Telling Time for Archaeologists

Miller, George L.; Samford, Patricia; Shlasko, Ellen; Madsen, Andrew D.

doi:10.22191/neha/vol29/iss1/2

Cited by 50 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Improved whiteware (also known as ironstone, white granite, and stone china) is a semivitreous ware introduced in the 1840s, along with a blue-tinted variant introduced in the 1850s. Porcelaneous whitewares, also sometimes classified as “semiporcelain,” are visually identifiable by the dense, glossy body and were commonly produced from the 1870s onward (Brown 1982; Majewski and O'Brien 1987; Miller 1991; Miller et al 2000).…”

Section: Analysis Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Archaeology of Serious Games: Play and Pragmatism in Victorian-Era Dining

Voss

2018

Am. Antiq.

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This study expands on Ortner's practice-based theory of “serious games” by interpreting artifacts through a continuum of intention: pragmatism and play. Decisions and actions are defined as pragmatic according to their desired outcome, while play, in contrast, is an attitude or disposition toward the action itself. Both pragmatism and play are examined in this study of dining-related material culture (ceramic tablewares) from a nineteenth-century Chinatown. The research reveals that Chinatown residents varied considerably in their approach to dining, some using the full complement of British- and American-produced earthenwares associated with Victorian-era genteel dining, whereas others primarily used porcelain vessels congruent with dining conventions in southern China. Other households blended the two types of ceramics, typically using Chinese porcelain vessels for individual table settings and British- and American-produced earthenwares for serving vessels. Chinese porcelains were typically purchased in matched sets; in contrast, British and American earthenwares were acquired piece by piece, contributing aesthetic variety to Chinatown table settings. Together, these findings indicate that most Chinatown households were establishing their own “house rules” that redefined dining through new practices. The continuum of intention represented by pragmatism and play affords an integrated methodology for bridging functional/economic and cultural/symbolic interpretive frameworks in archaeology.

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Section: Analysis Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1800–1835), and nonimpressed feather-edge (ca. 1865–1895; Miller et al 2000:12–13). Sponge-decorated vessels are all blue, as is the stenciled vessel; these designs were typically introduced in the 1840s (Majewski and O'Brien 1987:161–163).…”

Section: Playing With Ceramics: Aesthetic Eclecticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Archaeology of Serious Games: Play and Pragmatism in Victorian-Era Dining

Voss

2018

Am. Antiq.

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“…3). Some of the ceramics recovered from this stratum included Staffordshire white salt-glaze stoneware and North Midlands slipdecorated, trailed, and combed wares, varieties more typical of the mid-eighteenth century than the date suggested by the 1805 whiteware tpq (Miller 2000). Fig.…”

Section: Analytical Scalementioning

confidence: 96%

Scales of Analysis, Scales of Value: Archaeology at Bush Hill House, Barbados

Agbe-Davies

2008

Int J Histor Archaeol

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The excavations at Bush Hill House were sponsored because of its association with a notable historical figure, yet the archaeologists were more interested in what we saw as the "bigger" picture: colonialism; slavery; the Atlantic World. This paper addresses both the micro scale-individual deposits and individual people-and the macro scale-placing this site within the larger world of the British Atlantic of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Not surprisingly, both scales, when considered explicitly, offer insights into past social worlds and archaeologists' means of discovering them.

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“…However, while Australian colonial sites dating to the mid-19 th century onwards often contain ubiquitous cultural material, earlier archaeological deposits often lack such debris, and developing and/or refining a reliable chronology can be problematic. Even where present, typological chronologies of artefacts are governed by the unreliability of median dating -the 'lag effect' of the ongoing use of material goods and the reliance on the terminus post quem of the latest-made artefact within a stratigraphic layer (Adams, 2003;Miller et al, 2000); and which the ongoing use of similar technologies through the 18 th and 19 th Centuries strongly influences any developed chronology. More broadly, there is also a general misconception, or perhaps fairer to say a lack of knowledge, in the archaeological community that OSL techniques can be applied to the last few hundred years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The first successful application of Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating to a colonial era (<0.25 ka) archaeological site in Australia

Williams

Toms

Marcus³

et al. 2019

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

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While exploration of Australian post-colonial (≤0.25 ka) OSL dating is well established in a range of natural sedimentary contexts (e.g. fluvial, aeolian, coastal), to date there have been no successful examples of the technique applied to archaeological sediments of this era. Here we present the results of a multi-phase compliance-based archaeological excavations of a new bridge crossing the Hawkesbury-Nepean River (northwest Sydney). These works identified a Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) aeolian deposit through which a colonial era drainage system had been excavated. Historical documents reveal the construction of the system occurred between 1814 and 1816 CE. An opportunistic range-finding Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) sample was obtained from anthropogenic trench backfillcomposed of reworked LGM depositsimmediately above the drainage system. Minimum and Finite Mixture age models of single grain quartz OSL provided a date of 1826 CE (1806-1846 CE), in close agreement with the documented age of construction. These findings provide the first evidence of a colonial structure reliably dated using OSL, and demonstrate the feasibility of wider deployment of OSL dating to other archaeological sites of the recent era (≤0.25 ka). We propose that such environments associated with large volumes of sand-rich backfill, in particular, likely heighten OSL dating success. We propose that well-documented historical archaeological sites in Australia also have the potential to provide a robust testing ground for further evaluating the accuracy of OSL dating in a range of young archaeological sedimentary contexts, potentially to sub-decadal levels.

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Telling Time for Archaeologists

Abstract: This essay presents an accumulation of data on the dates for common types of artifacts found on archaeo

Cited by 50 publications

References 3 publications

The Archaeology of Serious Games: Play and Pragmatism in Victorian-Era Dining

The Archaeology of Serious Games: Play and Pragmatism in Victorian-Era Dining

Scales of Analysis, Scales of Value: Archaeology at Bush Hill House, Barbados

The first successful application of Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating to a colonial era (<0.25 ka) archaeological site in Australia

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Telling Time for Archaeologists

Abstract: This essay presents an accumulation of data on the dates for common types of artifacts found on archaeo

Cited by 50 publications

References 3 publications

The Archaeology of Serious Games: Play and Pragmatism in Victorian-Era Dining

The Archaeology of Serious Games: Play and Pragmatism in Victorian-Era Dining

Scales of Analysis, Scales of Value: Archaeology at Bush Hill House, Barbados

The first successful application of Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating to a colonial era (<0.25 ka) archaeological site in Australia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

The first successful application of Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating to a colonial era (<0.25 ka) archaeological site in Australia