This is an occasional update from Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology members about their research projects, field work and latest activities. If you would like to see your work featured, send an email to website@spma.org.uk
Dr Katerina Velentza (University of Hull)
The Community Waterscapes project is unravelling the city of Hull’s (UK) rich heritage of living with water. We generate a dialogue around the intricate relationship between water, community, and material culture within the city, documenting how these elements have collectively shaped people’s understanding of watery environments over time.
Stories shared by the community help us identify tangible and intangible heritage that is currently lost, unknown, under-represented or downgraded. They create a record of the changing cultural landscape in Hull.
Through this bottom-up heritage research approach, Community Waterscapes documents lived experiences, local knowledge, and environmental understandings related to life in a dynamic estuarine city. FInd out more from the project website.
Dr Sarah Inskip (University of Leicester)
The Tobacco, Health and History Project explores the impact of tobacco consumption on population health in England and the Netherlands from 1600-1900AD. It uses interdisciplinary analysis of archaeological skeletal remains. To detect tobacco use, the team developed a novel biomolecular approach (metabolomics) to look for molecules associated with tobacco use in bone.
This has revealed high tobacco consumption rates by women. The team found that oral disease and respiratory disease risk was significantly increased by tobacco use. In addition, intersectional health impacts based on biological sex, and rural or urban industrialised living conditions have also been identified. Read more on the project website.
Alessandro Camiz (Università degli Studi “Gabriele d’Annunzio” – Pescara)
Our council member Dr Alessandro Camiz has recently been involved in organising an international workshop on Abruzzo’s (Italy) historical heritage. Castel di Sangro: technologies and design was held 20-27 July at Museo Civico Aufidenate in Castel Di Sangro.
An opening conference illustrated the most recent research on the historical heritage of Abruzzo and Castel di Sangro. During the workshop 30 students from Italy, Spain, Greece and Türkiye were led by highly qualified tutors in digital survey, laser survey, documentation and design.
Lessons covered the operational aspects of the research during the workshop. The workshop results have been presented publicly and will be published. The image (above) is a laser scan of the courtyard. Watch a TV presentation about the workshop on YouTube. View a 3D model of a wooden sculpted head:
Maddalena, Head, XIX century by g.verdiani_DIDA on Sketchfab
David Caldwell (Independent scholar)
Our member Dr David Caldwell has recently co-authored a book with Victoria Oleksy and Bess Rhodes. The Battle of Pinkie, 1547: The Last Battle Between the Independent Kingdoms of Scotland and England was published by Oxbow in 2023. Using contemporary records and archaeological evidence, they offer new considerations for this well-documented battle.
David’s publication on nearly a decade of archaeology in Finlaggan will be published in 2025. The Archaeology of Finlaggan, Islay: Excavations at the Centre of the Lordship of the Isles, 1989-1998 will include results of the excavation and survey field work of post-medieval settlements and fortifications as well as lead mines. It is published by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Susana Pacheco (CFE-HTC, Nova University of Lisbon FCT)
As part of my PhD project “The Industrial HER. An archaeological vision of women’s lives and stories through photography”, this summer, I’m developing a somewhat different type of fieldwork. Perhaps it is better to call it laboratory work, or is it?
The main goal of this project is to understand the role played by women in the Portuguese industry, focusing essentially on the textiles and canning sectors. Recognising the problems they faced, both directly as members of a community in which they were not always well-accepted or sometimes not even treated as human beings, or indirectly as they were erased from documents, historiography and archaeological records. To fulfil this goal, a different type of materiality was chosen – photographs.
For that reason, photographic objects are being archaeologically analysed, just like one archaeologist would do with ceramics. Following a new methodology, these artefacts are being analysed in every possible way. Their materiality is being considered. Their formats, signs of use, marks of the passage of time, dimensions, biographies, and every aspect that one would consider for a piece of ceramics and beyond.
At the same time, their decoration (the image itself) is also being analysed, or “excavated”. In the words of Ralph Mills: “Objects within the same stratified deposit, physically and temporally, form an assemblage. While this might be within a three-dimensional soil layer, it can also be a ‘deposit’ depicted in the two-dimensional stratigraphy of a painting or photograph that captures assemblages frozen together in time. It is therefore possible to ‘excavate’ an image in an archaeological sense” (2017: 116). So, one could say that a photograph is an archaeological context. Therefore, it can be excavated just like any type of ruin.
In this sense, the fieldwork being developed for the past few months (and that will be carried out during the next ones as well) consists of an archaeological analysis (and “excavation”) of this unconventional type of post-medieval materiality. Their study allows us to learn so much about the historical subjects (women) that are the main focus of this project. Like almost no other materiality, they enable us to see their facial expressions. An interpretation of their emotions, recognising their possible fears and understanding their relations with the people and objects surrounding them in their daily lives are just some of the possibilities they offer archaeologists.
This fieldwork (or laboratory work) brings immense new perspectives on the lives of these agents who are often undervalued by Portuguese archaeology.