Material Culture Research Strand
The Material Culture Research Strand is an interdisciplinary group based in the School of Historical Studies. Its aims are to provide a focus for researchers in the field by reviewing and discussing recent work, providing feedback on its members’ research proposals and papers, and stimulating new projects. The Research Strand is open to all interested researchers at Newcastle University including staff and postgraduate students.
The convenor is Andrea Dolfini.
2011-12 Meetings (semester 2)
This semester we will be exploring new theory in material culture, with a particular emphasis on Memory and Material Culture in advance of the upcoming PGF conference on this subject. The schedule is as follows:
Thursday 16th February, 3pm, Classroom 2, Armstrong Building.
Reading Group: Olsen, Bjornar. 2010. In Defense of Things. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Chapter 2: Brothers In Arms? Archaeology and Material Culture Studies, p36-64.
Thursday 8th March, 3pm Classroom 2, Armstrong Building.
Reading Group: Drazin, A. and Frohlich, D. 2007. Good Intentions: remembering through framing photographs in English homes. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 72 (1): 51-76.
Thursday 26th April, 4pm, Shefton Room, Armstrong Building.
Archaeology Research Seminar. Speaker: Mark Vander Linden (Leicester), Behind the Wave: Possible Delay in the Neolithisation of Western Balkans
Thursday 17th May, 3pm Classroom 2, Armstrong Building.
Reading Group: reading TBC
2010 meetings
4th February 2010 – Material Culture Coffee
4th March 2010 – Material Culture Coffee Reading Group. Theme: interpreting symbols on material culture. Readings:
Gell, A. 1999. The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. In A. Gell (edited by E. Hirsch), The art of anthropology: essays and diagrams, 159-86. London: Athlone Press. And Maguire, H. 1990. Garments Pleasing to God: The Significance of Domestic Textile Designs in the Early Byzantine Period. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44, pp. 215-224.
22nd April 2010 – Archaeology Research Seminar (Material Culture), 4pm. Peter Bray, University of Oxford ‘What can the chemical composition of British and Irish Early Bronze Age copper objects tell us? Moving beyond provenance and towards people in scientific archaeometallurgy’
13th May 2010 – Material Culture Seminar, Shefton Room, 4pm. David Cranstone, SHS Research Fellow, 'Packaging the iron industry - technological packages and evolutionary archaeology'.
14th Oct 2010 – Material culture Reading Group, Shefton room, 3pm. Reading: Gosden, C. & Y. Marshall (1999). The Cultural Biography of Objects. World Archaeology 31(2): 169-78.
2009 meetings
Thursday 15th October 3-4pm, Northern Stage Theatre café: Strand coffee hour.
Thursday 5th November, 4-5pm: Reading group. Subject: Artefacts as categories of human knowledge. Recommended readings:
Miller, D. 1982. Artefacts as products of human categorisation processes, in I. Hodder (ed.) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology: 89-98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
AND/OR
Miller, D. 1985. Artefacts as Categories: A Study of Ceramic Variability in Central India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1 and 9
Thursday 26th November, 4-5pm. Dr John Merkel, UCL. Archaeology Research Seminar. Metallurgy in Archaeology: a tribute to Professor R.F. Tylecote
