In the first chapter I will discuss Renoir's involvement with the Goncourt brothers and his close interest in the themes of the Rococo. I will show how his connection with the Rococo surpasses superficial imitation and brings Renoir into direct dialogue with eighteenth-century ideas and motifs. In the second chapter I will explore the ideas about women that arose in the eighteenth century as seen in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and how Renoir puts them to use in his paintings of his wife, Aline. I will discuss Renoir's dialogue with Rousseau's natural roles for women, especially the practice of breastfeeding. In the last chapter, we will look at Renoir's career as an Impressionist in Paris and his interaction with the fashion of the day. During the rise of haute couture in Paris, emerging fashion was embraced most famously by Baudelaire, who despised the idealization of nature. Here we will look at Renoir's retort to Baudelaire's ideas. I seek to show that naturalism, as understood by Rousseau, is present in various ways throughout Renoir's Impressionist period, even as financial reasons constrained the artist to represent the busy city life of Paris. In summation this thesis will analyze Renoir's depictions of women, his love of eighteenth century artists, and the ideal of the natural woman he would return to throughout his career. I seek to demonstrate that Renoir was not superficially engaged with the Rococo Revival; rather, we shall see how deeply Renoir is in debt to Rousseau's ideas and Rococo aesthetics.

Lorenzo Ghiberti's east door of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, long famed as the Gates of Paradise, displays Old Testament stories in sculptural relief on ten gilded bronze panels. Stressing the significance of the Gates of Paradise as a public monument imbedded in the fabric of Florentine society will enhance our understanding of the cultural use of the door within its built environment. Consideration of its context could in turn clarify the motivation behind the choices for the iconographical program. Previous studies of the Gates of Paradise tend to isolate each narrative panel rather than examining the Gates as one door made up of ten unified panels (including decorative framing). As a result, the Gates of Paradise have rarely been looked at in terms of architectural function or context. The approach of the present study focuses on the Gates of Paradise as a significant architectural feature of Florence's built environment, as a feature that functioned as a centerpiece for the Baptistery and the Cathedral complex, and as a setting for the many spectacles that took place in that environment. This investigation aims to define the inseparable religious and civic functioning of the Gates of Paradise and to identify connections between specific function and the iconographical program. The research examines in depth the imagery of the Gates of Paradise, scrutinizing the function of the Gates within its physical setting, in the ceremonies of baptism, and in the regular rituals of the Florentine liturgical calendar. This hitherto-unexamined analysis of the Florentine liturgical ritual utilizes Medieval and Renaissance service books such as the Ritus in ecclesia servandi, Mores et consuetudines canonice florentine, Missal Ms. Edili 107 (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana), and the Missale romanum Mediolani, 1474. The examination of the Gates' function offers illumination of the possible meaning(s) conveyed by the choice of biblical narratives that make up the program. Research suggests that the iconographical program for the Gates of Paradise connects predominantly to its major function as the principal ritual entrance for the Baptistery. The program reiterates the liturgy for the season leading up to the Church's traditional celebratory period of baptism and the baptismal liturgy. While most days throughout the year the south portal was used for the daily baptismal ceremony, this special baptism-related use of the Gates reinforce the liturgy of the season which teaches and emphasizes the significance of the sacrament of baptism and the role of the Church in salvation.

During the last half of the nineteenth century, American sportsmen-artists painted hunting-related images that were designed to promote the ideals of sporting behavior, conservationist thought, and the interests of elite sportsmen against non-elite hunters. Upper-class American attitudes regarding common hunters and trappers, the politics of land use, and the role of conservation in recreational hunting played a significant part in the construction of visual art forms during this period, art which, in turn, helped shape national dialogue on the protection and acceptable uses of wildlife. This dissertation takes issues critical to mid-century American conservation thought and agendas, and investigates how they were embodied in American hunting art of the time. Beginning with depictions of recreational sportsmen during the era of conservationist club formation (mid-1840s), the discussion moves to representations of the lone trapper at mid-century. These figures were initially represented as a beneficial force in the conquest of the American frontier, but trappers and backwoodsmen became increasingly problematic due to an apparent disregard for game law and order. I explore the ways in which market hunting was depicted, and how it was contrasted with acceptable "sportsmanlike" hunting methods. Subsequent chapters consider the portrayal of the boy hunter, an essential feature to the sportsman's culture and its continuance, and the tumultuous relationship between elite sportsmen and their guides, who were known to illegally hunt off-season. The last chapters address the subject of the wild animal as heroic protagonist and dead game still life paintings, a pictorial type that represented the lifestyle of sportsmen and their concern for conservative catches and adherence to game law. Developments in conservation during the period were significantly tied to class and elitist aspirations, and artist-sportsmen merged these social prejudices with their agenda for game conservation. Their representations of hunting art both responded to and promoted the conservationist cause.

This dissertation expands upon previous analyses of the social functions of Pompeian domestic architecture by articulating the essential role of the peristyle garden in communicating the status of the homeowner while structuring the interactions of residents and visitors with the art and architecture both of the peristyle itself and with the house as a whole. Peristyles provided light, air, and circulation space for the home, but their aesthetic function was just as significant; embellished with painting, sculpture, fountains, and plants, peristyles were important centers of display. Although typically the largest and most lavishly decorated architectural space in a Pompeian house, the peristyle is often treated summarily in studies of Pompeian domestic architecture. This study fills a lacuna in scholarship, examining the architecture of peristyles in conjunction with the paintings, sculptural ensembles, and other features that adorned them. This synthetic approach to the material remains allows for an examination of peristyles as lived spaces rather than as collections of disparate decorative elements. The dissertation is divided into four chapters, each focusing on a specific problem related to the design and function of peristyles. The first chapter presents the characteristic architectural and decorative features of true, or fully colonnaded, peristyles in Pompeian houses. The second chapter consists of two case studies of true peristyles that demonstrate the role and function of the true peristyle within the Pompeian house. These case studies articulate the function of the peristyle relating to issues of status, access, and display in the House of the Vettii (VI.15.I) and the House of the Lovers (I.10.11). The third chapter addresses the architectural and decorative features of truncated peristyles, or those that are not fully colonnaded. This chapter also addresses differences in size, architecture, and decoration between true and truncated peristyles. The fourth chapter uses the truncated peristyles of the House of Marcus Lucretius (IX.3.5) and House of the Vettii (VI.15.1) as case studies to assess the various roles of truncated peristyles within the domestic setting. Together, these chapters bring about a more complete understanding of the social and aesthetic function of Pompeian residences and how domestic art and architecture shaped the experience of the viewer, enhanced the prestige of the owner, and affirmed social hierarchy.

Wave action along the shores of Lima Reservoir in Centennial Valley, Montana is actively eroding the southern margins of three neighboring Paleoindian sites. Despite ostensible similarity among the sites, major site formation differences are apparent in exposed sediments. Shoreline cutbank exposures one-to-five meters high connect the sites and reveal a complicated geomorphic history. Although each site contains artifact evidence of terminal Pleistocene-early Holocene occupations, Paleoindian components at these three localities occur in very different contexts: one is buried, while the other two are apparent surface scatters. This raise the question of why sites of the same age are in both buried and exposed contexts. Moreover, buried sites are more likely to have preserved spatial layout and sites with buried components are more likely to be considered significant under National Register of Historic Places criteria. These factors therefore prompt the management question of where might other buried sites be located in the valley? In order to answer these questions, I used a multi-pronged approach including optically stimulated luminescence dating, sediment grain size analysis, stratigraphic profiling and sediment facies analysis. I accomplished two nested objectives with this research. First, I reconstructed the last 60,000 years of geomorphic events for the area surrounding the three sites in order to determine what conditions resulted in site burial. Second, I used those findings to outline criteria for differentiating occupation-age and pre-occupation-age stratigraphic layers in Centennial Valley. I determined, in part, that cultural-age deposits are present at both high and low elevations and that they may be marked by a specific soil sequence. The oldest packages, far pre-dating potential human occupation, are deep lake and high energy stream sediments that may be recognized by soil color alteration and thick gypsum horizons.

No description available.

No description available.

The Spanish Fort San José, located on the St. Joseph Peninsula, was occupied from 1719 until 1723. This site is significant as it preserves key details on Spanish settlement, trade, and ethnic diversity on the northern Gulf Coast and relationships with aboriginal and other European peoples of the region. The first archaeological testing of this site was conducted in the 1960s, but limited information exists on this work, and the fort's structural remains are now gone. My research examines a recently discovered artifact collection from this site and combines the new data with information from extant collections from Florida State University and the University of West Florida. The research aims first, to document the large body of materials from the site, then to provide new insights on the nature of this remote and short-lived colonial outpost and how this settlement compares in material culture and inferred social and economic behavior with other contemporaneous aboriginal and Spanish settlements, including Santa Maria de Galve in Pensacola, approximately 225 km (140 mi) to the west, and Mission San Luis de Talimali in Tallahassee, approximately 127 km (79 mi) to the east. My artifact analysis, coupled with description from historical documents, resulted in the determination that Fort San José was not simply an outpost but is actually very similar to Santa Maria de Galve and Fort San Luis at the Mission San Luis de Talimali in both function and the artifacts that were left behind. Fort San José was intended to be a strong Spanish presence in the Gulf Coast, as evidenced by the number of individuals living here, the interactions they had with other colonial powers, and the remarkable footprint they left in just four short years.

This research examines and compares the distributions of archaeological sites and materials in order to investigate native settlement patterns and resources use throughout 12,000 years of prehistory and protohistoric time within the Apalachicola/Lower Chattahoochee River valley of northwest Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used to map the distributions of sites from different time periods and to explore their relation to various environmental characteristics that are now available in digital format. I employ tools now available in GIS to examine several longstanding research questions and expand upon archaeological interpretations within this region, where the University of South Florida (USF) has an ongoing research program. The results of this work illustrate change through time and space as cultures begin to adapt to post-Pleistocene ecological change, develop food production and complex societies, and react to the appearance of European groups.

In 1742, the settlement of Augusta was established as an outpost of English royalization on Roatán Island, Honduras. This military camp housed a mix of English soldiers, English colonists, and local indigenous Miskitu peoples. While the settlement was occupied for only a brief span of seven years, the material record of the community provides insight into Miskitu-English interactions during the royalization process. Royalization encompassed strategies deployed by the English Crown to bring about loyalty to the state. In this dissertation, I discuss the concept of royalization from an agent-centered perspective to consider the intentions behind the occupants' usage of objects and spaces in everyday practice. This interdisciplinary research integrates documentary evidence with the results of four field seasons of archaeological investigations, which have unearthed mixed deposits of English and Miskitu material culture. I contend that such deposits indicate that Augusta's occupants were participants in the royalization process, but that these strategies were not fluid or enforced. The royalization of Augusta was complicated by a number of factors including the settlement's distance from the Crown, its local environment, and the diversity of its occupants. By considering the historical and archaeological evidence, I contend that elements of English lifestyles were integrated into Miskitu identity, and that this integration reveals some of the ways in which the process of royalization was adapted to the unique social and natural landscape of the western Caribbean.