Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Material culture – Europe – History'
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Rosario, Deborah Hope. "Milton and material culture." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:45542c8d-0049-49cf-8d19-6d206195d9a7.
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In contradistinction to critical trends which have rendered Milton’s thought disembodied, this thesis studies how seventeenth-century material culture informed Milton’s poetry and prose at the epistemic level and by suggesting a palette of forms for literary play. The first chapter explores the early modern culture of fruit. At the epistemic level, practices of fruit cultivation and consumption inform Milton’s imagination and his vocabulary, thereby connecting their historic-material lives with their symbolic ones. Milton further turns commonplace gestures of fruit consumption into narrative devices that frame discussions of agency, aspiration, sinful and right practice. The second chapter examines two floral catalogues to discover how they find shape through the epistemologies of flowers, ceremony, and decorative arts. Here material culture shapes literary convention, as one catalogue is found to secret ceremonial consolation in its natural ingenuousness, while the other’s delight in human physicality upsets the distinctions between inner virtue and outer ornament, faith and rite. In the third chapter, urban epistemologies of light, darkness, movement, and space are examined through urban phenomena: skyline, suburbs, highways, theft, and waterways. By interpellating contemporary debates, these categories anatomise fallen character, intent, action, and their consequences. Milton’s instinctive distaste for urban nuisances is interesting in this Republican figure and is subversive of some ideologies of the text. Discursive and material aspects meet again in the fourth chapter in a discussion of his graphic presentations of geography on the page. Usually prone to analyses of textual knowledge, they are also informed by the embodiment of knowledge as material object. Milton’s search for a fitting cartographic aesthetic for the Biblical narrative and for the rhetoric of his characters leads him to an increasing consciousness of the ideologies energising these material forms. The fifth chapter explores Milton’s engagement with forms of armour and weapons. Military preferences for speed and mobility over armour help Milton explore the difference between unfallen and fallen being. Milton also uses his inescapably proleptic knowledge of arms and armour as a field of imaginative play for representations that are both anachronistic and typological. These lead to a discussion of imitation in the mythic imagination. In each of these studies, we witness Milton’s consciousness of his temporal and proleptic location, and his attempts to marry the temporal and the pan- or atemporal. In the conclusion I suggest that Milton’s simultaneous courting of the atemporal while he is drawn to or draws on temporal material culture imply an incarnational aesthetic.
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Geurts, Anna Paulina Helena. "Makeshift freedom seekers : Dutch travellers in Europe, 1815-1914." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2cfa072e-a9c4-42c9-a6b0-1e815d93b05c.
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This thesis questions a series of assumptions concerning the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernization of European spaces. Current scholarship tends to concur with essayistic texts and images by contemporary intellectuals that technological and organizational developments increased the freedom of movement of those living in western-European societies, while at the same time alienating them from each other and from their environment. I assess this claim with the help of Dutch travel egodocuments such as travel diaries and letters. After a prosopographical investigation of all available northern-Netherlandish travel egodocuments created between 1500 and 1915, a selection of these documents is examined in greater detail. In these documents, travellers regarded the possession of identity documents, a correct appearance, and a fitting social identity along with their personal contacts, physical capabilities, and the weather as the most important factors influencing whether they managed to gain access to places. A discussion of these factors demonstrates that no linear increase, nor a decrease, occurred in the spatial power felt by travellers. The exclusion many travellers continued to experience was often overdetermined. The largest groups affected by this were women and less educated families. Yet travellers could also play out different access factors against each other. By paying attention to how practices matched hopes and expectations, it is possible to discover how gravely social inequities were really felt by travellers. Perhaps surprisingly, all social groups desired to visit the same types of places. Their main difference concerned the atmosphere of the places where the different groups felt at home. To a large degree this matched travellers' unequal opportunities. Therefore, although opportunities remained strongly unequal throughout the period, this was not always experienced as a problem. Also, in cases where it was, many travellers knew strategies to work around the obstacles created for them.
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Hague, Stephen G. "A modern-built house ... fit for a gentleman : elites, material culture and social strategy in Britain, 1680-1770." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2fc553a3-8922-4793-b893-e6686518e61e.
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A 1755 advert in the Gloucester Journal listed for sale, 'A MODERN-BUILT HOUSE, with four rooms on a floor, fit for a gentleman'. In the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 'gentlemen's houses' like the one described evolved as a cultural norm. This thesis offers a social and cultural reading of an under-studied group of small free-standing classical houses built in the west of England between 1680 and 1770. By developing a profile of eighty-one gentlemen's houses and one hundred and thirty-four builders and owners, this study unites subjects such as the history of architecture, landscapes, domestic interiors, objects and social development that are often treated separately. The design, spatial arrangement, and furnishings of gentlemen's houses precisely defined the position of their builders and owners in the social hierarchy. The 1720s marked an important shift in the location and meaning of building that corresponded to an alteration in the background of builders. Small classical houses moved from a relatively novel form of building for the gentry to a conventional choice made by newcomers often from commercial and professional backgrounds. Gentlemen's houses projected status in a range of settings for both landed and non-landed elites, highlighting the house as a form of status-enhancing property rather than land. Moreover, gentlemen's houses had adaptable interior spaces and were furnished with an array of objects that differed in number and quality from those lower and higher in society. The connections between gentlemen's houses and important processes of social change in Britain are striking. House-building and furnishing were measured strategic activities that calibrated social status and illustrated mobility. This thesis demonstrates that gentlemen's houses are one key to understanding the permeability of the English elite as well as the combination of dynamism and stability that characterized eighteenth-century English society.
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Hagglund, Sarah. "The Myth of Bologna? Women's Cultural Production during the Seventeenth Century." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors1620502410389001.
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Le, Guennec Aude. "Le vêtement d’enfant ou l’entrée dans l’histoire. Enquête du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours dans les collections publiques et privées occidentales." Thesis, Paris 4, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016PA040205.
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Dans l’ensemble des recherches consacrées au vêtement, la mode enfantine française reste peu étudiée. Pourtant le vestiaire enfantin occidental du 18e siècle à nos jours, est abondamment présent dans les collections des musées de mode, d’ethnologie ou d’arts décoratifs. En partant de l’étude de ces fonds majoritairement inexploités et en les croisant avec des archives de la confection et des témoignages d’usagers, notre thèse analyse la relation de l’enfant à son vêtement. S’il possède des capacités à parler, à manipuler et à vouloir, l’enfant quand il nait n’est pas imprégné des usages qui fondent nos vies en société. L’éducation de l’enfant consiste, dans un rapport de dépendance constant à l’adulte, à socialiser le petit d’homme pour le faire entrer dans l’histoire. En prenant en compte la capacité du vêtement à habiller les identités et à investir le porteur d’un statut particulier, notre étude l’envisage comme un outil essentiel d’imprégnation dans les mains de l’adulte. Parallèlement, système technique manipulable, ensemble de sensations, objet d’envies et de fantasmes, le vêtement est utilisé par l’enfant à sa manière. Afin de sortir d’un regard purement adulte, nous avons cherché à déconstruire ce processus de socialisation en analysant l’appropriation du vêtement par l’enfant. Ainsi, croisée avec des données historiques, sociologiques ou ethnologiques, l’étude des vêtements d’enfant issus des collections muséales française apporte un autre éclairage à l’histoire de l’enfant et montre l’apport de la cultureDespite the abundance of children’s clothes in the collections of French Fashion, Applied Arts and Folk Museums, Children’s Fashion is not a major topic in Fashion History. Crossing a corpus of artefacts with ethnographical, historical and sociological testimonies and archives from the Fashion Industry, this research intends to analyse the relationship between the child and its clothing. Despite its abilities to talk, manipulate and desire, the child is not imbued by the habits defining social beings. Therefore, in a constant interdependence with the adult, the child’s education consists in its socialisation to bring him into history. Through the analysis of the capacity of Fashion to dress the identities, this research approaches clothing as an education tool in the hands of the adults. In parallel, as a technical handling kit, a set of sensations and an object of desire, clothing is an adoptable system by the child who dresses up itself as it wants. In order to avoid an adult focus, this study looks also at the deconstruction of this socialisation process by analysing the appropriation of fashion by children. Finally, this study of children’s clothing provides another approach to Childhood History and shows the essential contribution of the study of the Material Culture to a Childhood Sociology, source of knowledge of the mechanisms of our society
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Roeder, Tobias Uwe. "Professional identity of army officers in Britain and the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740-1790." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/277825.
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This thesis explores the existence and outlook of a European officer class in the mid- to later 18th century by studying the army officers of Britain and the Habsburg Monarchy from the War of the Austrian Succession to the eve of the French Revolutionary Wars. It illuminates the character of such an officer class of ‘Military Europe’ with its own cultural customs and practices. Furthermore, it details similarities, differences and peculiarities of both officer corps. This is achieved by analysing the social and national composition of both armies, with a focus here on the Habsburg Army due to the fact that it took in great numbers of foreigners and that the muster lists give an indication of how great the proportion of nobility was. A comparison with the British case shows striking similarities but also obvious differences. In a further step the ability of individuals for social advancement and national mobility is scrutinised on both sides. In this context, the state’s care for its officers and their social security is also taken into account. One possibility to acknowledge the officers’ service was to raise their status, either by ennoblement or through increasing the prestige of the uniform in court and society, its transformation into an ‘Ehrenkleid’ (garment of honour). As officers increasingly became servants to the state, rather than noble retainers and military enterprisers, they were also subject to professionalization efforts by the sovereigns. What becomes apparent, however, is that the officers did not only react to such measures but that at least a significant part of them actively worked on improving the service, thereby exhibiting a growing professionalism. In order to explore the coherence of the officer corps in those armies, with officers all following the same codes and accepting each other as equals, the thesis looks into core values (including honour, duty, courage and loyalty) binding them together and separating them from the enlisted men. The thesis will also offer a glimpse of their engagement with civilian society and culture as well as their role as ‘foot soldiers of Enlightenment’. On a European level, interaction between these officers proves their general acceptance of and respect for each other, while at the same time acting as state representatives in wartimes. Their interaction with non-European and non-state military forces and their leadership marks out the fluid boundaries of military Europe, but also exhibits the pervasiveness of European military culture.
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Dirks-Schuster, Whitney Marie. "Monsters, News, and Knowledge Transfer in Early Modern England." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1377008746.
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Nordqvist, K. (Kerkko). "The Stone Age of north-eastern Europe 5500–1800 calBC:bridging the gap between the East and the West." Doctoral thesis, Oulun yliopisto, 2018. http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:9789526218731.
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Abstract This work focuses on the Stone Age of north-eastern Europe between 5500 and 1800 calBC. Called the Neolithic in Finland and the Neolithic and Eneolithic in north-western Russia, the period and its research are characterized both by the encounters and separations between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’. Still, despite more than 100 years of archaeological research, few inter-regional studies exist. This dissertation aims to provide an overview of the basic concepts of the terminology and periodization and outline a general (absolute) chronological framework of the area. In addition, a historical research review of the present state of affairs is provided. Four case studies aspire to illustrate the varying (east–west-directed) contact networks that existed in the area during the Neolithic. The second central topic of this work is the Neolithic itself. The research area is located on the border of two major traditions defining the period either based on the appearance of productive livelihoods (west) or pottery technology (east). However, the purely Eurocentric and techno-economical views of the Neolithic have been recently challenged. An evaluation of the used terms and criteria are presented here in the context of north-eastern Europe. The Finnish-Russian border and national prehistories have affected and still affect the study of prehistory in north-eastern Europe. They have prevented studying many prehistoric phenomena to their full extent and have restricted the understanding of inter-regional interaction — during much of the Neolithic, the research area was not the last outpost of the western world but rather the north-western part of a vast Eurasian contact zone. The traditional definitions of the Neolithic have placed north-eastern Europe in an anomalous and peripheral position, but understanding the development as genuinely varying and multipolar would facilitate a more holistic and value-free examination of the periodTiivistelmä Koillis-Euroopan kivikautta aikavälillä 5500–1800 eKr. kutsutaan Suomessa neoliittiseksi, mutta Luoteis-Venäjällä se jaetaan neoliittiseen ja eneoliittiseen kauteen. Ajanjaksoa ja sen tutkimusta luonnehtivatkin ‘idän’ ja ‘lännen’ kohtaamiset ja erot. Huolimatta yli sadan vuoden tutkimushistoriasta on molempien alueiden aineistoja yhdisteleviä esityksiä olemassa vain niukasti. Tämän väitöskirjatyön tavoitteena on tarjota katsaus terminologian ja periodisaation keskeisiin käsitteisiin sekä hahmotella yleistä (absoluuttista) kronologiaa tutkimusalueella. Lisäksi työ esittelee nykytilanteen tutkimushistoriallisen taustan. Työhön kuuluu neljä tapaustutkimusta, joissa käsitellään Koillis-Euroopassa neoliittisella kivikaudella esiintyneitä (itä–länsi-suuntaisia) yhteysverkostoja. Työn toinen keskeinen teema on neoliittisen kivikauden käsite. Tutkimusalue sijaitsee kahden tutkimustradition rajalla, joista läntinen määrittelee aikakauden tuottavien elinkeinojen, itäinen keramiikan käyttöönoton perusteella. Puhtaasti Eurooppa-keskeinen ja teknologis-taloudellinen kuva neoliittisesta kivikaudesta on kuitenkin äskettäin kyseenalaistettu. Työssä esitellään yleistä terminologiaa ja pohditaan määritelmien käyttökelpoisuutta Koillis-Euroopassa. Suomen ja Venäjän välinen raja ja kansallinen esihistoriankirjoitus ovat vaikuttaneet merkittävästi kuvaan menneisyydestä. Ne ovat rajoittaneet ilmiöiden tutkimista niiden koko laajuudessa ja hämärtäneet alueiden välisiä yhteyksiä — suuren osan kivikautta tutkimusalue oli pohjoisella havumetsävyöhykkeellä vallinneiden verkostojen luoteisin osa, ei niinkään lännen viimeinen etuvartioasema. Perinteiset neoliittisen kivikauden määrittelykriteerit ovat asettaneet Koillis-Euroopan poikkeavaan ja perifeeriseen asemaan, mutta kehityksen ymmärtäminen aidosti varioivana ja moninapaisena mahdollistaisi periodin kokonaisvaltaisen ja ennakkoasenteista vapaan käsittelyn myös tällä alueella
Аннотация Работа посвящена каменному веку северо-восточной Европы от 5500 до 1800 лет до н.э. Этот временной промежуток соответствует периоду неолита по финской периодизации, или периодам неолита и энеолита для древностей Северо-Запада России. Для рассматриваемого периода характерны как сходства, так и различия в археологическом материале между западной и восточной частями региона, и, так же, наличие и сходств, и различий между «западной» и «восточной» научными школами в понимании этого периода и в подходах к его исследованию. Несмотря на более чем 100-летнюю историю археологических исследований, лишь в нескольких работах данная проблематика рассматривается на межрегиональном уровне. В диссертации представлен обзор основных существующих понятий и хронологических схем, очерчены общие (абсолютные) хронологические рамки периода неолита рассматриваемой территории. Кроме того, рассмотрена история формирования современного состояния изучаемого вопроса. На примере четырёх конкретных исследований проиллюстрированы варианты систем коммуникаций (между востоком и западом), существовавших на рассматриваемой территории в неолите. Другая основная тема исследования — неолит как таковой. Изучаемая территория является пограничной для двух основных научных традиций определения неолита, использующих в качестве главного критерия либо появление производящего хозяйства («западная школа»), либо распространение технологии изготовления глиняной посуды («восточная школа»). Однако в последнее время наметилась ревизия евроцентричных и исключительно технологических и экономических подходов к пониманию неолита. В работе приведён критический анализ понятий и терминов, используемых в исследованиях по северо-востоку Европы. Финляндско-российская граница и различия между национальными концепциями доистории оказывали и продолжают оказывать влияние на изучение доистории северо-восточной Европы. Они ограничивают исследование многих явлений доисторического прошлого во всей их полноте, в том числе процессы межрегионального взаимодействия. Ведь в действительности на протяжении большей части периода неолита рассматриваемая территория являлась не крайним аванпостом западного мира, а, скорее, северо-западной частью обширной зоны евразийских контактов. При традиционном понимании неолитической эпохи северо-восток Европы оказывается периферийной территорией с отличным от «нормального» ходом культурного развития. Однако понимание развития как действительно вариативного и полицентричного процесса способствует более целостному и непредвзятому изучению рассматриваемого периода. (Translation: D.V. Gerasimov)
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Gullason, Lynda. "Engendering interaction : Inuit-European contact in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35893.
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This thesis seeks to identify the mosaic, rather than the monolithic, nature of culture contact by integrating historical and archaeological sources relating to the concept of gender roles, as they influence response within a contact situation. Specifically, I examine how the Inuit gender system structured artifact patterning in Inuit-European contact situations through the investigation of three Inuit sites in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island. These date from the 16th, 19th and early 20th centuries and represent a variety of seasonal occupations and dwelling forms.The ethnographic data suggest that Inuit gender relations were egalitarian and complementary. On this basis I hypothesize that European goods and materials were used equally by men and women. Within each gendered set of tasks, European goods and materials were differently used, according to empirically functional criteria such as the nature of the tasks.
Opportunities for and responses to European contact differed depending on the types of tasks in which Inuit women and men engaged and the social roles they played. Seasonality of occupation bears upon the archaeological visibility of gender activities.
Sixteenth-century Elizabethan contact did not alter Nugumiut gender roles, tasks, authority or status but served primarily as a source of raw material, namely wood and iron. Based on the analysis of slotted tools I suggest a refinement to take account of the overlap in blade thickness that occurs for metal and slate, and which depends on the function of the tool. I conclude that there was much more metal use by Thule Inuit than previously believed. However, during Elizabethan contact and shortly afterwards there was actually less metal use by the Nugumiut than in the prehistoric era.
Little archaeological evidence was recovered for 19th-century commercial whaling contact, (suggesting geographic marginality to European influence), or for 19th century Inuit occupation in the area. This is partly because of immigration to Cumberland Sound and because of subsequent structural remodelling of the dwellings by later occupants.
By the early 20th century, the archaeological record showed not only equal use of European material across gender but a near-ubiquitous distribution across most activity classes, even though commercial trapping never replaced traditional subsistence pursuits but only supplemented them.
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Tycz, Katherine Marie. "Material prayers : the use of text in early modern Italian domestic devotions." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/276240.
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While scholarship often focuses on how early modern Italians used images in their devotions, particularly in the post-Tridentine era, little attention has been placed upon how laypeople engaged with devotional text during times of prayer and in their everyday lives. Studies of early modern devotional texts have explored their literary content, investigated their censorship by the Church, or concentrated upon an elite readership. This thesis, instead, investigates how ordinary devotees interacted with holy words in their material form, which I have termed ‘material prayers’. Since this thesis developed under the aegis of the interdisciplinary research project, Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home, 1400-1600, it focuses primarily on engagement with these material prayers in domestic spaces. Using an interdisciplinary approach drawing from material culture studies, literary history, social and cultural history, and art history, it brings together objects, images and archival sources to illuminate how devotees from across the socio-economic and literacy spectrums accessed and employed devotional text in their prayers and daily life. From holy words, Biblical excerpts, and prayers to textual symbols like the Sacred Monogram of the Name of Jesus, this thesis explores how and why these material prayers were employed for spiritual, apotropaic and intercessory purposes. It analyses material prayers not only in traditional textual formats (printed books and manuscripts), but also those that were printed on single-sheets of paper, inscribed on jewellery, or etched into the structure of the home. To convey how devotees engaged with and relied upon these material prayers, it considers a variety of inscribed objects, including those sanctioned by the Church as well as those which might be questioned or deemed ‘superstitious’ by ecclesiastical authorities. Sermons, Inquisition trial records, and other archival documents have been consulted to further illuminate the material evidence. The first part of the thesis, ‘On the Body’, considers the how devotees came into personal contact with texts by wearing prayers on their bodies. It examines a range of objects including prayers with protective properties, known as brevi, that were meant to be sealed in a pouch and worn around the neck, and more luxurious items of physical adornment inscribed with devotional and apotropaic text, such as necklaces and rings. The second part of the thesis enters the home to explore how the spaces people inhabited and the objects that populated their homes were decorated with material prayers. ‘In the Home’ begins with texts inscribed over the entryways of early modern Italian homes, and then considers how devotees decorated their walls with holy words and how the objects of devotion and household life were imbued with religious significance through the addition of pious inscriptions. By analysing these personal objects and the textual domestic sphere, this thesis argues that these material prayers cut across socio-economic classes, genders, and ages to embody quotidian moments of domestic devotion as well as moments of fear, anxiety and change.
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Barush, Kathryn R. ""Every age is a Canterbury pilgrimage" : art and the sacred journey in Britain, c. 1790-1850." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:63e1545c-1362-4bc3-bbc3-b950eecf7c70.
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This thesis examines the intersections of the concept of pilgrimage and the visual imagination in Britain from the years 1790 to 1850. Historically, distinctions between understandings of pilgrimage as motif, metaphor, artistic process, and actual journey have been blurred to varying degrees, resulting in the creation of images that were at once narratives, memorials, and stimuli for contemplative journeys from pictorial space to imagination. In the first half of the nineteenth century, religious architecture, sacred landscapes, and the emblematic figure of the pilgrim with coat, hat, and scrip functioned as temporal reminders of a promised land to come, as mediated through artistic practice. Through a close analysis of a range of interrelated visual sources, I contend that pilgrimage, both in practice and as a form of mental contemplation, helped to shape the religious, literary, and artistic imagination of the period and beyond. This study draws out the various levels at which pilgrimage engaged the visual imagination. In doing so it offers a detailed perspective on the conjunction of content, form, meaning, and process for artists and theorists, as notions of the transfer of ‘spirit’ from sacred space to represented space re-emerged as a key aspect of the theological and artistic discourse of the period. Chapter 1 outlines the antiquarian dissemination of medieval pilgrimage texts and images. I suggest that an awareness of pilgrimage as embodying the real and imagined emerged with the recovery of allegorical texts, histories of actual pilgrimages, and an interest in pilgrimage souvenirs. The discussion moves on to intersections between pilgrimage and religious art in Chapters 2 - 4, including the idea of painting as pilgrimage, as demonstrated through specific case studies, and the refashioning of relics and religious ruins as contemporary sites of pilgrimage (Chapter 5).
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McCray, William Patrick. "The culture and technology of glass in Renaissance Venice." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/290650.
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Venetian glass, especially that of the Renaissance, has been admired for centuries due to its quality workmanship and overall visual appeal. In addition, a certain mystique surrounds the glassmakers of Venice and their products. This dissertation research undertakes a comprehensive view of the culture and technology of Renaissance Venetian glass and glassmaking. Particular attention is paid to luxury vessel glass, especially those made of the "colorless" material typically referred to as cristallo. This segment of the industry is seen as the primary locus of substantial technological change. The primary question examined in this work is the nature of this technological change, specifically that observed in the Renaissance Venetian glass industry circa 1450-1550. After providing an appropriate social and economic context, a discussion of Venice's glass industry in the pre-Renaissance is given. Industry and guild trends and conditions which would be influential in later centuries are identified. In addition, the sudden expansion of Venice's glass production in the mid-15th century is described as a self-catalyzed phenomenon in response to prevailing cultural and economic conditions. Demand is identified as a necessary precursor to the production of luxury glass. Building on this concept, activities and behaviors relevant to demand, production, and distribution of Venetian glass are examined in depth. The interaction between the Renaissance consumer and producer is treated along with the position of Venice's glass industry in the overall culture and economy of the city. It is concluded that the technological changes observed in Venice's Renaissance luxury glass industry arose primarily out of perceived consumer demand. Social and economic circumstances particular to Renaissance Italy created an environment in which a technological development such as cristallo glass could take place. The success of the industry in the 15th and 16th centuries can be found in the fruitful interplay between consumers and producers, the manner in which the industry was organized, coupled with the skill of the Venetian glassmakers to make and work new glass compositions into a variety of desired objects.
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Philp, Jude. "Resonance : Torres Strait material culture and history." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.411074.
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Armstrong, Pamela. "Byzantine and Ottoman Torone material culture as history." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.599931.
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This work concerns the results of excavations that took place at Torone, on the southern tip of the central peninsula of the Chalkidiki region of northern Greece. It looks at two castles on the site, remnants of which were standing when the excavations began, and the material culture associated with them. Particular attention is paid to the ceramics, and their pJace within the ceramics of the region. With its location on the very edge of Europe, looking across the Aegean to Asia, Torone is a suitable vehicle for casting an eye round the region at the Byzantine and Ottoman archaeological framework into which the excavations there fit. Modern political divisions mask the former political, cultural, and socia-economic structures of the countries that encompass the north Aegean and its islands. While much archaeological work is being conducted, there is a tendency for it to be carried out in isolation so that, for instance, recent work on the Troad does not consider what is happening in Bulgarian or Greek Thrace, yet they are connected. To this end a study of the Thraco-Macedonian area is timely since so much evidence has recently been made available. The present work attempts to synthesize archaeological studies in Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey for the late Byzantine and Ottoman periods. At the centre sits Torone which is the key to drawing this information together .
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Gordian, Michael. "The culture of dis/simulation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe." Thesis, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2014. http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6135/.
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The dissertation examines early modern perceptions of the twin notions of simulation and dissimulation - which I refer to jointly as 'dis/simulation' - in various literary, social and semantic contexts and from a pan-European perspective. I look at how this thorny and controversial moral issue was addressed and discussed in a wide range of genres and texts and how it was disseminated to a broader readership. The introduction explains my approach to the subject, provides an overview of previous scholarship and includes a short excursus on three literary genres not discussed in detail in the dissertation. In the first chapter, I analyse the varied treatment of dis/simulation in emblem books. In the following chapter I explore the link between the problem of dis/simulation and early modern reform plans for poor relief, focusing on debates in Spain. Chapter 3 looks at texts from other European countries and establishes he connection between, on the one hand, learned and scholarly discussions of the problem of mendicancy, and, on the other, popular literature in which the deceptions and disguises of beggars, rogues and tricksters were a recurrent theme. The next chapter deals with the contemporary perceptions of courtesans and analyses the nexus between love, passions and dis/simulation. The last two chapters show that the problem of feigning and disguise became increasingly important in medical and physiognomical literature. I investigate how both genres addressed a cluster of relevant intellectual contexts relevant, including the possibility of reading the human countenance, the limits of dis/simulation and the morality of employing deception in the interest of healing. I conclude by considering the main contexts, themes and implications of early modern debates on dis/simulation and their gradual decline in the seventeenth century.
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Bolland, Charlotte. "Italian material culture at the Tudor court." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2012. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/26963.
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This thesis analyses the means by which items of Italian material culture came into the possession of the Tudor monarchs. The different modes of acquisition provide the structure for an investigation into Anglo-Italian relations during the sixteenth century. Although the items that came to England took many forms a synthesising approach is made possible by the fact that the 'biographies' of the objects which have been selected all share a common element - they reached England and were owned by the Tudor monarchs as a result of direct contact with Italian individuals. As a result, disparate items such as glass, armour, books, textiles and horses can be discussed as part of a broader whole in which elements of one culture travelled to another. This is not a discussion of the developing dominance of Italian culture over Western Europe during the sixteenth century, for, although the adjective 'Italian' carried clear connotations in late sixteenth-century England it appears to have been rarely used in relation to material culture. Instead it is a study of the appreciation of technical skill and the attempts that were made to appropriate it, which in turn provides a point of access to the life histories of the Italians who came to England in the sixteenth century and the way in which their interaction with the highest levels of the court played a role in shaping the idea of Italy and the Italian in England.
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Andrews, Noam. "Irregular Bodies: Polyhedral Geometry and Material Culture in Early Modern Germany." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493270.
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The dissertation explores the centrality of the Platonic Solids, and polyhedral geometry generally, to the artistic and mixed-mathematical cultures of Renaissance Germany. Beginning with Albrecht Dürer’s groundbreaking treatise on geometry, the Underweyung der Messung (1525), the dissertation redefines sites of early modern experimentation to include the graphical spaces in which new geometrical knowledge was practiced, invented, contested, manipulated, discarded, and presented. The research describes the historical contexts and development of the practice of polyhedral geometry over the course of the 16th century, expanding from Dürer to the lesser-known textbooks for practical geometry that his work inspired in Germany, and continuing with epitomes of the polyhedral genre, namely Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Perspectiva corporum regularium (1568) and the drawings of the Augsburg artisan Lorentz Stöer. The dissertation then follows the migration of polyhedra into intarsia and turned-ivory artifacts used for teaching applied geometry to European aristocracy, and concludes by addressing the polyhedral cosmology of the astronomer Johannes Kepler. By tracing the lifespan of polyhedra from their use as perspectival tools and pedagogical devices in Renaissance workshops into courtly Kunstkammern and onto the precious surfaces of domestic objects, the dissertation uncovers the influence that the decorative arts had on the conceptualization of geometrical knowledge and its new engagement with materials and concepts of materiality.History of Science
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Plachký, Tomáš. "Kulturní krajina." Master's thesis, Vysoké učení technické v Brně. Fakulta výtvarných umění, 2019. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-396100.
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The thesis deals with current cultural landscape and reflection of individual social topics in Europe. The installation consists of three objects that solve the individual theme, using material experiments. Their reactions shift these topics further to certain associations.
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Thomas, Sarah E. "Community and Culture: Material Life in Shenandoah County, Virginia, 1750-1850." W&M ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1530192713.
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This dissertation explores material life in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia from 1750 to 1850 through extant objects and those found in the documentary record. In the process, it highlights diverse processes of community formation that took place among artisans in Shenandoah County. This work provides three different perspectives on the processes of community formation in Shenandoah County, focusing on the impermanent buildings of early settlers, the growth of permanence at an ironworking community at Redwell Furnace and Pine Forge, and cultural markers in the furniture and material life of artisans Godfrey Wilkin and Johannes Spitler. The project brings together ideas about the development of a community with its own distinct regional culture by exploring the material life of Shenandoah County’s residents. There was a transition from distinct ethnicities to more homogenous regionalism that occurred from the earliest settlements beginning in the 1730s to generations later in the 1850s with a growth of a regional culture distinctive to the Shenandoah Valley. A major contribution of this work is that people, not their buildings or objects, have an active voice in a rich and detailed history of material life. Objects, buildings, and landscape, both extant and long gone, allow historians to explore the everyday life of people that have often been overlooked and previously inaccessible. This dissertation thus provides a snapshot of the varied material life of a community of artisans and consumers in Virginia’s northern Shenandoah Valley.
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Bestley, Nicola. "Material culture and cosmology : megalithic monuments and ritual practice in the Neolithic of north-west Europe." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2001. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/272337.
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Francois, Marie Eileen 1963. "When pawnshops talk: Popular credit and material culture in Mexico City, 1775-1916." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282621.
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This dissertation examines popular credit and material culture in Mexico City in the "long" nineteenth century. It considers the social relationships that constituted the pawning process, the development of pawning businesses, and the regulatory role of the state. The focus is on three sets of people--clients of pawning services, pawnbrokers, and state agents--as well as the material goods used to secure loans. For city residents, daily life was cash poor, a phenomenon that crossed class lines. Middle-class housekeepers, merchants and artisans as well as lower-class homemakers, carpenters and other workers faced daily challenges of meeting household, business and recreational needs with a scarcity of specie. The most common way to raise cash was to pawn material possessions such as clothing, tools, and jewels. The nature of the pawning process linked material culture and popular credit together as it was shaped by relations between pawnbrokers, pawning customers, and state agents. In order to obtain cash one had to have possessions for collateral, and the value of material goods determined one's credit line and the arena in which pawning occurred. Short-term credit secured by household goods financed cultural events, lifestyles, and further consumption. Pawnshops not only supplied credit, but they injected cash into a cash-starved economy. This study of pawning in Mexico City reveals a culture of negotiation: over what will be pawned, over values of goods and terms of credit, and over the freedom or pawnbrokers to make profits. This culture of negotiation was also one in which possessions served as tools of identity, cultural currency in the complexities of daily ethnic, gender and class relations in Mexico City. Pawning arenas included retail establishments in the colonial and early national period, the state-sponsored Monte de Piedad beginning in the late colonial period, and casas de empeno which emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. Colonial and national states regulated the pawning business throughout this evolution, until the revolutionary state seriously curtailed interest rates and hence profits in the early twentieth century.
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Carlson, Heidi Julia. "The built environment and material culture of Ireland in the 1641 Depositions, 1600-1654." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/269316.
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In recent years, historians have attempted to reassess the image of sectarian Ireland by offering an ethnically and religiously complex narrative of social intersection. Due to the changing intellectual and political climate in Ireland, archaeologists and historians can now begin revaluating the myths of the conquered and conqueror. As settlers poured into the Irish landscape to carry out the English government’s plantation schemes, they brought traditions and goods from home, and attempted to incorporate these into their lives abroad. Woodland clearance supplied timber and destroyed the wood kerne-infested fastness, and new houses erected on plantation settlements rattled a landscape still speckled with the wattle huts of its native inhabitants. Using the 1641 Depositions as the core of this dissertation, this research endeavours to contextualise evidence of material culture embedded within the written testimonies, beginning with the private world of the home and ending with the public devotional space of the church. Evidence found in the depositions will be placed alongside archaeological evidence, cartography, a small collection of wills and inventories, and seventeenth-century trade records. This thesis investigates the extent in which the English and Irish communities were at conflict in a material way: in their homes, local economy, clothing, household goods and religion.
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Hawley, Anna Louise. "Structures of daily life : the material culture of Surry County, Virginia, 1690-1715." PDXScholar, 1986. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3611.
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This is a study of the material culture of Surry County, Virginia for the years 1690 to 1715, based on an analysis of 221 probate inventories. The inventories were divided by decades and then ranked by total appraised value. The bottom 30%, lower middle 30, upper middle 30% and the top 10% are described and changes over time examined. The picture of Surry that emerges is that of a poor county which was, nevertheless, a place of opportunity for the poorer sections of society. The bottom 60% of Surry's residents profited from the brief boom in the tobacco market (1696- 1702) and were, as a group, wealthier by the middle of the second decade of the eighteenth century than they had been in the 1690s. The top 40%, on the other hand lost ground economically.
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Scherer, Mark Albert Larsen Lawrence Harold. "A material cultural analysis of the foundational history of Latter Day Saintism, 1827-1844." Diss., UMK access, 1998.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of History and School of Education. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 1998."A dissertation in history and education." Advisor: Lawrence H. Larson. Typescript. Vita. Title from "catalog record" of the print edition Description based on contents viewed Nov. 13, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-254). Online version of the print edition.
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Mackenzie, Vanessa E. "Egypt, Rome and Aegyptophilia : rethinking Egypt's relationship with ancient Rome through material culture." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2011. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/50218/.
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This thesis is concerned to demonstrate that Egypt had an important part to play in the formation of the Roman empire. There is a tendency for Classical scholarship to discuss Rome’s relationship with Egypt in terms which fall very far short of the way in which Rome’s encounters with Greek culture are treated. Within scholarship today, any perceived problems with Egypt are still often overstated, while any respect which the Romans may have held for Egyptian culture is dismissed, underplayed or only grudgingly accepted. I intend to re-appraise certain aspects of Egyptian/Egyptianising material culture in order to demonstrate that while some areas of the Roman literary corpus are scattered with apparently derogatory remarks about Egypt, the material evidence tells a quite different story. The aim of this thesis is to examine Egyptian/Egyptianising material culture in order to put the evidence of written texts into a fuller cultural context and perspective. I shall take a chronological approach and intend to focus primarily on artefacts found in the public sphere. The exception will be Chapter Four in which I shall discuss notions about Egypt in the private sphere. The final Chapter will conclude with Hadrian’s era in which the Villa at Tivoli may be seen as an expression of the merging of aspects of both public and private. Octavian’s so-called ‘propaganda’ campaign is central to the question of how scholarship deals with encounters between Egypt and Rome. After Egypt’s incorporation into the new empire of Rome, it was not in Octavian’s interests to continue a hostile disparagement of the country, given his status as pharaoh. I will argue that Octavian set in motion a rehabilitation of the country’s reputation by a policy of appeasement towards Egypt and by incorporating aspects of Egypt’s culture into Rome. It is my contention that Egypt had a greater role to play in the ideology of Rome’s empire, particularly through its first Emperor, than modern scholarship allows. I conclude that the ‘question of Egypt’ while complex, fluid and often contradictory, nevertheless was very much less negative than modern scholarship portrays.
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Cannon, A. "Socioeconomic change and material culture diversity : nineteenth century grave monuments in rural Cambridgeshire." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1986. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/273117.
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Boroughs, Jason. ""I Looked to the East---": Material Culture, Conversion, and acquired Meaning in Early African America." W&M ScholarWorks, 2004. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626444.
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Croker, Trevor D. "Formation of the Cloud: History, Metaphor, and Materiality." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/96439.
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In this dissertation, I look at the history of cloud computing to demonstrate the entanglement of history, metaphor, and materiality. In telling this story, I argue that metaphors play a powerful role in how we imagine, construct, and maintain our technological futures. The cloud, as a metaphor in computing, works to simplify complexities in distributed networking infrastructures. The language and imagery of the cloud has been used as a tool that helps cloud providers shift public focus away from potentially important regulatory, environmental, and social questions while constructing a new computing marketplace. To address these topics, I contextualize the history of the cloud by looking back at the stories of utility computing (1960s-70s) and ubiquitous computing (1980s-1990s). These visions provide an alternative narrative about the design and regulation of new technological systems.
Drawing upon these older metaphors of computing, I describe the early history of the cloud (1990-2008) in order to explore how this new vision of computing was imagined. I suggest that the metaphor of the cloud was not a historical inevitability. Rather, I argue that the social-construction of metaphors in computing can play a significant role in how the public thinks about, develops, and uses new technologies. In this research, I explore how the metaphor of the cloud underplays the impact of emerging large-scale computing infrastructures while at the same time slowly transforming traditional ownership-models in digital communications.
Throughout the dissertation, I focus on the role of materiality in shaping digital technologies. I look at how the development of the cloud is tied to the establishment of cloud data centers and the deployment of global submarine data cables. Furthermore, I look at the materiality of the cloud by examining its impact on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper socio-technical complexities. Both the materials and metaphor of the cloud work to make the system invisible. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how these larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud.Doctor of Philosophy
This dissertation tells the story of cloud computing by looking at the history of the cloud and then discussing the social and political implications of this history. I start by arguing that the cloud is connected to earlier visions of computing (specifically, utility computing and ubiquitous computing). By referencing these older histories, I argue that much of what we currently understand as cloud computing is actually connected to earlier debates and efforts to shape a computing future. Using the history of computing, I demonstrate the role that metaphor plays in the development of a technology. Using these earlier histories, I explain how cloud computing was coined in the 1990s and eventually became a dominant vision of computing in the late 2000s. Much of the research addresses how the metaphor of the cloud is used, the initial reaction to the idea of the cloud, and how the creation of the cloud did (or did not) borrow from older visions of computing. This research looks at which people use the cloud, how the cloud is marketed to different groups, and the challenges of conceptualizing this new distributed computing network. This dissertation gives particular weight to the materiality of the cloud. My research focuses on the cloud's impact on data centers and submarine communication data cables. Additionally, I look at the impact of the cloud on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper complexities. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud.
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Nakou, Georgia. "The end of the early Bronze Age in the Aegean : material culture and history." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.324282.
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Whitley, Cynthia Ann. "The Monetary Material Culture of Plantation Life: A Study of Coins at Monticello." W&M ScholarWorks, 1991. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625658.
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Doughty, David Charles. "Changing patterns of the spa culture in Britain and Central Europe from the final decades of the 19th century." Thesis, Kingston University, 2000. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/20646/.
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This study sets out to test the hypotheses that during the selected period from the closing decades of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century and within the defined compared areas of Britain and Central Europe, specific differences can be traced in the Spa cultures of the two areas. These differences show arise in Spa culture in both areas at the beginning of the period, followed by a decline in Britain and by a period of stability in Central Europe. The reasons for these differences are shown to be partly due to geographical factors such as the landlocked situation of Central Europe as opposed to the island status of Britain as well as aspects of medical, allopathic progress in Britain which is not echoed in Central Europe where alternative cures still continued for socio-economic and traditional reasons. The study is based upon extensive fieldwork and establishes some key aspects for the success of a Spa and of Spa culture in the past, the present and the future. These aspects are found to be present in established Central European Spas and also to be feasible for the re-development of British Spas which are now in a state of decline. The study also development attempts to establish a semantic definition of the terms Spa and Spa culture and to relate this terminology to social and leisure factors and built environment usage of the terms whilst accepting the mutability of linguistic terminology and use.
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Pougher, Richard David. "The Confederate Enlisted Man in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Reevaluation of His Material Culture." W&M ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625436.
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Willey, Amanda Mae. "Fashioning femininity for war: material culture and gender performance in the WAC and WAVES during World War II." Diss., Kansas State University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/20556.
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Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of History
Sue Zschoche
In 1942, the U.S. Army and Navy announced the creation of their respective women’s military services: the WAAC/WAC and the WAVES. Although American women had served alongside the military in past conflicts, the creation of women’s military corps caused uproar in American society. Placing women directly into the armed services called into question cultural expectations about “masculinity” and “femininity.” Thus, the women’s corps had to be justified to the public in accordance with American cultural assumptions regarding proper gender roles. “Fashioning Femininity for War: Material Culture and Gender Performance in the WAC and WAVES during World War II” focuses on the role of material culture in communicating a feminine image of the WAC and WAVES to the American public as well as the ways in which servicewomen engaged material culture to fashion and perform a feminine identity compatible with contemporary understandings of “femininity.” Material culture served as a mechanism to resolve public concerns regarding both the femininity and the function of women in the military. WAC and WAVES material culture linked their wearers with stereotyped characteristics specifically related to contemporary meanings of “femininity” celebrated by American society, while at the same time associating them with military organizations doing vital war work. Ultimately, the WAVES were more successful in their manipulations of material culture than the WAC, communicating both femininity and function in a way that was complementary to the established gender hierarchy. Therefore, the WAVES enjoyed a prestigious position in the mind of the American public. This dissertation also contributes to the ongoing historiographical debate regarding World War II as a turning point for women’s liberation, arguing that while the seeds of women’s liberation were sown in women’s wartime activities, those same wartime women were firmly convinced that their rightful place was in the private rather than the public sphere. The war created an opportunity to reevaluate gender roles but it would take some time before those reevaluations bore fruit.
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Jones, Emily. "Constructing a conservative : the reception of Edmund Burke in British politics and culture, c. 1830-1914." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:06d5fb72-9272-4255-a2ae-51c31d89063b.
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Between 1830 and 1914 in Britain a dramatic modification of the reputation of Edmund Burke (1730-97) occurred. Burke, an Irishman and Whig politician, is now most commonly known as the 'founder of modern conservatism' – an intellectual tradition which is also deeply connected to the identity of the British Conservative party. Indeed, the idea of 'Burkean conservatism’ – a political philosophy which upholds ‘the authority of tradition', the organic, historic conception of society, and the necessity of order, religion, and property – has been incredibly influential both in international academic analysis and in the wider political world. This is an intellectual construct of high significance, but its origins have not hitherto been understood: insofar as it has been considered at all, it has been typically seen as the work of Cold War American conservatives. In contrast, this thesis demonstrates that the transformation of Burke into the 'founder of conservatism' was in fact part of wider developments in British political, intellectual, and cultural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing from a wide range of sources, including political texts, parliamentary speeches, histories, biographies, and educational curricula, this thesis provides a properly contextual history of political thought. It shows how and why Burke's reputation was transformed over a formative period of British history. In doing so, it bridges the significant gap between the history of political thought as conventionally understood and the history of the making of political traditions. The result is to show that, by 1914, Burke had been firmly established as a 'conservative' political philosopher and was admired and utilised by political Conservatives in Britain who identified themselves as his intellectual heirs. This was one essential component of a conscious re-working of 'C/conservatism', especially from the mid-1880s, which is still at work today.
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Monteiro, Maria Lavinia Machado. "The Stone Ovens of St Eustatius: A Study of Material Culture." W&M ScholarWorks, 1990. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625581.
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Jordan, John Frederick Dodge. "Legal culture in a turbulent time : law and society in early modern Saxony." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:08a01053-87e3-4310-a974-b194f516b692.
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This thesis reconstructs and interprets the evolution of legal culture in the Saxon city of Freiberg in the sixteenth century. It challenges the notion that early modern state institutions were punitive and disciplinary; and instead posits that in Saxony, they were flexible and sought to maintain social harmony. While previous scholarship has favoured a sociological approach, based on the concept of social control, this thesis employs a legal anthropological optic to study the interaction of state institutions and social life holistically. The focus is not just on how state institutions sought to regulate social life, but also on how ordinary people used institutions for their diverse purposes. The goal of this methodological approach, based on Lawrence Friedman’s concept of legal culture, is to assess the relative position and interaction of the people, the judiciary, and the law in early modern Germany. Probing the interactions of the court and the residents of Freiberg reveals that the court was primarily a record-keeper and a mediator. For the former, it logged and transcribed all manner of transactions: peace pacts, loans, and house purchases; and Freibergers readily turned to the court to get a formal record of an obligation. For the latter, the court was rarely a site of punishment, rather it was a place where conflicts were regulated, and bonds forged. At court, Freibergers fostered ties to one another. Neither of these roles, record-keeper or mediator, are ones traditionally ascribed to early modern courts. Only by considering by the culture of a court does either become apparent.
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Liu, Xiaoyi. "Clothing, Food and Travel: Ming Material Culture as Reflected in Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193863.
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Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan 醒世姻缘传 (The Story of a Marital Fate to Awaken the World) is a 100-chapter, 100,000-character Chinese magnum opus written under the pseudonymous aegis of the seventeenth-century writer Xizhou Sheng 西周生. The novel primarily concerns itself with a curious reversal of power dynamics and relations in the institution of marriage, namely henpecking. To do so, the novel weaves into its narrative, both in the personalities and the events it illustrates, great details of Ming material life. It is through this literary snapshot of material culture that this dissertation is able to investigate the practices and custom of clothing, food and travel, three of the "four major concerns of the people's livelihood", known as yishizhuxing 衣食住行 in Chinese. The project, while frequenting economic dimensions and probing the impact that Ming politics had on the ethos and social economy of the period, sheds significant, if not equal, light on folk custom, legal and religious practices and women's status, among other issues. Although this dissertation allocates one chapter to the surveying of Ming sumptuary laws and ethos as evidenced by the "guxiu incident," the struggle between the forces of conservative social hierarchy and the growing market as a feature of Ming material life is a question that runs throughout the entire composition.
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Steward, Jill. "The development of tourist culture and the formation of social and cultural identities 1800-1914, with particular reference to Central Europe." Thesis, Northumbria University, 2008. http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/3031/.
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The essays presented here for submission for the degree of PhD by publication were published between 1998 and 2006 and (with one exception) consist of sole-authored studies in cultural history focused on the development of tourist culture in the period 1800-1914. Cultural history as a field of academic study is a rich area for interdisciplinary research and these case studies draw on a wide range of disciplines — anthropology, cultural geography, the history of medicine, visual culture, media and literature for theoretical and methodological support. Together, they constitute a coherent examination of the material and cultural factors influencing the development and expansion of tourist culture across the European continent and an exploration of its role in the formation of the social and cultural identities of people and places in the period 1800-1914, in different contexts and from different perspectives. The essays fall into two main groups. The first focuses on material and cultural factors influencing the growth of tourism in central Europe: its relationship to the development of urban culture and nationalism in the region and to the discourses and practices relating to health and leisure that supported the spa trade. A particular concern is the contribution of a developing tourist culture to the formation of cultural identities within the Habsburg Monarchy in an era of growing nationalism. For the state, tourism represented an opportunity to counteract its growing weakness by capitalising on the imperial image (a key element in touristic images of Vienna), to bolster the image of the Monarchy abroad and attract valuable foreign currency. At the same time the growth of tourism contributed to that weakness by reinforcing perceptions of cultural distinctiveness in areas influenced by growing national and regional self-consciousness. The second group of essays focuses on the production of tourists and the creation of a market for different types of tourism through an examination of the discourses influencing tourist motivations and behaviours, the experience and performance of place and the broader question of how and why tourists were attracted to particular places. A theme running through both sets of essays is that of the way that the spread of tourist culture, geographically and socially, contributed to the formation of cultural identities as particular social groups incorporated tourist practices into their lifestyles, and the places they visited acquired distinctive tourist images. Key factors in this process were the media and cultural industries responsible for the production and dissemination of travel-related forms of literature and visual culture. These industries helped to shape tourism as an economic and social institution by influencing the way in which particular places were produced for tourists and the manner in which they were perceived, experienced and performed as, for example, in case of the relationship between the British and different parts of continental Europe.
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Battles, Kelly Eileen. "The antiquarian impulse history, affect, and material culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature /." Diss., Connect to online resource - MSU authorized users, 2008.
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KARSKENS, Grace. "THE ROCKS AND SYDNEY: SOCIETY, CULTURE AND MATERIAL LIFE 1788-C1830." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/405.
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This study explores the early history of Sydney's Rocks area at two levels. First, it provides a much-needed history of the city's earliest, oldest-surviving and best-known precinct, one which allows an investigation of popular beliefs about the Rocks' convict origins, and which challenges and qualifies its reputation for lowlife, vice and squalor. Second, by examining fundamental aspects of everyday life - townscape, community and commonality, family life and work, human interaction and rites of passage - this study throws new light on the origins of Sydney from the perspective of the convict and ex-convict majority. Despite longstanding historical interest in Sydney's beginnings, the cultural identity, values, habits, beliefs of the convicts and ex-convicts remained largely hidden. The examination of such aspects reveals another Sydney altogether from that presented by governors, artists and mapmakers. Instead of an orderly oupost of empire, a gaol-town, or a 'gulag', the Sydney the Rocks represents was built and occupied largely according to the tastes, priorities and inclination of the people, with relatively little official regulation or interference. While the Rocks appeared 'disorderly' in the eyes of the elite, it nevertheless functioned according to cultural rules, those of the lower orders - the artisans, shopkeepers, publicans, labouring people, the majority of whom were convicts and ex-convicts.
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KARSKENS, Grace. "THE ROCKS AND SYDNEY: SOCIETY, CULTURE AND MATERIAL LIFE 1788-C1830." University of Sydney, History, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/405.
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This study explores the early history of Sydney's Rocks area at two levels. First, it provides a much-needed history of the city's earliest, oldest-surviving and best-known precinct, one which allows an investigation of popular beliefs about the Rocks' convict origins, and which challenges and qualifies its reputation for lowlife, vice and squalor. Second, by examining fundamental aspects of everyday life - townscape, community and commonality, family life and work, human interaction and rites of passage - this study throws new light on the origins of Sydney from the perspective of the convict and ex-convict majority. Despite longstanding historical interest in Sydney's beginnings, the cultural identity, values, habits, beliefs of the convicts and ex-convicts remained largely hidden. The examination of such aspects reveals another Sydney altogether from that presented by governors, artists and mapmakers. Instead of an orderly oupost of empire, a gaol-town, or a 'gulag', the Sydney the Rocks represents was built and occupied largely according to the tastes, priorities and inclination of the people, with relatively little official regulation or interference. While the Rocks appeared 'disorderly' in the eyes of the elite, it nevertheless functioned according to cultural rules, those of the lower orders - the artisans, shopkeepers, publicans, labouring people, the majority of whom were convicts and ex-convicts.
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Smith, III John E. "The Art of the Airport: Using Public History and Material Culture to Humanize and Interpret the American Airport." Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2018. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/496713.
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HistoryM.A.
In recent decades, government officials and social scientists have increased their study of American airports and their relationship to security and national defense. Despite the growing attention, airports remain interpreted primarily as homogenized, transient spaces deprived of any culturally unique qualities. This thesis will study American airports as historical artifacts with significant layers of meaning. If contextualized and situated within a broader historical framework, then airports expose larger trends throughout American history including resistance to multiculturalism and diversity. The stress and anxiety often associated with airports reflect a prolonged struggle to embrace the democratization of public places. If studied with an historical approach from multiple perspectives, then the airport provides historians with a tangible, familiar object to engage popular audiences about complicated issues such as surveillance, xenophobia, and urban renewal. This thesis proposes a conceptual framework for historians to assess the significance of airport space and offers suggestions to better engage the national conversations surrounding these complicated spaces.
Temple University--Theses
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Lachaud, Frederique Sophie Joelle. "Textiles, furs and liveries : a study of the material culture of the court of Edward I (1272-1307)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.317694.
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Shapiro, Jonathan Chira. "Hyphenated Japan: Cross-examining the Self/Other dichotomy in Ainu-Japanese material culture." Oberlin College Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1494762526392067.
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Manley, John Francis. "The material culture of Roman colonization : anthropological approaches to archaeological interpretations." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/6952/.
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This thesis will explore the agentive roles of material culture in ancient colonial encounters. It takes as a case study the Roman colonization of southern Britain, from the first century BC onwards. Using ethnographic and theoretical perspectives largely drawn from social anthropology, it seeks to demonstrate that the consumption of certain types of continental material culture by some members of communities in southern Britain, pre-disposed the local population to Roman political annexation in the later part of the first century AD. Once the Roman colonial project proper commenced, different material cultures were introduced by colonial agents to maintain domination over a subaltern population. Throughout, the entanglement of people and things represented a reciprocal continuum, in which things moved people's minds, as much as people got to grips with particular things. In addition it will be suggested that the confrontations of material culture brought about by the colonial encounters affected the colonizer as much as the colonized. The thesis will demonstrate the impact of a variety of novel material cultures by focusing in detail on a key area of southern Britain – Chichester and its immediate environs. Material culture will be examined in four major categories: Landscapes and Buildings; Exchange, Food and Drink; Coinages; Death and Burial. Chapters dealing with these categories will be preceded by an opening chapter on the nature of Roman colonialism, followed by an introductory one on the history and archaeology of southern Britain and the study area. The Conclusion will include some thoughts on the integration of anthropological approaches to archaeological interpretation. I intend that the thesis provides a contribution to the wider debate on the role of material culture in ancient colonial projects, and an example of the increasingly productive bidirectional entanglement of archaeology and anthropology.
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Brooks, Christopher andrew. "Excavations at the Barton-Swift-Nolan House: Antebellum Material Culture in the Georgia Piedmont." W&M ScholarWorks, 1995. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625952.
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Hunter, Elizabeth Katherine. "Melancholy and the doctrine of reprobation in English puritan culture, 1550-1640." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7adadd9e-17c0-4ebe-837b-0e5183fc8495.
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The thesis examines the relationship between reprobation fears and melancholic illness in puritan culture over a period of approximately ninety years. Reprobation formed part of the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination, by which God had chosen a few for salvation (the elect), and many for destruction (the reprobate). When a person came to believe that they were reprobate, this could give rise to symptoms of fear and despair similar to those associated with melancholy (an imbalance of black bile believed to affect the brain). The thesis shows how puritans used explanations based on melancholy in order to explain how otherwise godly people came to doubt their election. The first chapter shows how the Calvinist physician, Timothy Bright, incorporated ideas from medieval scholastic and medical texts into his Treatise of melancholie (1586), in order to explain how physiological causes could be at the root of reprobation fears. The second and third chapters examine the religious context in which Bright was writing. The second chapter shows puritan ambivalence about pronouncing a person to be reprobate through an examination of responses to the death of the apostate, Francesco Spiera. The third chapter shows how the Elizabethan puritan clergy developed a form of consolation for those suffering from despair of salvation based on the medieval idea that melancholy was the ‘devil’s bath’. The fourth and fifth chapters show the importance of physiological explanations for despair in defending the reputations of the dying. When a godly person despaired on their death-bed, or committed suicide, this was blamed on a combination of forces external to themselves – melancholy and the devil. The final chapter shows how Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy adapted puritan ideas about despair, to be more acceptable in the context of growing resistance to the preaching of double predestination in the 1620s and 30s.
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Schürger, André. "The archaeology of the Battle of Lützen : an examination of 17th century military material culture." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6508/.
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In the late 20th century, historical research on the 1632 Battle of Lützen, a major engagement of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), came to a dead end after 150 years of mostly unfruitful discussions. This thesis examines the battle’s military material culture, including historical accounts and physical evidence in the form of archaeological finds from the battlefield to provide new insight into the battle’s events, but also to develop a methodology which allows a comparison between two very different sources: the eyewitness account and the ‘lead bullet.’ To achieve this aim, the development of 17th century firearms is highlighted through an assessment of historical sources and existing weapons and by an evaluation of various collections of ‘lead bullets’ from Lützen and other archaeological sites, thus providing a working baseline for interpreting bullet distribution patterns on the battlefield. The validity of bullet distribution patterns is also dependant on the deposit process during the battle and metal detector survey methodologies, which also provides vital information for battlefield surveys in general. In an overarching methodology, statements from battle eyewitnesses are evaluated and compared to bullet distribution patterns, in conjunction with the historic landscape, equipment and tactics. Together, these ultimately lead to a better understanding of the battle and its historic narrative, by asking why reported events actually did not happen at Lützen. This last element is also important for understand the reliability of early modern battle accounts in general. Overall, a more general aim of this case study has been to provide a better insight into the wider potentials of early modern battle research in Europe.
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Lucas, Michael T. "Negotiating public landscapes history, archaeology, and the material culture of colonial Chesapeake towns, 1680 to 1720 /." College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/8032.
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Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2008.Thesis research directed by: Dept. of American Studies. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.
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Chezum, Tiffany. "On the endurance of indigenous religious culture in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt : evidence of material culture." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d6bee2aa-49a5-42db-9617-394ea1f73cf5.
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The aim of this thesis is to examine changes in the status of traditional Egyptian religious culture during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, from 331 BCE to 313 CE. Four distinct categories of material culture are examined: monumental construction of temples and civic buildings, traditional hard-stone sculpture, Alexandrian tombs, and Roman coins. These bodies of evidence were chosen because each offers a unique perspective, reflecting respectively the personal inclinations and official attitudes of both the culturally Hellenic and indigenous elites, which have not previously been studied in this context. Examined together for the first time, these categories reveal commonalities that show clearly the progression of the status of indigenous religious culture. From this, it is argued that, despite being economically disadvantaged by the Roman administration, the high status of this culture persisted in Egyptian society under both the Ptolemies and the Romans. Patterns of Egyptian temple and classical civic building show that Egypt's indigenous elite controlled the resources allocated for temple construction under the Ptolemies, but that the Romans gradually transferred this land into the management of the culturally Hellenic elite. This resulted in a decrease in Egyptian temple building after the first century CE and a corresponding increase in classical construction from then on. The production of hard-stone statues is shown for the first time to reveal that the indigenous elite had the resources and cultural confidence to continue and develop their traditions under the Ptolemies, while the sharp decrease at the start of the Roman period reflects their diminution in autonomy and prosperity under Roman rule. New analysis of traditional elements and motifs in the tombs of Alexandrian elites shows that this group respected and adopted indigenous religious customs and beliefs, with a higher incidence of indigenous imagery in the Roman period compared with the Ptolemaic period. In a similar way, well-informed Egyptian religious iconography rendered in a classical style on Alexandrian coins demonstrates the respect of the Roman authorities for Egyptian religious cults and institutions at an official level. In sum, it is argued that indigenous religious culture largely maintained its privileged economic and social status throughout the Ptolemaic period, despite political upheavals. Under Roman rule, the individuals and institutions representing Egyptian religious culture were disadvantaged economically; however, its social importance and standing were preserved and it continued to enjoy respect.