No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Applying the concepts of mimesis and "third space" to Virginia's early colonial settlements, this study presents a comparative examination of documentary, pictorial, cartographic, and material evidence surrounding City Point's Site 44PG102 and contemporary James River plantations. By considering archaeological site data that are possibly contemporaneous, but previously have been segregated by archaeologists into "prehistoric" (Native Virginian) and "historic" (European) categories, I investigate the evidence for interethnic interactions as well as the social conventions surrounding 17th-century object and landscape use. This thesis argues that people of European, West Central African, West African, and Algonquian-speaking Native Virginian backgrounds endowed shared objects, buildings, and places with different values and social functions, impairing the ability of colonial material culture to convey clear and consistent messages of status and intention across ethnic boundaries. I propose that mimetic landscapes and material culture with precolonial histories of use as signals of prestige became central to socially competent interethnic communication in colonial contexts.

This paper examines the content of eighteenth-century American and British portraits within the ideologically-expanding context of eighteenth-century British identity. It explores the ways in which Britons and Americans negotiated who they were and, consequently, their claims on society, in the era preceding and including the American Revolution. It does so for three reasons: to advance a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of American portraiture; to motivate further dialogue on the relationship between American and British portraits; and to invoke the potential for American portraits as documentary evidence of social history.;Through historical examination of philosophical influences informing the development of British narratives, Part One considers the contexts within which portraits were produced and the implications of those contexts for the interpretation and presentation of identity. Against this ideological backdrop, Part Two deconstructs the content of selected portraits by John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Ralph Earl, William Hogarth, Allan Ramsay, Sir Joshua Reynolds and others in order to come to terms with contemporary perceptions of reality and identity vis-a-vis the dominant narrative.;Broadly speaking, American Revolutionary portraits suggest a standard for identity based on principles drawn from conflicting narratives. This standard intimates an effort to conflate the principal ideals of a dominant neo-Country narrative---those of natural progress, potentiality and virtue, for example---with Liberal and Reformed notions of autonomy, self-determination and industry that denied the doctrines of hierarchy, fixity and birth upon which the traditional ideals were said to depend. The results signaled a gap between British ideology and colonial experience visually manifest as conflicting perceptions of reality. Implicated in these conflicting perceptions was an alternative meaning of life whose suppression may have led, in the end, to revolution.

This dissertation will examine the James River stoneware tradition, which encompasses parts of Henrico, Dinwiddie, Prince George, and Charles City Counties, south and east of the Falls of the James at Richmond, Virginia. This area has one of the richest histories in American ceramics. The essential elements of stoneware production will be examined. This dissertation will provide the only comprehensive overview of this regional industry with in depth descriptions of the relevant potteries, potting families and their environment. Detailed description of ceramic forms and decorations specific to individual potters will be provided. The archaeological research done at the potting sites, much of it participated in by the author will be presented. This will allow future attribution and dating of James River stoneware.;Landscapes of the 19th century James River stoneware industry will be explored and the nature of the potters' craft and community will be analyzed within the Meshwork as used by Tim Ingold. Through applications of both structural and semiotic approaches the production, relationships, and landscapes of the potteries will be organized and problematized. An effort will be made to provide as deep and broad a context as possible including social, political, and economic conditions. Archaeological, historical, and oral data will be used to understand the potters' habitus and the roles of artisans, their neighbors, landscapes and artifacts in actively creating that world.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.