The Archaeology of the British
Mathew Johnson
This symposium seeks to explore one example of a cultural identity as it is deployed in the colonial contexts: the ‘British’. Like many such cultural identities, the ‘British’ were created and re-created at home at the same time as British identities were created and recreated abroad. This session starts with the consideration of ‘British’ identity in the British Isles themselves, critically examining the interplay of national and regional identities and the creation of a ‘British myth’ from the constituent identities of England, Scotland and Wales. This symposium continues by examining the outward expansion of British colonies and the creation of Empire.
Material culture was central to the creation of all these identities, from the interplay between polite and vernacular style in the 17th century to the creation and labelling of commodities in the 19th. Object and architectural spaces defined and redefined what it meant to be British, both for the colonial oppressor and for the colonised.
This symposium does not propose one theoretical viewpoint from which to examine the archaeology of the British; rather it seeks to bring together scholars not just from different geographical areas but from different theoretical traditions.
papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Bragdon Native Americans in an English world: Material Culture and Indian Identity in Colonial Southern New England
Brown Re-thinking the concept of “Georgianization”: Patterns in the Material life of early Bermuda and Virginia
Delle Spatial conflict, collusion and resistance in late 16th century Ireland
Graves Civic ritual in Newcastle and North sea relations in the 17th century
Green Durham Houses: Social relations and regionality in north east England, c.1600-1750
Johnson In the tracks of the Thunderer: Shakespeare, Britishness and Material culture.
Klingelhofer The architecture of Empire: Elizabethan country houses in Ireland
Lawrence Becoming Australian: Material life in the Bush, 1800-1900
Leech The Garden House-Historical context and merchant culture in the early modern city
Merrington Staging History, Inventing Heritage: The “New Pageantry” and British Imperial Identity, 1905-1935
Norman Archaeological evidence of colonial environmental adaptation. The Elueuthera settlement in the Bahamas