Western Europe (Geographic Keyword)
326-350 (352 Records)
This paper will briefly review some of the characteristics of North American, British and Contintental Eropean historical archaeology.from ahistorical perspective.The aim is to provide a background for other more detailed papersin this session on the nature and future direction of European historical arcaheology. There is no coherent Continet-wide approach to historical or post-medievalk arcaheology. Nevertheless, there are widely shared aspects whci serve to distibguish it from North American...
Transformations of the native elite in post-medieval Ireland: an archaeological perspective (2013)
Narratives of Ireland’s past are often dominated by simplistic binary oppositions between native and newcomer, English and Irish, Catholic and Protestant, which serve to disguise the social and ethnic complexity of post-medieval Irish society. Accordingly, the ‘big house’ functions, perhaps too conveniently, as the material embodiment of colonial privilege, working as a simple and stark counterpoint to the ‘thatched cottage’ of humble native tradition. This paper interrogates such divisions by...
Typologies of Consumption: Examining consumer behaviour through an analysis of the inherent qualities of material culture (2013)
Material culture analysis has traditionally paid more attention to the inherent qualities of artefacts which are associated with their production (like material, form, and decoration) while spending less time considering those inherent qualities which are formed by their consumption (like quality, wear, and repair). The dwindling overlap, over the last five centuries, between the group of people who produce goods and the group of people who consume them calls into question the assertion that...
Understanding Maritime Heritage Through The Iterative Use Of Geophysics and Diving (2018)
Over recent decades, offshore developments in the UK have given archaeologists access to large areas of seafloor which would not otherwise have been subjected to archaeological investigation. Heritage assets within these areas comprise remains of vessels, aircraft and associated debris associated with ports and harbours, maritime trade routes and activity associated with war. While the larger assets are often understood, the smaller or more ephemeral assets are more difficult to identify, but...
Underwater Archaeological Parks in Greece: The Case Studies of Methoni Bay-Sapientza Island and the Northern Sporades – Moving From A Culture of Prohibition Towards a Culture of Engagement (2013)
The representation and management of Greece's underwater archaeological heritage has recently 'set sail' from policies of almost absolute prohibition towards the recent permission of recreational diving. When past law enforcement measures attempted to gain monitoring rights and control of underwater archaeological heritage, underwater archaeology suffered from both restrictions and a lacked of a wider community engagement which the public image of underwater archaeologists. Working within the...
Underwater Cultural Heritage Training Programs Aimed at Increasing Professional Capacity: the UNESCO Foundation and Advanced courses Held Between 2009 and 2012 in Thailand for the Asia - Pacific Region (2013)
Between 2009 and 2012, UNESCO developed a foundation course for the management of underwater cultural heritage followed by advanced courses - all for the Asia-Pacific Region and aimed at professionals working for governmental organisations. Three foundation courses and two advanced courses were given in Thailand. In total 70 people were trained from 17 different countries. This huge success resulted in a few spin off effects in the region such as a platform of professionals from several...
Unearthing Scandinavia’s Colonial Past (2016)
In the recent years colonialism has been a subject of debate and new research in Scandinavian historical and anthropological scholarship. This scholarship is scrutinizing the impact of colonial expansion on societies in Scandinavia as well as the role and participation of the Swedish and Danish kingdoms in the colonial enterprises. Drawing on this research, my paper will explore the background and consequences of this interest in Scandinavia’s colonial past; the ways it rewrites historical...
Unethical Pasts, Uncertain Presents, and Potential Futures: The Evolution of Archaeological Representation in Video Games (2017)
Since the late 1970s, archaeology and archaeologists have appeared within games presented on every major video game and console format. From the earliest depictions as treasure hunters within games such as the Atari 2600’s temple crawler, Quest for Quintana Roo, to more nuanced portrayals within PC gaming’s recent field school simulator, C14 Dating, changes to how the public privileges and disregards the reality of archaeological practice can be traced through how the discipline is represented...
Urban material culture in Copenhagen in the post medieval period (2013)
Refuse dumps in Copenhagen comprise a broad variety of imports from abroad and show that the new world did indeed influence a small capital like Copenhagen in the post-medieval period. The archaeological finds are unique in an international perspective. Well-preserved leather, textile, hair and other organic components supplement the common ceramic material. The finds from several large post-medieval waterfront excavations form a very strong archaeological source material for urban material...
Using GIS and underwater sampling in the Armação de Pêra bay, Portugal (2013)
Aiming to contribute to an understanding of underwater landscapes and the evolution of shorelines, this work presents research in the submerged area of the Armação de Pêra bay (southern Portugal). Due to logistical difficulties involved in studying this context, it was necessary to develop two main approaches. On the one hand, it was necessary to collect underwater samples using a drilling system. On the other hand, it was necessary to develop and manage a Geographic Information System (GIS) for...
Valued relations: coin dies as actants (2013)
In present-day Scandinavia a coinage was introduced c. AD 995 which imitated contemporary Anglo-Saxon coins. For more than thirty years the English and Scandinavian coinages were closely connected. Humans (commissioners, moneyers, artisans) and objects (e.g. coin-dies) moved between the mints. Coinage is often seen as articulating sovereign rights in a certain area, but the Anglo-Scandinavian coinage network instead cut across kingdoms from west to east. Despite ongoing state-formation...
The ‘Very Stillness of Things’: Object Biographies of Sailcloth and Fishing Net from the Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission (Burgiyana) Colonial Archive, South Australia (2017)
This paper details the discovery of early 20th century sailcloth and fishing net samples pertaining to the lives of Aboriginal peoples on Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission (Burgiyana). Biographies for the samples are explored, from which it is argued that these objects may have many viewpoints assigned to them. The sailcloth and fishing net samples allow the telling of complex stories from the past and present. These stories include the resilience, adaptability and strength of Narungga culture...
A Village School in the City? Urban transition and School Heritage (2013)
Schools are a key component of urbanism, places where the regulatory apparatus of the state reaches into the lives of families. High density, busy, with ever shifting power politics creating spaces of fear and safety; creativity and control. In many ways they are hyper-urban. The establishment of Board Schools at the end of the 19th century in Britain coincides with the expansion of coastal cites such as Portsmouth. Throughout the 20th century ideology has been explicitly and publicly expressed...
Visualizing the visible: Mapping Access and Commodities at a 19th century Farmhouse (2013)
In this paper, I utilize GIS and other programs to explore the complexities of interior space in an early 19th century rural household. The E.H. and Anna Williams House in Deerfield, Massachusetts was lived in by the same family for much of the first half of the 19th century. The Williamses were wealthy, and filled their house with goods from around the world, in addition to the material necessities of running a working farm. Their house still stands today, as a museum, but what I will show is...
Wars With America 1776 - 1815 (2013)
Shipbuilding by James Martin Hilhouse at Bristol during this period of conflict. This young man aged 24 founded in 1772 a shipbuilding business that lasted 200 years and built large warships and merchantmen in Dockyards on the Avon that no longer exist but there is valuable archival material and some recent archaeological surveys have taken place. How did he use the experience gained by his apprenticeship to the Master Shipwright in Royal Dockyards for the benefit of Bristol merchants with...
"We are not ready for musealization – the conflict is not over yet" - A multisource and community approach to a 20th century protest camp site in Germany (2018)
This paper presents my PhD project which investigates the contested site of Gorleben, the iconic camp with 2000 inhabitants protesting against a nuclear waste facility, which was forcibly dismantled by the police in May 1980. Today it is a reference point for the German green movement and the sustainable energy discussion. In a multi-source approach, written accounts, photographs, excavation data and oral history are interpreted in a comparative perspective to reconstruct what happened (everyday...
"We liked the Ladies’ little double bed": Queer Pilgrimage and the Heritage House (2013)
Particular heritage houses have long been associated with prominent figures who have been claimed for queer history. Plas Newydd, Llangollen, the home of the Ladies of Llangollen, for example, drew admiring and fascinated visitors during their own lifetimes and since, many of whom were keen to replicate or fantasise about a similar romantic friendship or sexual relationship (depending on their interpretation of its nature). Changing attitudes to same-sex love in recent decades raise a new set of...
"What happens in the Embocadero, stays in the Embocadero": An Archaeological interpretation of the early Spanish exploration of the Pacific and the establishment of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade. (2017)
This paper lays out the the current archaeological findings of the Manila-Acapulco Trade route, and analyzes the navigation pattern as they travel from Manila, through the embocadero then travelling the northern trade winds over to North America. The route can take 4-6 months, and takes a heavy toll on the crew and their passengers. almost one third of this time is taken to traverse the Embocadero, a water route weaving through the middle of the Phillipine Islands. Knowing there were other...
"When Hungate Was Taken Down.........." – Solid And Ephemeral: The Dichotomy At The Heart Of The Archaeology Of Clearance In 1930s York. (2018)
In the early 1930s the Hungate district of York had become renowned as an area of dilapidated buildings and people living in poverty. In parallel to this the York Corporation had embarked on a new housing programme. This new programme required tenants and in an act of self fulfilling prophecy this process drove the demolition of Hungate. This act of clearance is solidly defined in the archaeology, through the remains of levelled buildings and rubble. However, the act of demolition is fleeting...
When medieval becomes early modern – changing interpretations of the Poel 11 and Hiddensee 12 ships from the southwestern Baltic Sea in Germany (2013)
The wrecks of two large ships found in the southwestern Baltic Sea in 1997 and 1999 were originally believed to be the remains of late 14th-century cargo vessels of extraordinary size. It was suggested they represented a special type of ship which was then called the "Baltic Cog" based on some similarities with ships of the so-called medieval "cog"–building tradition and in reference to a theory of the German scholar Paul Heinsius. However, in some aspects they differed from all known medieval...
Where Archaeology and History Diverge: how the archaeology of mystery U-boat wrecks challenges official history but yields insights into the realities of anti-submarine warfare in World War Two. (2013)
Research into the archaeology and distribution of 29 U-boat wrecks in the English and Bristol Channels, sunk in 1944 -1945 reveals that over a third of them do not match the losses recorded in the official histories of World War Two. Through historical research and archaeological recording these mystery sites can now be tentatively identified. What this process has revealed is how and why the Allies did not correctly assess the losses during wartime. It gives a unique insight into the challenges...
The Whipstaff Mascaron (2018)
When Vasa was built, it was decorated with numerous sculptures that presented ideas and beliefs on the importance of Sweden and the person of the King. One of the more intriguing, but until today little researched sculptures is the mascaron that sits above the bearings for the ship’s whipstaff. From the grotesque mouth of the sculpture, the whipstaff protrudes like a 4-meter-long tongue. Based on the intricate nature of the carving, and its unique location, the whipstaff mascaron possesses a...
Widening social participation in conservation and display of archaeology at the Museum of London (2013)
Since the 1980s, the MoL conservators have carried out innovative projects to engage new audiences and involve the public in conservation activities. Large structures have been conserved in the galleries, with students providing interpretation. Volunteer programmes have also been used to engage diverse audiences, offering the opportunity to handle archaeological material, take part in museum work and gain transferable skills. For the Galleries of Modern London, adults from an employment-support...
The work space of the British planter class, 1770 – 1830 (2013)
Focusing on Jamaica, the largest and most prosperous eighteenth-century British sugar colony, this paper will analyse the work space of wealthy Caribbean planters within a wider British-Atlantic context. The letters and probate inventory of Simon Taylor (1738-1813), one of the wealthiest sugar planters of his generation, will provide the main basis for the paper, which will analyse two aspects of the world of the planters and their perceptions of it. First, it will examine where plantation...
Working with indigenous (descendant) communities and the study of Roman Britain (2013)
This paper explores the meaning of the Roman past to people in Britain. The imperial context of Roman studies has been interrogated for almost two decades and alternative, more-critically-based, accounts of the impact of Roman upon Britain have been produced. The popular media, however, often portrays the Roman intervention in Britain as having granted material progress to barbarian Britons through the gift of Roman civilization. These arguments tend to divide specialists from the broader...