No description available.

This study examines the archaeological reflections of group identity and socio-economic networks in the region of Essex and London in the Anglo-Saxon period, between c.400 and 1066. Given its location in the south-east of England, Essex was a key zone of socio-political interaction during the early medieval period. This doctoral research has brought together the stray and excavated archaeological material from the region for the first time. The thesis presented here is centred on diachronic, quantified distributional analyses of three key material culture classes: dress accessories, pottery, and coinage. The discussion synthesises the results of these analyses, examining the observed patterns within their broader archaeological context. The thesis reveals the emergence of a hybrid dress style in the 5th and 6th centuries. This appears to have been actively created in Essex to reflect a diverse cultural inheritance, but not a specific ethnic identity. However, from the mid-7th century these styles were rejected in favour of dynamic fashions, reflecting the maritime focus of the region, and especially links with the Merovingian/Carolingian Continent. From the later 9th century, Scandinavian dress and cultural practice are also apparent, particularly in north Essex This Continental orientation reflects the emergence and transformation of the North Sea network. The engagement of Essex communities with this network is studied in detail in this thesis. The coinage and pottery analyses reveal the emergence of several exchange hubs along the North Sea coast, as well as a generalized engagement with long-distance exchange among coastal communities. This system was disrupted, but not destroyed, by the Vikings, who linked Essex with wider Scandinavian networks. However, the long-term pattern shows the decline of coastal sites in favour of urban centres from the later 9th century.

This thesis provides the first sustained study of the material culture of dining among the gentry and ‘middling sort’ in early modern England. It focuses on the religious and ritual significance of the shared dining experience, interrogating the role objects played in engendering domestic commensality. The project establishes that through their material properties and ritualized uses, objects such as salt-cellars, eating utensils and banqueting trenchers, were essential instruments in the construction and communication of personal and social identities. I argue that developments in the material paraphernalia of dining functioned to create a sense of continuity and community during this period of profound religious and social change. Chapter One applies the anthropological theory of ‘distributed personhood’ to salt-cellars, offering new insights into why salts were considered particularly effective objects for conveying identity. Chapter Two draws connections between eating utensils and significant moments in the life cycle and argues that utensils could have strong ‘personal’ associations, which commemorated essential rites of passage and functioned as perpetual reminders of familial ties. Chapter Three investigates banqueting trenchers as tools for sociability and collective spiritual contemplation and examines how their visual and material qualities required a specific ‘performance’ from diners. As a whole, the thesis provides a framework for interpreting a neglected body of historical artefacts and it contributes new knowledge about how specific types of crafted objects communicated identity within the context of ritualized social activities.

This thesis is about popular rejoicing and public ritual in Norwich and Coventry from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the Reform of the Municipal Corporations in 1835. It is distinctive in at least two ways; first in its attention to the local context, and second in its examination of public festivity as a separate, but not an isolated, cultural form. Previous studies of the subject have generally looked at rejoicing and ritual as but one strand of a larger, fairly amorphous, popular culture and done so on a national or even a continental level. The study is divided into three parts. The first is largely descriptive; an account of the festive events, whether on the annual holiday calendar or not, which took place in Norwich and Coventry at or about 1750. This not only sets the scene for the analysis which follows, it also indicates the extent to which rejoicing and ritual was subject to social, political and economic change. That this was so will become clear in the second part of this study which identifies the three major developments to affect the conduct of and attitudes to public festivity at Norwich and Coventry in this period; commercialisation, political change and the divergence of polite and plebeian cultures. The extent to which the impact of these developments varied between the two cities is also explored in this section, as it is in part three of the thesis which is made of two case studies, one of the Norwich Guild and the other of the Coventry Show Fair. The very different form and fortune of these two events will be seen to confirm the importance of studying rejoicing and ritual in relation to the most immediate context in which it was performed.

Based on the author's long term fieldwork from 2005 to 2008 in Qiaoxiang, a rural Hakka community in Xingning County, Guangdong Province, Southeastern China, this dissertation examines how the revival of tradition in contemporary China can be understood through the dynamic interaction and negotiation among state, villagers and local elites. This ethnography describes the history and reality of tumultuous social change in the community, especially in Maoist and post-Maoist times, and shows how the villagers living in weilongwu, a characteristic lineage or multi-family compound of the Hakka heartland, have managed to mobilize political, social and cultural resources to deal with outside forces in contemporary China. I analyze how the Maoist state's attempts to break down kinship ties failed and how kinship's importance has been maintained and strengthened in both collective and post-collective periods. This dissertation focuses on how the participation and collaboration of ordinary villagers and village elites facilitates a vigorous revival of tradition, including the establishment of organizations at the level of lineage and community, the reediting of genealogies, the rebuilding and renovation of ancestral halls, and most importantly, the reactivation of kinship rituals. I demonstrate how the active engagement and complicated entanglement of socialist state, overseas power and other contemporary forces has shaped and reshaped the social and cultural landscape of the local community. I argue that the revival of tradition is by no means a remnant of the past or a total invention; instead, traditions are forming within the fluctuating context of Late Imperial legacy, state imposition and uncertain modernity. I also argue that the ordinary villagers are not passive subjects of domination by state power or other forces; instead, they are sophisticated activists possessing the strategic competence and wisdom to deal with the circumstances in which they live. In this sense, tradition should be taken as the practice of ordinary people in an ongoing process of inventing and becoming.

The taste for fish in England and the British Isles as a whole has fluctuated on several occasions and understanding the reasons behind these changes is vital, especially in light of the great importance fish held in later medieval diet and society. The beginnings of marine fishing have usually been thought to lie in the late Anglo-Saxon period and are believed to lie with economic changes. Indeed, most studies of fish in archaeology have centred around economic approaches. However it is extremely unlikely for economics to have been the sole reason. This thesis will attempt to fill in the gap currently extant in early medieval fish studies by taking a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the character of fishing and fish consumption in Anglo-Saxon England. Zooarchaeological data alongside isotope evidence, artefactual, structural and textual will be considered together to explore not just economic but also social factors, in effect, exploring the dynamics of fishing and fish consumption. This multidisciplinary approach will also hopefully highlight the fact that fish cannot just be studied in isolation; to gain a full understanding of the implications freshwater and marine fishing will have on communities and society as a whole all aspects of fishing must be considered.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX84585. / Consultation copy in 3 volumes.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-156).

‘Mourning Identities: Hillsborough, Diana and the Production of Meaning’ explores the meaning-making processes which contributed to the widespread public mourning that followed the Hillsborough stadium disaster of 1989 and the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It does so by the textual analysis of a sample of the public condolence books signed following these events and by drawing upon autobiographical stories related to each of them produced using the method known as ‘memory work’. Drawing upon a variety of theoretical frameworks, including psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and Bakhtinian influenced dialogics, it suggests that a range of social identities were ‘hailed’ and discursively mobilised in the public mourning events that followed the Hillsborough disaster and the death of Princess Diana. It further suggests that identification is an indispensable and precursory aspect of public mourning, which is summoned and given shape by epistolary and narrative practices of the self. Public mourning of the sort considered here is theorised along two principal lines: the iconic and the totemic. The former, it is argued, can be seen to relate to the largely feminine global structures of feeling through which the public mourning for Princess Diana were articulated, whilst the latter can be seen to relate to the largely masculine local structures of feeling through which the public mourning following the Hillsborough disaster were configured. In turn, it suggests that aspects of resistance to the public mourning following each of the events considered as case studies here can in themselves be considered as aspects of mourning, albeit for something other than the obvious referents of loss during these events. It further points to the situated social identity of the researcher as both instrumental not only to the motivation for, but to the outcomes of social research.

Issued also as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University. / Bibliography: p. [211]-218.