Towards an archaeology of everyday life in British Ionian Islands: the cultural itineraries of the Kythera Gin Bottles

Abstract

SUMMARY During the course of the nineteenth century the island of Kythera, Southwest Greece, was part of the United States of Ionian Islands, under the control of the British empire. This paper explores the materiality of colonialism in local contexts, through the object itineraries of a group of stoneware bottles—a class of artefacts that continues to be represented in domestic assemblages locally today. We examine the diverse ways the vessels became entangled with the lives of individuals, colonialist agendas, and collective perceptions of identity, seeking to identify how the meanings associated with the objects and their relational connections shifted across time and space.