Seats of Honor, Seats of Power: The Symbolism of Public Seating in the English Urban Community,c.1560-1620

Abstract

The use of anthropological methods and models to inform the conceptualization of social history is no longer a novelty by any means. Whereas the historian has long documented and interpreted the events and sometimes the material objects of past times, and placed them in causal relationships, in recent years anthropologists have helped historians to unveil the multiplicity of meaning in a particular sets of events or material objects. Common and effective applications of such collaboration have been made with regard to such concerns as kinship and marriage, the nature of personal honor, hospitality, and the ritualized expression of group identity. Yet historians have also employed an anthropological approach to the ritualistic or semiotic aspects of whole communities.