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 My artifact analysis, coupled with description from historical documents, resulted in the determination that Fort San José was not simply an outpost but is actually very similar to Santa Maria de Galve and Fort San Luis at the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.

From excavations of burial complexes of the Early Bronze Age Cyclades (c. 3000-2200 BC) we know that obsidian was just as important and as widely consumed in burial contexts as it was in contemporaneous household contexts; Early Bronze Age Cycladic tomb assemblages are dominated by beautiful obsidian blades produced through a unique knapping technique reserved for burial contexts (Carter 2007; Dickinson 1994). The lack of sourcing studies in the area is an unfortunate pitfall in Aegean archaeology, as understanding patterns of source selection provides us with precious insight into the complex social structures and behaviors that characterized these ancient communities. The research detailed in this thesis set out to accomplish these goals for obsidian assemblages from 11 Early Cycladic cemeteries. Structurally, these assemblages are dominated by pressure-flaked blades manufactured specifically for funerary consumption, but also include a small number of blade cores and some pieces of flaking debris. Contextually, the composition of the assemblages reflects the social significance of body modification amongst these islanders, with the blades themselves likely used for depilation, scarification, and tattooing, and the cores reemployed as pestles in the grinding of pigments, as evidenced by pigment residues located on the artifacts (Carter 1998). Two additional assemblages from settlements on Crete were analyzed, one from a Late Neolithic cave site and another from a Late Minoan settlement. These assemblages served both to provide additional regional and temporal context for the Early Cycladic findings and to advance obsidian sourcing efforts in the Aegean as a whole. In order to characterize the chemical profiles of these artifacts for sourcing purposes, this study employed portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a non-destructive archaeometric method which allows for the time- and cost-effective mass-sampling of objects on-site. The results display clearly that the Early Cycladic artifacts are overwhelmingly made from Melian obsidian, and approximately 88% derive from the Sta Nychia source. How far-reaching this procurement bias is throughout the Early Bronze Age Aegean is currently difficult to say, though contemporary data from previous studies, as well as the results obtained from the two Cretan assemblages in this study, seem to show a similar pattern. Future research integrating regional traditions of obsidian source selection with previously defined regional distinctions in pressure-blade technology is necessary in order to begin to map communities of practice across the broader Aegean.

The work comprises a critical commentary and a portfolio of ten published major texts by the author, presented in whole or part. It represents a set of related themes and approaches to the subject of culture, technology and being. The portfolio critiques and develops theories of technology in response to significant examples within cultural contexts, in order to address and interrogate contradictions and assumptions pertaining to technologically led readings of images, objects and environments. The publications range from critical approaches to major theorists of technology and culture, including Baudrillard, McLuhan and Heidegger; artists who have utilised technology within performative contexts (Warhol, Duchamp, Gorgerous): and phenomenological studies of network-based culture. The commentary focuses on dominant theoretical concepts in order to connect the texts. These include Baudrillard's principle of 'reversibility', McLuhan's reading of disembodiment, Heidegger's 'standing reserve' and Jarry's 'pataphysics'. The work concludes with a critical obituary of Jean Baudrillard, and shows how the portfolio of publications (1999-2011) has had an impact within academe and for a more general readership, and how it informs current research and future publications.

This thesis is a case study of the relationship between a nineteenth-century French landscape painter, Théodore Rousseau, and his patrons and public. My aim is to reconstruct the context in which Rousseau's work was created, thereby inferring what the artist intended for his painting and how his collectors and public approached the style of his work. The thesis examines the nature of the dynamic between Rousseau and his consumers and the extent to which the artist's style may, or may not, be affected by the taste of his audience. In Part I, I examine Rousseau's involvement with the members of his circle including those who supported him during his years of absence from the Salon, the critic, Théophile Thoré, the industrialist, Frédéric Hartmannn and the civil servant, Alfred Sensier. This provides a framework for discussion of a number of ideas which preoccupied both the artist and his patrons including the level of finish in his work, the importance of pantheism, responses to commercial deforestation and the continuing resonances of ancient Greek culture. In Part II, I look at the problem of Rousseau's response to the expansion of the public sphere for art in the nineteenth-century. I approach this by locating Rousseau within the institutional structures of the art world which acted as intermediary between the painter and a wider public. These include the public exhibition, the rôle of the reproduction in the dissemination of his imagery, the importance of one-man public auctions and the position of the dealer as an outlet for the sale of his work. In reconstructing the dynamic between Rousseau and his patrons and public, I have relied above all on primary sources. These have included the often unpublished correspondence of the artist and his collectors, contemporary Salon criticism and sale catalogues, auctioneers' records and the stock-books of the Durand-Ruel firm of dealers, as well as a close formal analysis of Rousseau's paintings themselves.

This thesis describes and interprets furniture produced in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) between c. 1800 and 1900 as part of a cultural 'dialogue' of everyday objects between Europe and Asia. By synthesizing the research methods of furniture history and material culture, the present work examines Ceylonese furniture within the context of the society in which it was produced and used. For the first time, the range of furniture produced on the island during the nineteenth century is categorized and defining characteristics of such furniture are outlined. In addition, and again for the first time, consumption of furniture in Ceylon during this period is examined and the place of these artefacts within the production of Western cultural practices is explained. Specifically, this thesis also contributes to an understanding of the history of Ceylon by interpreting the acquisition and use of western-style furniture by the indigenous social elite as part of the production of anglicized life-styles on the island. The present work contributes to debates centred on colonialism and culture by historicizing and localizing the furniture of the island. Such furniture, it is argued, in addition to its use value, reproduced European refinement and civility in the domestic interiors of Ceylon; in this way furniture, despite its quotidian nature, is taken to be expressive and constitutive of the colonial relationship between the British and Ceylonese. Through analysis of archival data, examination of the furniture itself and interpretation of the communicative capacities of these artefacts, explanation of the empirical and symbolic is combined in a new understanding of a substantial, but overlooked, part of the object-world of nineteenth century Ceylon. Through the process of developing and using a new conceptual framework for the interpretation of colonial furniture produced in Asia, a contribution is made to the study of furniture history and, more specifically, items of furniture from Ceylon are interpreted as materializations of human behaviour and constitutive elements in the production of culture.

This project documents and analyzes a substantial private collection of artifacts from archaeological sites around Choctawhatchee Bay, northwest Florida. The goals are to determine what the materials can contribute to the archaeological record, how they enhance our knowledge of the people who lived there over the past 2000 years, and how this information can be used to expand or contradict models of prehistoric lifeways in this region. This is done by comparing artifact assemblages, looking at site distribution patterns, and using pXRF trace-element analysis to compare Late Archaic clay objects with those from elsewhere along the Gulf. Examination of the assemblage and the results of the pXRF trace-element analysis show that both materials and finished products were imported into this region from as far away as Poverty Point, Louisiana, especially during Late Archaic times. In addition to the movement of artifacts, site distribution patterns around Choctawhatchee Bay show that people also moved into and away from the area during periods of low and high sea levels.

This work looks at the artistic production of the Porfiriato (1876-1910) with particular attention to the representation of prehispanic cultures and their incorporation into an official historiography. Whilst highlighting the growing popularity of prehispanic and conquest themes, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the research centres on the study of what may be described as a 'neo-prehispanic' genre in order to explore issues of identity and nationalism in the arts. The use of academic styles for the artistic interpretation of prehispanic material coincides with an already growing concern to redefine prehispanic cultures as 'classical' civilisations. The neo-prehispanic as a style may therefore be understood as a reappropriation of the past via western canons and art schools, and the construction of a neo-prehispanic imagery as a means of 'cleansing' the barbaric. The analysis concentrates on the function of neo-prehispanic representations by looking at the reception of these images in relation to the aesthetic ideas operating at the time, and their production within the institutional framework of the Academy of San Cartos. It also looks at State-funded projects in order to highlight the cultural politics of the Porfiriato which sought to celebrate the cultural legacies of prehispanic Mexico. The study will hence seek to explore the particularities of a national style, the function of art in the Porfiriato, and the relationship between artistic production and the construction of a national identity. All of this will be looked at in relation to history painting, monuments and architecture. The main objectives of the research aim to be both practical (a catalogue of material 'Appendix B'), and interpretative. The correct cataloguing and identification of this material together with an analysis of their function within the context of Porfirian society will provide invaluable material for more research, and will constitute the original contribution of my PhD.

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