Kitchen Things: Material Entanglement and Modernity in 19th- Century Iceland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Working on the 19th-Century" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper will look at the material culture of the kitchen in 19th-century Iceland through probate inventories and ceramic assemblages. It hypothesizes that changes in kitchen assemblages had an active role in the modernization process. Rather than simply being the effects of increased consumerism and global capitalism the things had an active influence on women’s routines. While the theory of the separation of gendered spheres suggests that through modernity the female sphere became more private, I suggest that there was a parallel push for the private to become public. The new kitchen assemblages afforded a standardization in routines and although the demand for the consumption of the correct material culture and a right way of doing things created sharp class boundaries it also encouraged the professionalization of housework and illuminated the work of women. Through the establishment of housewife-schools and the publication of books on housework the private became public.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Working on the 19th-Century

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 233