Reconstructing the Retail Mind: the Analysis of Store and Mail Order Catalogues

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "“And in his needy shop a tortoise hung”: Construction Of Retail Environments And The Agency Of Retailers In Historical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper reflects on 15 years of close analysis of over 55,000 prices in store and mail order catalogues and price lists of major Australian, English, American and Canadian retailers dating from the 1860s to 1907. These rare and dense resources capture extraordinary detail of material and consumer cultures. My previous research has focused on establishing the price and material facets of individual classes of household goods (ceramics, glass, jewellery and footwear). This paper will focus on the broader patterns of organisation that reveal retailer influence and agency. For example, divisions in the catalogue reflect divisions in the physical retail space and the personal style of Department heads. Each item description—embellished or simple—can be read as a salesman’s pitch, an asynchronous recreation of a retail exchange in the customer’s parlour. It tells us as much of the retailers themselves as it does the customers they were pitching to.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• “And in his needy shop a tortoise hung”: Construction Of Retail Environments And The Agency Of Retailers In Historical Archaeology

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 317