation in the New Guinea Highlands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Gaffney ◽  
Tim Denham
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Food Production ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Plant Food ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
High Diversity

This article examines three key aspects of New Guinea Highlands prehistory, with important implications for regional and global archaeology, including evidence for (1) adaptive flexibility at high altitudes, particularly within montane rainforests and grasslands; (2) plant-food production and cultivation in the tropics; and (3) the emergence of incipient social stratification and how it was transformed by the production and redistribution of material culture, plants, and animals. After synthesizing the archaeological evidence, we propose that social transformations amongst highland groups were intraregionally variable and involved a sequential diversification of subsistence practices that overlapped and persisted through time. Because communities, and their sociotechnical practices, were differently interconnected across the mountains, and at times to the lowlands, coasts, and islands as well, each subregion transformed asymmetrically at different rates and scales through time. The high diversity of highland cultures observed in the early twentieth century by ethnographers is likely to have arisen from these asymmetric processes of growth.

scholarly journals Historical Visuals and Reconstruction of Motion: A Gestalt Perspective on Medieval Fencing Iconography

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-164
Author(s):  
Maciej Talaga ◽  
Harrison Ridgeway
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Material Source ◽  
Technical Literature ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Crucial Information ◽  
The Subject

SummarySeveral subdisciplines within historiography, most notably the arms and armour or martial arts studies, are interested in inferring physical qualities of historical material objects from historical sources. Scholars from these fields face serious deficiency of written accounts when it comes to various crucial information regarding their subject matter. Therefore, researchers’ attention is often drawn to iconographical sources, sometimes resulting in certain fascination with the material culture depicted in primary technical literature (Fachliteratur). This tendency seems particularly strong in studies on HEMA which rely heavily on pre-modern combat treatises known as ‘fight books’ (Fechtbücher) and are tempted either to treat the available iconography as a faithful representation of its corresponding material reality or to interpret apparent mismatch between icono-graphical representations and their material source domain as evidence for the inferior skills of the illustrator.We would like to put forward that there is a fundamental oversight in such approach to Fachliteratur in general and fight books in particular, namely the lack of consideration for the artwork as a diagrammatic representation of the functional aspects of depicted embodied technique, where proportional ‘realism’ is of lesser priority. It may be fruitful to develop a more nuanced method of ‘reading’ such images. Our survey of select late-medieval fight books shows that equipment, and even body parts, are regularly distorted in their depictions in the fight books to better communicate the subject matter, especially where textual descriptions would be complicated. Interpreted in Gestalt terms, this phenomenon may serve as an example of historical pragmatic application of the cognitive principle of holism – that the whole is something different than the sum of its parts.

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