Boys and Their Toys: Masculine spaces in eighteenth-century York

Summary

This paper highlights the potential of material culture to challenge and nuance historical accounts of large-scale cultural transformations in the Georgian period, such as urban improvement and domestic privacy. It explores how the detailed analysis of houses and the changes made to their fabric, form and function, sheds light on their changing uses and meanings over time. When combined with the study of diaries, maps, newspapers, wills, illustrations and early photographs, it can be used to generate a series of ‘street stories’ and ‘building biographies’ that illuminate how the urban environment was experienced. The paper focuses on shops tailored towards masculine consumption in eighteenth-century York, exploring the use of social space. It investigates how these masculine spaces were associated with older forms of architecture rather than the latest fashionable styles, as well as perceptions of ‘public’ and ‘private’.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Postgraduate Research In Post-Medieval Archaeology In The UK: A Society For Post-Medieval Archaeology Sponsored Session   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 581