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Dwelling and practice represent two of the most powerful approaches that have been developed in archaeology over recent years. Together they offer a way of thinking about the past that recognises bom the agency of past peoples and the way in which they are always situated within their worlds. Yet both these approaches can be accused of a certain essentialism: they often fail to consider the socially contextual nature of identity, emotion and memory and the vital importance of these to how people go about the business of living their lives. By incorporating understandings of embodiment, gender, personhood, conviviality, emotional geographies, social memory and forgetting, among other themes, this thesis is an attempt to redress that. The first half of the thesis is thus an explicitly theoretical engagement with these broad, complex, but vital topics. In order to further this argument the second half of the thesis then applies these understandings to a single extended case study over three chapters: the Neolithic of Dorset This detailed and in-depth examination of one part of the country between 4000 and 2200 cal BC allows both the importance, and the applicability, of this theoretical approach to be set out Through this case study new understandings of people, landscape, materiality and monuments will emerge. The intention is to offer complex and coherent narratives that interweave the rich evidence of Neolithic occupation from Dorset with a sophisticated theoretical understanding that will allow new understandings of this particular place and time to emerge. Without a serious attempt to consider how identity, emotion and memory may have been both important and different in the past, archaeology is doomed to produce a picture of prehistory that not only falls short, but also reflects and reifies the conditions of the present.

This thesis provides a view of modern art in St Ives between 1939 and 1949 by focusing on two interlinked concerns: the movement of objects, people and ideas through communication and transport networks, and the modern art movements which were developed by artists working in the town during this period. Drawing especially from studies of place, hybridity and mobility, Chapter 1 provides an account of two artists’ migration to St Ives in 1939: Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth. It considers the foundational importance of movement to the narrative of modern art in St Ives and examines the factors which contributed to artists’ decisions to relocate. Using this information, it probes presumptions surrounding St Ives as an artists’ ‘colony’ and proposes it as a site of ‘coastal modernism’. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the contribution by artists in St Ives to two developing art movements: Constructivism and Cubism. Both investigations show how artists participated in wide-reaching artistic networks within which ideas and objects were shared. Each chapter also particularly reveals the value of art movements for providing temporal scales through which artists could reflect upon and establish the connections of their work to the past, present and future. Chapter Two focuses on the Constructive project associated with the publication of 'Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art' (1937), revealing how modern art in St Ives inherited ideas and styles from earlier movements and continued to reflect upon the value of the ‘Constructive spirit’ as Europe changed. Chapter Three is an examination of Nicholson’s connections to the Cubist movement and an analysis of the long-standing impact this had on his work and critical reception both before and after the Second World War. To conclude this thesis, two narratives centred on 1964, the year often used to define the end of an artistic period in St Ives, suggest how the internationalism of artists and artist groups in St Ives changed during the period which followed 1949.

The agricultural history of the well-documented manor of Rimpton in south-east Somerset provides an opportunity for a detailed reconstruction of one medieval demesne farm and for testing generalized models of economic development in one specific local context. Background information is provided concerning the evolution of the manorial economy through to the twelfth century. This analysis suggests that manorialization might have been a significant factor in the adoption of nucleated settlement, common-field agriculture, and certain peasant tenures and customs. Quantitative and qualitative information from the Pipe Rolls of the Bishopric of Winchester, 1208/09 to 1411/12, is used to describe the operation of the demesne farm under direct management. Topics addressed include the field system, the physical resources (buildings, crops, livestock) and human aspects (administration, labour, marketing) of production. Despite the basic inflexibility of manor's agrarian structure, significant chronological changes in production types, agricultural technology, and administrative systems are detected. Some of these reflect the influence of market pressures upon arable and pastoral husbandry, others the importance of social relationships between lord and peasant for the success of manorial farming. The thesis concludes with a statistical investigation of arable productivity, agricultural investment, and manorial profit. Earlier hypotheses emphasizing overcultivation and lack of manure for yield trends are discarded in favour of management decisions concerning the labour supply and production techniques. Although technology was not static, analysis of investment at Rimpton still shows that bouyant market conditions led to expansion in the scale of manorialised production rather than intensive applications of capital. Trends in productivity, investment, and profit, therefore reflected the impact of wider movements in population and the money supply upon market demand. Despite the success of pastoral production over the fourteenth century, a contracting market for grain undermined farming success and led to the lease of the manor.

The main argument of this thesis is that the landscape and locality of Clarendon Forest and Park were strongly influenced by the presence (or, later, absence) of Clarendon Palace, which fell into decay in the late fifteenth century. This contention is addressed by taking the landscape as the unit for study, rather than focusing on the palace and extrapolating 'outwards'. A primary aim is to restore the wider conceptual landscape by considering the forest alongside the relict landscape of the park, and it is argued throughout that, because medieval forests are archaeologically elusive, the best way to achieve this is through an intensive documentary methodology. Attention is drawn throughout to the capacity of documents to illustrate how estates were managed over time. This is demonstrated particularly in Chapters Two and Three, the main findings of which (including observations of a major change in attitude and landscape use in the early- to mid- fourteenth century) are drawn together in the conclusions of those chapters. The thesis, representing an unprecedented systematic study of manuscript sources for Clarendon Park and Forest held at central and regional record offices, is supported by references to printed primary sources. It has resulted in the compilation of a main computer database listing over 800 relevant documents held at the Public Record Office alone (Appendix 11), from which those that might prove most useful were selected and transcribed. The transcriptions, arranged by subject, form several substantial and searchable electronic databases facilitating cross-checking and comparison, some of which are reproduced here as Appendices. The written sources themselves have informed the structure of the thesis. Their worth in a study such as this is explored in Chapter One, following a brief background history of Clarendon and an elucidation of the study's academic and historiographical context. Chapter Two then addresses ecology and economy, while the park's 'built environment' is considered in Chapter Three in order to provide new insights. Settlement is explored in Chapter Four, which reveals Clarendon Forest to have been a landscape of control in which assarting, in particular, was restricted. Chapter Five expands on this point by addressing 'closure' and conflict in the landscape. It examines also Clarendon's 'social topology', partly by employing gender as a tool to elucidate the nature of social closure, and ends by considering the palace as a scene of social negotiation. The Conclusion, Chapter Six, expands on the management of the forest and park and the phasing of the latter's use based largely on materials in Chapters Two and Three. It concludes that the hypothesis is supported; this unique landscape and locality was indeed profoundly influenced by the existence of a royal park and palace at its centre. Nevertheless, what has emerged strongly in the course of the study are the myriad ways in which the forest, in turn, shaped the lifecycle' of the palace.

The thesis opens with a very general account of the earliest settlement in the Plymouth region, passing to a more detailed treatment of the manorial division of the district and the settlements on the site of modern Plymouth - their character, growth and significance in the development both of a corporate life within the region and of commercial interests overseas. The effect on the neighbourhood of the extension of the Empire and of national prestige at sea is considered, particularly in relation to the expansion of the port's colonial trade. This brings us to the end of Ch. 5. At this stage the salient physical conditions governing the use of the port are discussed, prior to an examination of the trends of commerce from the 1860s to the present day. The port includes three important and highly individualised harbours, and after studying the characteristics of the port trade as a whole, each of these harbours is considered separately. Part II concludes with a study of Plymouth as the centre of the Westcountry fishing industry. Part III deals with the human and social aspects of the City behind the Port, beginning by tracing the actual consolidation of the several elements into the present highly complex unity of the City of Plymouth, correlating each major advance with the larger developments both in the district and in the country as a whole. Population changes during the past twenty years and the human and economic factors now at work in determining the character of the connurbation are treated in some detail. Finally the City-Port is considered as a centre of commerce, trade and social intercourse, in relation first, to its immediate hinterland, and secondly, to the major population centres of the British Isles.

The subject of this thesis is the social significance of knighthood in England during the reign of Edward I. The introduction outlines the process whereby knightly rank became associated with landed wealth. Evidence discussed in the second chapter points to the existence of many knights. The personal relationships between them indicate a defined social group. Next it is argued that the failure from the late 13th century of many landholders to take knighthood was prompted by financial considerations but the group retained its integrity. The fourth and fifth chapters investigate the nature of the knights ' lordship and reveal great variations in their social and economic power. The following chapter shows that inheritance underpinned the changing composition of the knightly group into which freemen might prosper. It is then suggested that territorial and family solidarities were more instrumental in determining alliances between knights and greater landholders than feudal tenurial ties. It is next shown that military and administrative service occasionally overlapped but those aspects of service were crystallizing respectively around the retinues of the magnates and the lesser knights active in the counties. The conclusion suggests that the cult of knighthood legitimized the social position of all knights.

This thesis explores the richness of Devon’s antiquarians’ records covering the period from the 15th century through to the early 20th century, and reveals the wealth of information that these archives contain about archaeological sites and medieval buildings that have since been lost. The lives of the Devon antiquarians themselves, how the carried out their research, and the unpublished and published material they have left us, are all reviewed. Of particular importance are unpublished questionnaires, journals, diaries, notebooks and commonplace books which together provide an untapped resource of information on lost and damaged archaeological sites. When assessing the antiquarians’ pictorial evidence it was important to undertake field visits in order to ascertain their accuracy and the amount of damage sites have incurred since. The earliest antiquarians were those who visited Devon during the 16th century in order to collect material for the histories of England they were writing. These were followed by Devonian antiquarians, who from the 16th century onwards wrote histories of Devon, and a later group who visited, and in some cases excavated, archaeological sites. Antiquarians are discussed in depth where they have left us documentary evidence, and in some cases illustrations, from their research. The thesis explores six areas of research pursued by these antiquarians: barrows, hillforts, Roman sites, castles, religious houses and churches. Within the discussion of these types of sites, particular case studies are used to show the progression of archaeological techniques within antiquarian research, it was found that the majority of the sites described by antiquarians have not undergone any further archaeological investigation.

This thesis challenges the notion that little light can be shed on Exeter’s ‘middling’ and ‘poorer’ sorts in the period 1550-1610, defined as ‘the chorus’ by Wallace MacCaffrey in his book Exeter 1540-1640. It selects data from mid- to late- sixteenth and early seventeenth century urban archives, defines the strengths and weaknesses of that data and captures it in a digitised database. It uses this data to test which of the methodologies of prosopography, collective and individual biography, social network analysis and occupied topography are most appropriate for analysis of the city’s social structure and individuals’ lived experiences. It subsequently selects collective and individual biography for use with the randomly incomplete data set presented by the archives. Using the database to create group and individual biographies, it then introduces elementary quantitative analyses of the city’s social structure, starting by describing broadly the distinguishing characteristics of the leading actors and the chorus. Following on from this, it describes several groups who form part of the chorus, including the more civically active, alongside those with less data against their names. It investigates family and household dynamics and reveals how these are reflected through the occupation of baker. It continues by examining the post-mortem intentions of those who bequeathed goods and explores the lives of a selection of craftsmen, merchants, tailors and widows viewed through in-depth biographies created from the comparatively rich data associated with death. It also makes explicit that the lack of a particular document type compromises the degree of success in connecting the chorus to the cityscape using occupied topography methodologies. It reveals the challenges of recreating the notion of neighbourhood in the city’s west quarter around St Nicholas Priory, then the town house of the wealthy Hurst family. It concludes that it is possible to outline a new model, that of the ‘categorised, connected citizen’, which challenges the validity of MacCaffrey’s construct of a bi-partite society, one side of which is a murky unknown quantity about whom no ‘striking assertions’ can be made. This new model acknowledges the dynamism, individuality and interactivity of Exeter’s inhabitants, and contents that it is a better one for enabling historians to treat respectfully people they cannot yet fully understand.