The circulation of college crockery in Cambridge, England, c.1760-1950: an urban archaeological tracer dye?

Summary

From c. 1760 onwards the colleges and other component elements of the University of Cambridge, England, regularly used ceramics marked with the names of colleges and the cooks who worked for them. We know with absolute certainty where many of these ceramics were principally employed, during dining in the hall of the college. This information, combined with their known depositional contexts, allows us to consider such ceramics as a form of archaeological ‘tracer dye’, whereby the circulation of material culture between different spatial, temporal and social contexts in mid 18th to mid 20th century Cambridge can be modelled and patterns recognised. When this is extended to groups of material rather than individual artefacts, it creates powerful ‘assemblage biographies’ which have a materialised temporality that reveals much about how the urban archaeological record is formed and the individuals, households and other groups that created these assemblages.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Any Colour You Like: International Perspectives in Ceramic Analysis   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 117