Material Culture In Relation Research Articles

The Stuff of Snuff: The Affective and Sensory Connotations of Snuffboxes in Eighteenth-Century Culture

Abstract This essay explores the relationship between emotions and material culture in relation to one specific artefact, the snuffbox. Small in scale, capable of activating multiple senses and hugely fashionable, the snuffbox became an enormously popular accessory that was extensively used by both sexes in eighteenth-century society. Its scale, and intimate relationship to the body, made it an ideal gift between lovers or courting couples, and it could be personalised to carry affective inscriptions, imagery or even portraits. Often made of ornate or expensive materials, or studded with jewels, its materiality became part of its seductive charm. Its emotional potency extended to its role in the performance of public identities through the display and manipulation of the box in polite society, while its secret compartments facilitated the retention of mementos or the private display of explicitly pornographic imagery.

The Social Movement Archive

The Social Movement Archive

Salt Making and Pottery Production: Community Craft Specialization in Alburquerque, Bohol, Philippines

ABSTRACTThis ethnoarchaeological study examines contemporary salt and earthenware pottery production in Alburquerque, Bohol, Central Philippines. It highlights the intersection of these two craft industries through the use of locally made earthenware pots for salt making, serving both as brine boiling containers, as well as standard units of measurement for trade. It examines the spatial distribution of production activities and related material culture, from the procurement of resources through the stages of production, to distribution, and the resulting archaeological correlates to serve as a framework for interpreting prehistoric salt sites with pottery remains. Moreover, this research contributes to research on household-based production activities, demonstrating that households can be active and integral participants in inter-community and regional markets and long-distance exchange.

Ceramics and locational identity: Investigating the symbolism of material culture in relation to a sense of place

This article is an investigation into material culture and its symbolism regarding place and space and addresses the research question ‘why do select ceramic artefacts evoke or become symbolic of a specific location and sense of place?’ The research covers the areas of conceptual ceramic design, craft, culture and practice-led research. Dutch design duo Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck – Atelier NL are discussed as an example of contemporary designer makers who create objects that embody social meaning and express an evocative sense of locational identity. The two Eindhoven-based designer-makers’ creative process combines and reveals different strands of academic and material enquiry and representing a creative process that flows between making, scientific knowledge, anthropology, archaeology, geology, art, design and craft. Atelier NL’s practice is representative of a current interest within visual and material culture in both practice-led research and socially engaged practice. The narrative of their research-based practice is unequivocally part of the production and presentation of their work. Atelier NL’s practice stands for a creative partnership that investigates and celebrates their locality as well as responding to a sense of ‘culture loss’ indicative of mainstream patterns of design, production and consumption of goods and services.

Dining with Christ and His Saints. Tableware in Relation to Late Medieval Devotional Culture in Sweden

SummaryThe profane meal was an important part of social life during the Middle Ages and could take place within a single household, at a larger banquet or in the community of a guild. The focus of this article is on medieval material culture in relation to the meal. At the centre are cutlery and drinking vessels from medieval Sweden such as spoons, knives, jugs, drinking horns, bowls and goblets. These categories of objects have so far been studied only on a limited scale and mostly from the perspective of the material, technique, style, trade and practical use, while the function and meaning of inscriptions and images have not been thoroughly examined. The article points at the appearance of pious images and prayers in relation to Christ and the saints on utility goods as an expression of a desire for and a promise to receive help and protection in everyday life. Devotional images or short prayer inscriptions could in all likelihood generate a response in the form of a quick prayer or a pious thought. Objects such as the presented utility goods could accordingly activate devotion. Open to the senses in relation to devotion, the owner could view the images, read the prayers aloud or silently, touch the images and words with the fingertips, lips and tongue and in that way come in direct bodily contact with what was regarded as sacred.

Sous la loupe des écrivains contemporains. La nourriture ou son absence à l’époque soviétique, entre mythe et réalité

Contemporary Russian Fiction on Food and its Absence in Soviet Times : Between Myth and Reality. the theme of food and its absence in the Soviet era appears in the works of many contemporary russian writers. on the one hand, literary works document food related material culture in Soviet times and the difficult relation with food in periods of shortage. they also document the lasting consequences of the absence of food, such as the fear of hunger or alimentary obsessions. on the other hand, several novels and stories by émigré writers tend to mirror the mythical dimension that food acquires in fantasy and recollection. numerous narrative threads revolve around food : to a certain extent food acts as a catalyser of introspective motives and psychological nuances, historical and domestic chronicles. the art of making a meal out of nothing mastered by the Soviet housewife is a topos in the works set in those years as is the case with the reflection on the tangle of feelings connected to hunger : distress, shame and fear. of course, the representation of food very often adjusts to the writers’ specific stylistic trends. but more generally, food is used as a metaphor, the symbol of a state of mind or the expression of a nostalgic feeling and provides us with a possible key to interpreting reality.

Towards a Chronology of the Eritrean Red Sea Port of Adulis (1st – Early 7th Century AD)

The Eritrean coastal site of Adulis has been known to archaeologists since the second half of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Italian archaeologist Roberto Paribeni conducted extensive excavations in different areas of the site which uncovered the remains of monumental buildings, churches and houses, as well as rich deposits of related material culture. Since then, archaeological investigations have been limited to the activities of Francis Anfray in 1961–62 and to a survey conducted by the University of Southampton in 2003–04. Our team’s first excavations in stratified deposits began in 2011, and soon revealed a complex chronological sequence of great importance for the understanding of the cultural history of the southern Red Sea region and the Horn of Africa. The project’s main efforts were directed towards the identification of the main phases of occupation at Adulis, the establishment of a typological sequence of pottery, and the analysis of architectural change.

Material Culture and the Study of Hinduism and Buddhism

AbstractThis essay surveys the history of material culture in relation to the study of Buddhism and Hinduism. The essay opens by exploring the factors in Reformation and Enlightenment Europe that led to the marginalization of material culture in relation to religion, and how these attitudes towards the use of material objects in religion entered the academic study of religion as the discipline developed. Colonial attitudes towards Buddhist and Hindu material culture are also addressed as an example of how the western move towards a privileging of texts and doctrines over matter impacted the early study of Indian religions by western academics. The more recent shift towards including data from material sources is also demonstrated with a focus on two fields within religious studies: the history of religions and lived religions. In relation to the history of religions, the essay demonstrates that incorporating material sources both questions accepted scholarship based solely on texts and allows for a more complete historical context through which scholars can explore both texts and objects together. The discussion of lived religions and material culture emphasizes the movement towards understanding religion as embodied and that a study of how objects are produced, exchanged and understood gives us insight into everyday religious practice and the social relationships that are constructed through the use of ‘stuff’.

Exhibiting Popular Music: Museum Audiences, Inclusion and Social History

In recent years the relationship between museums and their visitors has been subject to much discussion in relation to debates about the role that these institutions can play in widening participation and tackling social exclusion. Focussing on the display and representation of popular music in UK museums, this article considers the way in which popular music and its related material culture has been displayed, interpreted, valued and mobilized for museum audiences. One particular exhibition, The Beat Goes On, will be examined as a case study through which to explore the issue of popular music and museum audiences in more detail. The article addresses specific issues relating to the representation of music and music culture in the museum context. It explores how social history is constructed by museum professionals and how visitors interpret the material within an exhibition drawing on personal and collective memory. On the one hand, the case study exhibition sought to reflect the ways in which people engage with and experience popular music. On the other hand, the exhibition was necessarily informed by existing research about how visitors negotiate exhibition content and gallery spaces. Drawing on visitor feedback, gallery observation visits and formal evaluation, the article will examine the challenges of effectively communicating concepts and themes around music within an exhibition.

The Scheldt Valley Commercial Activity Zone: 350 Hectares of the Gallo-Roman Landscape

ABSTRACTThe research undertaken on the Scheldt Valley Commercial Activity Zone was the frst large-scale excavation in the Valenciennes region (northern France), permitting an insight into the organization of a large territory. It has yielded a great wealth of data on land use and settlement and it forms a key point of reference for any future research within the region for each of the studied periods. The article discusses the characteristics of the occupation of the territory, allowing the development of new models for the occupation, structure, and management of the land and the institution of settlements and their related material culture. It argues for a Roman-indigenous land cadaster, until now not observed for this part of Roman France. The different enclosures and their internal organization are described (buildings, wells, ponds, an artisanal zone, a road system, and a burial zone), showing the persistence of numerous protohistoric sites into Roman times, which is explained by the continuity of the agricultural system and a voluntary integration into a Roman administration. The Onnaing-Scheldt Valley demonstrates the importance of large-scale excavations for the understanding of land use.

Consuming children and making mothers: birthday parties, gifts and the pursuit of sameness

Children's birthday parties, and related consumption, form an integral part of the social process of mothering in contemporary consumer culture. From the choosing of the 'right' present to the arrangement of the 'appropriate' party theme, an enormous pressure is exerted upon mothers to maintain social equilibrium through the circulation of their children and gifts amongst and across households. Ethnographic research in Britain suggests that the economic growth of children's party provision and services is coupled with a popular discourse that laments the loss of 'authentic' kinship-based birthday parties and home-made provisioning. In contrast to this spoken discourse, this article reveals how women in fact avidly embrace market goods and services; as a means of generating a culture of sameness that avoids the risks (to the motherhood as a collective, localised phenomenon) of exceptional or overtly accomplished mothering. Commercialised, mass produced goods and birthday services are used as a means of limiting expressive gift relations and hospitality. In this sense, the search for sameness, through the cultural practice of making children's parties, is at once liberating and potentially oppressive in its strive for the normative and its inadvertent exclusion of 'other' care-givers. Furthermore, children and their related material culture are consumed, through the birthday party circuit, as a means of generating specific types of mothering.

Reassessing the Developmental and Chronological Relationships of the Formative of Coastal Ecuador

The Ecuadorian Formative was initially interpreted as a result of long-distance diffusion, and migration, more recent research has changed our perception of the Valdivia, Machalilla, and Chorrera culture complexes. In this analysis, these archaeological investigations are reassessed in order to reevaluate our understanding regarding the nature of these prehistoric cultures. Formative chronologies, distributions, interrelationships are reviewed in the light of Pre-Hispanic occupations in El Oro Province. Previous investigations on the Ecuadorian littoral are examined. Results indicate (1) Valdivia and Machalilla are part of the same ceramic tradition and (2) the interrelationships of these complexes to Late Formative Period ceramic sequences are more complex than previously assumed. (3) A major adaptive shift related to an increased dependence upon agriculture occurred during Valdivia VI–VIII, and continued into the Late Formative with the widespread distribution of Chorrera related material culture. (4) Long-distance interaction with the Ecuadorian highlands resulted in the spread of what may be termed a Chorrera horizon and formed the basis of subsequent Andean cosmology where it was symbolically represented according to local and regional artistic canons and over a vast area of Andean South America.

History and Technology of Olive Oil in the Holy Land by Rafael Frankel, et al

242 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE were categorized geographically—but the entry numbers in the in­ dex hardly ever matched the ones in the text. Some I never did find. When I did, I found substantial errors. For example (to mention one of many),Jan Vansina’s works on western Bantu expansion and Bantu linguistics are listed under East Africa, where they obviously do not belong. Au experienced researcher will go crazy using this bibliography; a student or layperson will be seriously misled. Until these problems are corrected, the bibliography under review here will not replace the older standard resources in this area of study. Walter Cline’s Mining and Metallurgy in Negro Africa (Menasha, Wise.: George Banta, 1937) is outdated and has serious drawbacks, but it remains valid in many ways, not the least of which is the author’s technical expertise, which allowed him to expand on the data he collected, posing cogent questions and drawing historical inferences about production ofmetals and technology transfer. Den­ nis Spande’s bibliography, A Historical Perspective on Metallurgy in Af­ rica (Waltham, Mass.: Crossroads Press, 1977), is smaller, including 1,052 sources published before 1975. He begins it with a brief but very astute general introduction to the subject, explaining then the layout of the sections, and there is along with the table of contents a handy map that shows how the continent has been divided up into geographical categories. It still passes the test: the reader glides through the finding aids and listings without getting lost or frus­ trated. Colleen E. Kriger Dr. Kriger teaches in the Department of History at the University of North Caro­ lina at Greensboro, and specializes in precolonial and early colonial African history, specifically the work of artisans. Her current research is on ironworkers in 19thcentury central Africa. History and Technology of Olive Oil in the Holy Land. By Rafael Frankel, Shmuel Avitsur, and Etan Ayalon; translated by Jay C. Jacobson. Arlington, Va., and Tel Aviv: Olearius Editions and Eretz Israel Museum, 1993. Pp. 208; illustrations, maps, figures, tables, bibliog­ raphy, index. $40.00 (cloth). (Available only by mail order from Olearius Editions, P.O. Box 906, Arlington, VA 22216, USA.) Food, cooking oil, cosmetic, medicine, trade and export item, temple offering, anointment of kings and priests, the olive fruit and its expressed oil have occupied a central place in Mediterranean life for centuries, and are the focus of this work by authorswith a century of collective research experience in olive oil and related technology. Compiled as a hybrid book that is neither singly authored nor a col­ lection of individual works, this well-written, authoritative book of­ fers a three-part olein anthology: ancient oil mills and presses (Fran­ kel), traditional to industrial olive oil production (Avitsur), and TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 243 traditional olive oil plants (Ayalon). Drawing on historical texts, ar­ chaeological evidence, and comparative ethnographic studies—in Israel and the surrounding Mediterranean region—the authors re­ construct the history of the growing of olives and the production of their oil, framed within the context of the paramount role which olive oil played in the economy, culture, and religion of their home­ land. And while the focus here is on this facet of life in Israel—the first book ever to deal comprehensively with this subject in Israel— it resounds with a broader appeal to Mediterranean-wide scholarship in related material culture. The first two chapters both begin with introductory information on the historic importance of olives and the olive industry in the Land of Israel, including descriptions of the growth, harvest, and uses of olives. The bulk of these two chapters (fully 90 percent), however, reports on the design, construction, and operation of crushing and pressing installations. Many of the details concerning mills and presses first presented by Frankel (“Ancient Oil Mills and Presses in the Land of Israel”) are repeated by Avitsur (“Olive Oil Production in the Land of Israel: Traditional to Industrial”) before he begins comparing traditional to mechanized and modern meth­ ods. Such repetition is a common problem in multiauthored works, especially those which deal with such a narrowly focused subject. In this case it is the result...