Range Of Material Culture Research Articles

The people of the Cambridge Austin friars

ABSTRACT The Austin friars in Cambridge was an important religious institution between the late thirteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries. Excavations have revealed well-dated and contextualised burials associated with the friary, as well as a range of material culture. The burials have been subject to a wide range of analyses including osteology, palaeopathology, stable isotopes, ancient DNA and geometric morphometrics. Significantly the distinction between clothed and shrouded burials allows members of the Augustinian order and the laity to be identified. This represents the best-understood published group of burials from an Austin friars in the British Isles and emphasises the importance of nuanced interpretation, as burial at friaries was a structured and multi-local phenomenon. These burials and other material can be interpreted in terms of both mendicant ideals and anti-fraternal criticisms.

Archaeology, Heritage and Performance in the Perth Popular Music Scene

The city of Perth, Western Australia, has a long-running local popular music scene. Music is performed live in pubs and clubs, but it is often only a secondary reason for the running of these venues – consequently, the physical heritage of this music scene is often forgotten, with little memorialisation of the places and people involved in it. Archaeological investigation of one of these longer-running venues – the Fly By Night Club, a music venue from 1986 to 2015 – recovered a range of material culture that largely provides evidence of social encounters within the audience rather than of the many performers who have played at the Fly. The material evidence challenges the notion of modern music as capitalist commodity, including the idea of audiences as passive entities that exist in a subordinate position to performers, who occupy a privileged position within the paradigm of live music. Instead, the audience is shown to have considerable agency in the way it enhances its own enjoyment of live music, and to be an active participant in the social process of live musical performance.

Transforming Culture on an Insula Portunalis: Port Cities as Central Places in Early Roman Cyprus

During the Early Roman period in the Mediterranean (ca. 30 BC–330 AD), the key central places that distinguished socio-political landscapes were towns. These urban centers functioned as economic and administrative focal points that were controlled by local elites who oversaw wealth redistribution and maintained a dialectical relationship with Rome that mutually benefitted both parties. Yet, beyond providing such rudimentary observations, central place theory has recently been revised to examine how local factors, such as a place’s long-term geography and history, intersect with globalizing ones to transform settlement hierarchies as well as economic, political, and cultural landscapes. This article’s goal is to explore such intersections through a study of how port towns functioned as central places that connected globalized imperial networks to localized provincial ones within island contexts. It examines a range of material culture including, ceramics, architecture, prestige goods, and coinage from ports in Early Roman Cyprus in order to investigate how the island’s integration into Roman networks created central places that altered existing settlement types, hierarchies, and thus, local identities. Overall, this study shows how the reanalysis of central places within their unique geohistorical contexts can shed new light on both regional and state-level processes of cultural change.

The archaeology of the mafia: a material investigation of extortion, justice and reprisal in Palermo, Sicily (1982–2012)

This article examines the Sicilian mafia and the physical manifestation of the legal responses to criminal activity in Palermo, Sicily between 1982 and 2012, a period marked by increasing criminal violence against the state. We look at the commemoration of key public figures assassinated by the mafia as a way to understand episodes of illegal activity as well as the ways that different people and groups respond to these acts of terrorism. We also examine the archaeological evidence for the resultant new legislation and judicial process, from the courtrooms to evidence in the city streets. We suggest that the wide range of material culture from Palermo affords the opportunity to examine the landscape of the mafia, the temporality of legislation, discourse between acts of criminality and the legal and judicial responses.

The National Art Library repositioned

Archives, libraries and museums have for some time been trying out the advantages, for themselves and for each other, of working together and sharing long-term aims. These independent sorties were given a coercive impetus in April 2000 when the Government-funded Library & Information Commission and the Museums & Galleries Commission were replaced by the single-word Resource, to bring together ‘strategic advocacy, leadership and advice to enable museums, archives and libraries to touch people’s lives and inspire their imagination, learning and creativity’. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Art Library, which already included the Museum’s Archives, has recently merged with Prints, Drawings and Paintings to form the Word & Image Department. The integration of the National Art Library with a department that has traditionally put greater emphasis on its curatorial role has suggested new paths of development for us all and, in particular, an enhanced contribution for the new Department across the full range of material culture as represented in the V&A’s collections. Thus the merger has acted as a catalyst to put into practice aspects of the Government’s agenda within a single institution. This article outlines some of the developments proposed for the Word & Image Department, with particular emphasis on implications for the National Art Library, its staff, collections and users.

Energetic Activities of Commoners

Sir Grahame Clark's interests in wetland archaeology were not restricted to his pioneering work at Star Carr and much of his writing was illuminated by his wide knowledge of the fruits of wetland research in many parts of the world. The paper presents the case for wetland archaeology, to show how it has expanded our knowledge of the past and has made prehistory more colourful and dynamic to both archaeologists and the public. In seeking the patterns of behaviour that existed in the past, six key elements contribute to our studies: environment and change; economy and subsistence; stratification and context; structures and activities; chronology and precision; and range of material culture. The evidence for all of these aspects is well-preserved in many wetland environments, and a number of key sites are identified and assessed for their contribution to prehistoric studies.

Tenant farms of the past, present, and future: An ethnoarchaeological view

part of the archaeological research at farming com munities including Silcott (Adams 1977), Mill wood Plantation (Orser et al. 1987; Orser 1988b), and Waverly Plantation (Adams 1980). Oral infor mation was collected for each of these studies dur ing?rather than prior to?the archaeological field work, with the exception of Adams' work at Silcott. The ethnographic study of Silcott, how ever, was conducted from an archaeological view point, "not to provide an analogue for some ar chaeological data, but instead to provide a better perspective on the ethnographic data" (Adams 1982:45). Queries about material culture in each of these investigations were restricted largely to hous ing and settlement rather than to a more complete range of material culture. The present study focuses on the use of oral testimonies to develop an interpretive framework for archaeological research on sites inhabited by tenant farmers. Four areas of interest to plantation archaeologists who study these sites are: settle ment, housing and associated features, material culture, and foodways. Specific archaeological problems are identified through the use of living archaeology, a method of collecting ethnographic data primarily for archaeological research.