Living in the Past: Exploring Everyday Life during and after the Victorian Period in an East Midlands Industrial Town (original) (raw)
Related papers
Community Archaeology Under Scrutiny
Conservation and Management of Archaeological …, 2008
Community archaeology claims to offer the public an opportunity to become engaged with and involved in the interpretation and understanding of the past. It has been claimed that this interactive approach, one of participation in the archaeological process, develops both intangible and tangible values from the past for individuals and communities in the present. Such values range from educational to economic and from political to social; however, these supposed results of community archaeology have yet to be critically analyzed.
Familiarity and Contempt: the archaeology of the 'modern'
Over the last twenty years or so there has been a growing recognition within field archaeology that post-medieval sites deserve as careful excavation and recording as those of more ancient date. Even so, the patience of many archaeologists seems to run out some time between 1750 and 1850. Too many are still prepared to shave off the Victorian and twentieth-century deposits from urban sites on the grounds that they are 'overburden' or, worse, 'modern disturbance'. Rural sites fare no better, with interest confined largely to standing farm buildings (e.g. Brunskill 1987) and other industrial remains, iiicluding transport systems. The coiTimonest excuse given is that this period is so fully documented and understood that we do not need to 'supplement' the historical record with archaeology. This is nonsense, of course. To deny that archaeology can make a contribution towards understanding modern societies is to deny that the discipline has a role to play in understanding any society. Ultimately, it is a denial that archaeology has its own specific viewpoint (Shanks and Tilley 1987: 208). In fact, there are many roles that archaeology can play in giving meanirig to the world, from providing the sole information about prehistory to documenting stylistic changes in a specific artefact category. However, one of the most important ought to be helping people in the present to eiigage with their own past and the pasts of others. This is what we try to achieve with popularizing accounts or with television programmes, but the results are all too often lacking in the sort of engagement which fires the public imagination.
From the Unusual to the Banal: the Archaeology of Everyday Life in Victorian London
Research Matters 4 (Museum of London Archaeology pamphlet), 2010
Museum of London Archaeology. The research was funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council, and involved bringing together documentary historical records with archaeological evidence in order to try to understand everyday life among households in three distinct localities in 19th-century London. The use of archaeological evidence in the analysis of the economic, social and cultural history of Victorian London has been very limited, but it offers the potential for new insights into experiences of metropolitan life. Our project drew upon some of the vast collections of 19th-century archaeological finds that have been curated by the Museum of London at its London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC), exploring assemblages of objects retrieved from excavations in Limehouse in the East End, New Palace Yard in Westminster and Sydenham in South East London. It deployed an 'ethnographies of place' approach (described below) to analyse these objects and related documentary sources in order to address a number of key questions: • What does archaeological evidence tell us about everyday domestic life in the city? • How does the material culture of everyday life vary across different localities in the city? • How does the inclusion of archaeological evidence challenge or necessitate a revision of existing historical understanding of life in Victorian London?
Historical Archaeology, 2014
The authors introduce a new artifact-centered oral-history PHWKRGRORJ\ DQG GHVFULEH LWV XVH LQ LQWHUSUHWLQJ ¿QGV IURP the 19th-century midden associated with a row of cottages at Ovenstone, Northumberland. The history of settlement and excavation at Ovenstone are described, and the evolution and development of the artifact-centered approach is explored. Four case studies are presented in order to illustrate some of the ways in which oral testimonies have informed the interpretation of artifacts from the Ovenstone midden. Each of these examples draws directly on the memories and experiences of community elders who were interviewed for the Ovenstone Project between 2009 and 2012.
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE-Introduction
The Archaeology of Daily Life: Ordinary Persons in Late Second Temple Israel, 2020
Have you ever wondered what it was like to live in the past? Did they experience reality in a much different way than we do now with our media, our fast travel, our fast food, and our leisure. How would you have made a living? What kind of house would you have lived in? What diseases might you have contracted? This book takes you on a journey into the past to view daily life through the lenses of not o nly texts but archaeological finds.
The power of pits: archaeology, outreach and research in living landscapes
2014
This chapter reviews the aims and results of a linked series of outreach projects which have involved thousands of members of the public in archaeological testpit excavations in rural settlements. These have been intended to engage members of the public in research, in order to inspire and to enrich lives and communities while simultaneously advancing knowledge and understanding of the historic development of today’s previously overlooked villages, hamlets and small towns. This chapter presents and assesses the social impact of these projects as well as the new perspectives the archaeological evidence has provided on the historic development of medieval settlements and landscapes, documenting the story of an innovative landscape research programme which, since 2005, has sought to bring together public engagement and scholarly research in a genuinely symbiotic community research partnership.