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One British Thing: A History of Embodiment: Ann Purvis, ca.1793–1849

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2020

Abstract

Taking a material culture approach to the body poses challenges to our research practices and approaches to studying past experience. This piece considers what can be learned from using human remains in the study of the British past, arguing that integrating the material body into our methods aligns well with historical emphasis on the constructed nature of the body.

Type
Original Manuscript
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2020

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References

1 Raynor, C., McCarthy, R. and Clough, S., Coronation Street, South Shields, Tyne and Wear. Archaeological Excavation and Osteological Analysis Report (Lancaster, 2011), 87Google Scholar; quoted in Diana Swales, “The Material Body: Information on Potential Case Study Sites, Report 2,” unpublished report for The Material Body: An Interdisciplinary Study Using History and Archaeology, British Academy SG151375, 2017, 11.

2 “Deaths,” Newcastle Courant, Friday, 19 October, 1849, 4; Durham Diocese Bishop's Transcripts South Shields St. Hilda, DDR/EA/PBT/2/227, Durham University, in “England, Durham Diocese Bishop's Transcripts, 1639–1919,” FamilySearch, http://FamilySearch.org, accessed 10 July 2019.

3 The following discussion is based on Swales, “Material Body,” 20, and Vanessa Campanacho, “Osteobiographical Report: Identified Skeletal Remains,” unpublished report for The Material Body, 1–3.

4 Hubert, Jane and Fforde, Cressida, “Introduction: The Reburial Issue in the Twenty-First Century,” in The Dead and Their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice, ed. Fforde, Cressida, Hubert, Jane, and Turnbull, Paul, rev. ed. (New York, 2004), 3, 14Google Scholar. For more on UK debates, see also Cressida Fforde, Jane Hubert, and Paul Turnbull, “Preface to the Paperback Edition,” in Fforde, Hubert, and Turnbull, Dead and Their Possessions, xiv–xvi; Moira Simpson, “The Plundered Past: Britain's Challenge for the Future,” in Fforde, Hubert, and Turnbull, Dead and Their Possessions, 199–217.

5 Sofaer, Joanna, “Bioarchaeological Approaches to the Gendered Body,” in A Companion to Gender Prehistory, ed. Bolger, Diane (Chichester, 2013), 226–43Google Scholar.

6 Larsen, Clark Spencer, Skeletons in Our Closet: Revealing Our Past through Bioarchaeology (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar.

7 Sofaer, Joanna, “Bodies and Encounters: Seeing Invisible Children in Archaeology,” in The Archaeology of Childhood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on an Archaeological Enigma, ed. Coskunsu, Güner (New York, 2015), 7389, at 77Google Scholar; see also Sutton, John and Keene, Nicholas, “Cognitive History and Material Culture,” in The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Richardson, Catherine, Hamling, Tara, and Gaimster, David (London, 2017), 4658Google Scholar; Coward, Fiona and Gamble, Clive, “Big Brains, Small Worlds: Material Culture and the Evolution of the Mind,” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 363, no. 1499 (2008): 1969–79CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

8 Scott, Joan W., “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry, 17, no. 4 (1991): 773–79, at 779CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Hannah Wallace, “Ann Purvis (1793?–1849),” unpublished report for The Material Body; Karen Harvey, “The Material Body: History, Archaeology and Biography,” unpublished paper.