The Familiar Past surveys material culture from 1500 to the present day. Fourteen case studies, grouped under related topics, include discussion of issues such as:
* the origins of modernity in urban contexts
* the historical anthropology of food
* the social and spatial construction of country houses
* the social history of a workhouse site
* changes in memorial forms and inscriptions
* the archaeological treatment of gardens.
The Familiar Past has been structured as a teaching text and will be useful to students of history and archaeology.

This book provides an historical archaeology of death, burial and bereavement from the Reformation to the present.

This book provides an historical archaeology of death, burial and bereavement from the Reformation to the present.

In this innovative 2007 study, Sarah Tarlow shows how the archaeology of this period manifests a widespread and cross-cutting ethic of improvement. Theoretically informed and drawn from primary and secondary sources in a range of disciplines, the author considers agriculture and the rural environment, towns, and buildings such as working-class housing and institutions of reform. From bleach baths to window glass, rubbish pits to tea wares, the material culture of the period reflects a particular set of values and aspirations. Tarlow examines the philosophical and historical background to the...

This book is based on the Thinking through the Body workshop held at the University of Wales, Lampeter, in June 1998. We would like to thank the University of Wales, Lampeter, and in particular the Department of Archaeology for financial and other support; the student volunteers for their help in organizing the conference; and the participants for co-operating in preparing their papers for pre-circulation. An exhibition of works by contemporary artists dealing with the body was also held in conjunction with the academic conference and contributed greatly to the intellectual, aesthetic and...

Drawing on archaeological, historical, theological, scientific, and folkloric sources, Sarah Tarlow s interdisciplinary study examines belief as it relates to the dead body in early modern Britain and Ireland. From the theological discussion of bodily resurrection to the folkloric use of body parts as remedies, and from the judicial punishment of the corpse to the ceremonial interment of the social elite, this book discusses how seemingly incompatible beliefs about the dead body existed in parallel through this tumultuous period. This study, which is the first to incorporate archaeological...

Historical burial grounds are an enormous archaeological resource and have the potential to inform studies not only of demography or the history of disease and mortality, but also histories of the body, of religious and other beliefs about death, of changing social relationships, values and aspirations.

In the last decades, the intensive urban development and a widespread legal requirement to undertake archaeological excavation of historical sites has led to a massive increase in the number of post-medieval graveyards and burial places that have been subjected to archaeological...

Focusing particularly on the period 1752-1832, this book provides a summary of the historical evidence, the factual history of gibbetting which explores the locations of gibbets, the material technologies involved in hanging in chains, and the actual process from erection to eventual collapse.