The current state of post-medieval archaeology in Flanders

Abstract

Post-medieval archaeology in Flanders (Belgium) is a comparatively young archaeological discipline, even in an historically important region with centres such as Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent. Originating in the slipstream of Flemish urban archaeology during the 1970s, the discipline has struggled for recognition ever since. As a result of more than 40 years of fieldwork, the material record of early-modern and modern history has changed drastically. Yet post-medieval archaeology has not reached its apogee. A framework with its own methods, teaching, research questions and theoretical approaches is still under construction. This paper aims not only at historiographical analysis of the field, but chiefly at defining a clear framework for positioning post-medieval archaeology in one of the most important regions in early-modern and modern Europe.     

Historical and zooarchaeological evidence of horn-working in post-medieval London

Abstract

The 1641 list of members of the Horners' Company, parish registers and apprentice rolls provide information on the location of the horn-working industry in east London, on family relationships and on how horners' careers may have developed. Sawn cattle horncores distinguish horn-working deposits from butchers' and tanners' waste. Horn waste was used as a cheap substitute for brick to line pits in workshops of other trades and in houses and to line field drains in the nearby countryside.     

Death in the sun: the bioarchaeology of an early post-medieval hospital in Gibraltar

SUMMARY: In 2014, during construction work at the ex-Civil Hospital in Gibraltar, excavations led by the Gibraltar Museum revealed a major, previously unknown burial ground containing more than 200 skeletons. We present the historical, archaeological and radiometric dating evidence from the site alongside the results of initial osteological analyses. The data indicate that the burials pertain to an earlier 16th-century Spanish hospice, and therefore stand to offer new insights into the functioning of this early modern hospital and the health and movements of people at a time of incipient globalization.     

二里头文化陶礼器造型艺术研究

二里头文化陶礼器的造型艺术表现为简洁质朴的艺术风格,这与夏代礼制文化中"尚质"的审美倾向十分吻合。陶礼器的造型艺术由黄金比例、纹饰和仿生三种设计方法以体现陶器造型和装饰的简洁与抽象性,而三至四期动物造型装饰的增多则为商代青铜礼器的艺术形式奠定了基础。酒器和食器的器物造型构成了礼仪中行为与时间的观念,以及动与静的礼仪活动的日常行为规范。而高等级墓葬中的稀有陶器斗笠形器,其造型与古人对天的描述相同,它不仅代表了所葬之人的身份与职能,还是上层社会对天祭祀权力的象征。     

The influence of different tempers on the composition of pottery

The modification of the raw clay by the potter to produce a paste suitable for the intended purposes adds a layer of obfuscation to the problem of provenancing the original clay source by chemical fingerprinting. By preparing different pastes from the same commercially available raw clay and their chemical analysis by Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, an experiment under controlled conditions (tempers, mixing ratios, firing temperatures and sampling methods) sheds light on the influence of different tempers.     

Aberglasney: the theory,history and archaeology of a post-medieval landscape

Abstract

Printed and documentary sources, archaeological excavation, dendrochronology and geophysical survey are employed to investigate the history of Aberglasney, a small country house near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire (SN 5815 2213). Traditions about its garden layout, parapet walkway, a gatehouse and a yew ‘tunnel’ are examined. Circa 1600, Bishop Anthony Rudd (1549–1614) probably built a ‘cwrt’ enclosure aligned north-south. The gatehouse belonged to this or a later house. In 1770 or later, the Dyer family rebuilt the house, probably redesigned and rewalled the entire estate layout, when an earlier farm building was converted into the parapet walkway and stock pens, in an area later known as the ‘cloistered court’. In Victorian times this feature, originally a farmyard, became a pleasure garden, part of a typical Georgian-Victorian complex including a kitchen garden, glasshouses, orchards and fishpond. A yew grove was established, most likely c. 1805, when the Philipps family began planting in a Picturesque style. Abandoned c. 1950, house and garden became dilapidated. The site is now the object of a radical development programme, involving inter alia the stabilization of all buildings fabric, and imposing 16th-/17th-century style formal gardens over the 18th-/19th-century kitchen garden and orchard.     

Physical study of the Cucuteni pottery technology

Most of our knowledge concerning the Cucuteni pottery is based on traditional archaeological methods (typology, style and context analysis) and only a few interdisciplinary studies have been published. As there is a strong interest in revealing the basic pottery technology used by the Cucuteni communities we have investigated a significant number of pottery samples from 22 archaeological sites located in Eastern Romania by several physical analysis techniques: X-ray diffraction (XRD) and by magnetic measurements, including a first-order reversal curve (FORC) diagram study on the samples showing a hysteretic behavior. The main results presented in this study are discussed and compared with actual knowledge on the ancient Cucuteni pottery.     

At the crossroads of nationalism: Huizinga,Pirenne and the Low Countries in Europe1

Johan Huizinga and Henri Pirenne belong to the most prominent historians of the twentieth century. The fame of the former is most of all based on Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919), a fascinating study of the Burgundian culture; the latter is widely considered as the innovator of the economic and urban history of the Middle Ages. But both historians were equally highly preoccupied by the question as to which position their countries – the Netherlands in the case of Huizinga, Belgium in the case of Pirenne – should take up in Europe and what were the responsibilities of these engagements in an international community. This preoccupation is the subject of this essay. It tells the story of diplomats from small countries, of disappointment through war and of national pride, a story also in which positions changed repeatedly.     

On the dissolution of pottery for diatom studies

This paper deals with a study of the pictographs at Trontveit, Nissedal parish, County of Telemark, by scientific methods. The observations lead to the conclusion that the pictographs were not painted.     

北魏陶器的装饰纹样

瓷器大量出现以前,陶器在古代人民生活中占有重要地位,是人们日常生活中不可缺少的用具。本文所说的陶器仅指生活用具中的器皿,不包括陶俑及模型。陶器皿的造型及装饰反映了其生活时代的     

Domestic material culture and post-medieval archaeology in Greece: a case-study from the Cyclades Islands

Abstract

The Kyklades or Cycladic Islands have always been popular amongst archaeologists working on the Aegean Bronze Age and the 'glorious' Classical Greek past. In contrast, not much light has been shed upon aspects of post-Roman life on the islands. Research into the post-medieval period has been a subject mainly for historians and folklorists. This paper attempts to explore aspects of the lifestyle of the peoples who inhabited this island group throughout the more recent, yet most neglected centuries of Greek history, using archaeological, textual and other sources and methods. My aim is to reconstruct everyday rural life in Greece, by focusing on the domestic sphere and addressing questions concerning society and the domestic material culture of a littoral area that has remained traditional until very recently.

This paper examines some first results of the CY.RE.P. (Cyclades Research Project) and introduces examples concerning the domestic material culture of the late medieval and post-medieval periods (early 13th–late 19th centuries) in the Aegean Islands of the Cyclades, with particular reference to housing, furniture and internal fittings, costumes and embroideries.     

The development of the bottle kiln in pottery manufacture in Britain

Abstract

This paper describes the types of bottle-shaped kiln used in the British pottery industry in the 1950s. It reviews the evidence of standing structures, archaeological fieldwork and documentary sources for their operation and antecedents. It concludes that their origins are to be found in developments of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and that their widespread adoption was as much for cultural as for technical reasons.     

From the sublime to the Druidical: changing perceptions of prehistoric monuments in southern Anglesey in the post-medieval period

Abstract

The prehistoric monuments of southern Anglesey have been interpreted in various ways over the past three centuries, as an examination of the work of antiquarians, artists, landscape designers and other contemporary commentators reveals. During the post-medieval period, the meanings of these monuments shifted, as perceptions of the pre-Roman era changed. As embodiments of the past, megalithic monuments were embraced by Welsh historians, antiquarians and artists in the movement to formulate a Welsh national identity. Moreover, their incorporation into landscape gardens was indicative of the extent to which they captured the contemporary imagination. Local communities, meanwhile, reacted in differing ways to the megaliths, influenced concurrently by superstition and agrarian pragmatism.     

Iron IIA slag-tempered pottery in the Negev Highlands,Israel

The article presents results of a petrographic investigation of pottery from Iron IIA settlements in the Negev Highlands in southern Israel. It focuses on a group of almost exclusively handmade wares that are tempered with crushed slag. The polarizing and electron microscopes explicitly identify these inclusions as copper smelting slag. Based on the slag as well as certain rock inclusions, the slag-tempered wares can be sourced to the copper districts in the Wadi Arabah, and hence for the first time provide a link between the Negev Highlands and the Arabah copper production centers in the period under review. More specifically, they demonstrate direct involvement of at least part of the pastoral-nomadic Negev Highlands population in the copper extraction system.     

The role of interdisciplinary science in the study of ancient pottery

Abstract

In the context of the modern world, the term ceramics suggests a very versatile group of materials capable of being designed to have particular physical and chemical properties and to fulfil a wide range of functions, functions that traditionally have often been fulfilled by other types of material.¹ While suitably designed ceramics may hold the key to overcoming many of humankind's future technological problems, it is interesting to reflect on how much ceramics can also tell us about our past. Future technological innovations in ceramics will influence and be influenced by wider aspects of human culture; so too it may be expected that there was a similar relationship between ancient ceramics and the past societies that made them. In archaeology, ceramics hold an important and varied role as a key to understanding many aspects of the development of human civilisations. This paper aims to explore some of the ways in which ceramics have been studied by archaeologists, and to illustrate some of the many contributions interdisciplinary science has made to the study of ancient pottery.     

夏家店下层文化彩绘陶器纹饰研究

夏家店下层文化有彩绘陶器,资料集中见发表于中国社会科学院考古研究所编着的《大甸子——夏家店下层文化遗址与墓地发掘报告》中“,另外,我所在敖汉旗范仗子墓群中也挖到一些o,其他地区也有,但发表的不多．此种彩绘陶器都出土于墓葬中,此知彩绘陶器的纹饰与丧祭有关。在居住遗址中,也有少数彩绘陶器残片的出土,因数量太少,不是实用器,应是专供祭祀用的祭器,是与上层建筑的观念有关。下面以《大甸子》报告为主,发表个人研究心得,请专家学者指正。     

汉阳陵博物馆藏陶俑概述

汉阳陵博物馆馆藏陶俑无论从陪葬级别、制作工艺、种类和数量都是其他博物馆无法比拟的,本文就汉阳陵馆藏陶俑种类、艺术特点、功能方面加以考证和综合概述。