Department of Archaeology

Two environmental samples from a Roman corn drying oven at Cold Harbour Farm, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, produced evidence for a range of charred plant remains, including cereal grains and chaff, weed seeds, and food plants, such as peas. The assemblage suggests the use of grain processing waste (chaff and weed seeds), as a fuel for the furnace.

This paper employs an approach based on understanding and interpreting the social practices embodied in architectural grammar. In the past, architectural grammar as described by Glassie,  and developed by Harris and Johnson,  has been seen as the static material residue of historical events,  and neglectful of the non-visual senses.  However, by extending the concept of grammar to include the phenomenological experiences of people who lived within specific architectural settings, we may reconfigure those repeated social practices that formed and transformed everyday life.  In so doing, we can begin to envisage how ethnically aware social actors drew from the palette of choices available in their habitus in constructing and developing their community relationships,  values and identities.  The case study of later medieval Córdoba, a society in continuous transition, is presented, in which the sensory and phenomenological understandings of ethnically aware people are considered as they engaged in their everyday practices in domestic and religious architectural settings.
http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2015/the-art-literature-and-material-culture-of-the-medieval-world/

Lenton, D. A. 2013: Structuring Ethnicity: Ethnic Identities and Diasporic Communities in the Architecture of Later Medieval Córdoba, Spain, 10th to 16th Centuries. London: British Library Ethos Ph.D Thesis Catalogue.

"This thesis provides the first detailed documentation of the standing architectural-archaeological remains of medieval Córdoba dating from the 10th to the 16th centuries. It establishes a comprehensive account of the range of building forms, the chronology of their development, and an analysis of their spatial arrangements, designed forms and materiality. It also develops a sophisticated archaeological approach to the study of ethnic community identities within colonial encounters by drawing upon and contributing to sociological and anthropological debates on ethnic expressions and diasporic lifestyles.
A new methodology is employed to avoid solely identifying ethnic groupings from data sets of ‘ethnic signifiers’. A contextual-grammar approach is developed to visualise the everyday practices of different ethnic groups. The methodology focuses on the people and procedures imperative to constructing and living in their buildings. These everyday practices are identified as the “buildways” of ethnic communities. Social and cultural connections are analysed together with family and kinship mechanisms fundamental to ethnic practices. It is posited that varied groups across the social spectrum were actively using technical, syntactic and semantic architectural grammar not just in their artistic expressions but also in their habitual community practices. Within Córdoba’s ethnic communities, architectural grammar was a vehicle for meaningful cultural and political dialogue. The creation and maintenance of an urban environment is evoked as a critical factor in the creation and maintenance of the city’s ethnic expressions. The argument is made that the communication of each community’s ethnic identity was not merely in the reproduction of traditional cultural practices but in their adaptation to local circumstances within what became hybridised building forms. As ethnic practices changed over generations, the continuous reuse of Córdoba’s civil, domestic and religious architecture emphasised the continual adaptation of Córdoba’s ethnic communities to their social surroundings."

http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.578255

This article addresses a fundamental problem encountered when interpreting past material culture as signifiers of ethnic identity: classifying cultural remains as ethnic styles produces static interpretations which do not recognise changes over time. An alternative methodological approach is proposed that examines the phenomenological aspects of past ethnic communities’ practices, termed buildways, which were embodied in the production and inhabitation of past built environments. Using the case study of medieval Córdoba’s religious architecture, it is argued that reconfiguring the buildways of architectural grammar is a route into interpreting the actions of ethnically aware people, structuring community attitudes and ethnic identities. Expressions of ethnic identities can be found in the adaptations and hybridisations of architectural settings that accommodated the requirements of ethnic practices. Critically, those ethnic practices changed over generations.

It is recommended that the site of Moonta and the Copper Triangle be considered for National Heritage listing under the criteria: A, C, E, F, and G. The place and the structures within its parameters exhibit outstanding heritage value to the nation because of:
a. the unparalleled contributions of the Copper Triangle’s miners, mining companies and mining communities to the course of Australia’s cultural history that established Australia in the industrial world economy;
c. the place’s potential to yield phenomenal amounts of archaeological and historical information that will contribute to a greater understanding of Australia’s 19th-century free settler communities and Australia’s early 20th-century cultural development;
e. the place’s importance in exhibiting particular aesthetic qualities of 19th-century Cornish mining settlements, architecture and landscapes;
f. the place’s importance in demonstrating the high degree of creative and technical achievement of the Cornish mine engineers, the innovative new ore extraction methods and smelting processes pioneered in Australia;
g. the place’s strong and special association with Cornish-Australian ethnic identity as the spiritual homeland with an unbroken tradition of celebrating cultural distinctiveness.

The loss of these places would significantly impoverish Australia’s National Heritage. Consequently, Moonta Mines & the Copper Triangle as defined within this report should be included within the National Heritage List.

This thesis provides the first detailed documentation of the standing architectural-archaeological remains of medieval Cordoba dating from the 10th to the 16th centuries. It establishes a comprehensive account of the range of building forms, the chronology of their development, and an analysis of their spatial arrangements, designed forms and materiality. It also develops a sophisticated archaeological approach to the study of ethnic community identities within colonial encounters by drawing upon and contributing to sociological and anthropological debates on ethnic expressions and diasporic lifestyles. A new methodology is employed to avoid solely identifying ethnic groupings from data sets of' ethnic signifiers' . A contextual-grammar approach is developed to visualise the everyday practices of different ethnic groups. The methodology focuses on the people and procedures imperative to constructing and living in their buildings. These everyday practices are identified as the "buildways" of ethnic communities. Social and cultural connections are analysed together with family and kinship mechanisms fundamental to ethnic practices. It is posited that varied groups across the social spectrum were actively using technical, syntactic and semantic architectural grammar not just in their artistic expressions but also in their habitual community practices. Within Cordoba's ethnic communities, architectural grammar was a vehicle for meaningful cultural and political dialogue. The creation and maintenance of an urban environment is evoked as a critical factor in the creation and maintenance of the city's ethnic expressions. The argument is made that the communication of each community's ethnic identity was not merely in the reproduction of traditional cultural practices but in their adaptation to local circumstances within what became hybridised building forms. As ethnic practices changed over generations, the continuous reuse of Cordoba's civil, domestic and religious architecture emphasised the continual adaptation of Cordoba's ethnic communities to their social surroundings.

This report comprises both a desktop historical study and an archaeological field survey assessment
of the above ground structures on the Blundell’s Cottage, Parkes, Canberra, ACT with particular
focus on the main house building. Its purpose is to summarise the current state of research and
assess the archaeological significance of the structure.
The evidence indicates that the land on which the cottage was built was utilised by the indigenous
Ngunnawal inhabitants prior to the building of the original cottage in the 1850s. The cottage was
part of the Duntroon Estate, which had been awarded to Robert Campbell by the Crown in 1825. The
first elements of the cottage were built in the 1850s as part of a series of cottages used by workers
on the estate. An attempt was made to replicate a Late Georgian-style workers’ cottage adapted to
the local materials that established and reflected the status of Campbell’s new head ploughman.
Nevertheless, the cottage occupied a low enough status for the internal rooms to remain
multifunctional. The cottage was occupied by three different families over an extended period of
time, most significantly by George Blundell who worked the plot as a smallholding farm. Blundell
made attempts to enhance the appearance of the cottage and succeeded in creating a complex
where domestic and social activities could be promoted at the front, whilst agricultural activities
were confined to the rear. Blundell’s Cottage is significant as it is one of the few surviving workers’
cottages from the Duntroon Estate and is currently maintained as an historical museum on the shore
of Lake Burley Griffin.

Blundell's Cottage is one of the few surviving dwellings from the early European settlement in the Australian Capital Territory. It was built as part of Robert Campbell's Duntroon Estate and was an attempt to replicate a late Georgian-style workers cottage. First constructed in the 1850s, it established the status of Campbell's head ploughman above the other agricultural workers on the estate. Nevertheless, the cottage's rooms remained multifunctional. When the Blundell family occupied the cottage later in the 19th century, they changed the appearance of the cottage, creating a complex where social hospitality could be promoted at the front with agricultural activities continuing at the rear. Successive occupants perpetuated this appearance of a comfortable, gentrified smallholding. Recent survey of the stratigraphy has analysed and interpreted the materials, craftwork and spaces to provide new insights into the social archaeology of an important pastoral complex that pre-dated the establishment of the nation's capital.