Historic Material Culture (Other Keyword)

1-7 (7 Records)

Approaches to the archaeology of value (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Penny Crook.

The value of material goods, be it economic, social, spiritual or otherwise, is a key factor in their manufacture, acquisition, use and discard. While changeable, value mediates every phase of the object’s life cycle. It changes over time and amongst subcultures. The consideration of value is fundamental to archaeological interpretation, and yet archaeological theories of value have only recently attracted attention. This is in part a reflection of a broader reconsideration of value across the...


An archaeology of colonial consumption: Sydney trade and material culture, 1788–1901
PROJECT Uploaded by: Penny Crook

This is the project archive of an ARC Discovery grant conducted between 2014 and 2018 that explored Sydney’s history as a colonial marketplace at the height of the British empire. It employed emerging digital technologies and pioneering new methods to explore the cost, quality and value of archaeological relics found across Sydney, and underwrite new transnational histories of empire, commerce and consumer culture.


"For the kitchen or nursery”: The Promotion of Willow and Other Common Transfer-printed Ceramics (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Penny Crook.

This paper explores the promotion of ‘Willow’ and other common transfer-printed patterns in 19th-century trade catalogues and Australian colonial newspaper advertisements. These ‘usual suspects’ (‘Willow’, ‘Asiatic Pheasant’, ‘Rhine’ amongst others) appear in large numbers on historical archaeological sites across the globe. We know from select trade catalogues and ad hoc advertisements that by 1880s, ‘Willow’ and ‘Asiatic Pheasant’, along with Band-and-line wares, were sold as dinnersets ‘for...


Measuring the Quality of Personal Goods: Antipodean Adventures in the Archaeology of Consumption (2018)
DOCUMENT Full-Text Penny Crook.

The systematic indexation of quality in mass-produced goods offers a new approach for historical archaeology and studies of consumption. The relative excellence of glass and ceramics sherds has proven to be a useful complement to traditional analyses of function, fabric and decoration when studying consumer choice at the household level. But does this approach suit the archaeological study of personal goods? Are the challenges of artifact preservation and assemblage diversification too great?...


Measuring the quality of personal goods: challenges and opportunities for the archaeology of consumption (2015)
DOCUMENT Full-Text Penny Crook.

The practice of the systematic indexation of quality in 19th-century mass-produced goods offers a new approach for historical archaeology and studies of consumption. This paper will discuss current efforts to expand the systematic measurement of quality of archaeological goods from ceramic and glass to personal goods, specifically footwear and and pressed-metal ornaments (including buckles, buttons and brooches) known as the ‘Birmingham wares’. This has the potential to address another important...


The promotion of personal and domestic goods in 19th-century trade catalogues: similarities and differences (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Penny Crook.

Nineteenth-century trade and store catalogues are an invaluable source of data about material and consumer cultures. They record in fine detail, small font and recurring lithographs millions of products offered sale to customers around the corner and across the globe. Their utility in historical archaeology has long been acknowledged but rarely exploited. This paper will report on the creation of a dataset of 55,000 items sourced from illustrated catalogues and price lists of major Australian,...


Walpi Archaeological Project - Phase II, Volume 2: Part I: Euro-American Manufactured Remains (1981)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah A. Hull.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.