Collecting Swiss lake-dwellings in Britain, 1850-1900
This dissertation asks how knowledge about the past is made and transmitted, and what the role of material culture is in this process. Taking as its case study the Swiss lakedwelling collections acquired in Britain between 1850 and 1900, it uses a selection of these collections as primary sources of the material and social networks that were central to the development of archaeology as a discipline. The project not only supports the more widely held assertion that scientific knowledge is a form of cultural production (Lenoir 1998), but emphasises the material basis of such production, and the traces it leaves. In particular, it pays close attention to previously unexamined aspects of historic collections; namely the transformative practices - such as the conservation, packaging, labelling, cataloguing and illustration - by which lake-dwelling artefacts were salvaged, documented, and displayed. It uses this perspective to shed light on the social networks which motivated such practices, and develops a method of analysing the collections in dialogue with other contemporary representations, underscoring the variety of material contexts and media through which knowledge about lake-dwellings was represented and
Leckie, Katherine Mary
Lake-dwellers and lake-dwellings--Switzerland ; Antiquities--Collection and preservation--Great Britain ; Switzerland--Antiquities
Collecting Swiss lake-dwellings in Britain, 1850-1900. This dissertation asks how knowledge about the past is made and transmitted, and what the role of material culture is in this process. Taking as its case study the Swiss lakedwelling collections acquired in Britain between 1850 and 1900, it uses a selection of these collections as primary sources of the material and social networks that were central to the development of archaeology as a discipline. The project not only supports the more widely held assertion that scientific knowledge is a form of cultural production (Lenoir 1998), but emphasises the material basis of such production, and the traces it leaves. In particular, it pays close attention to previously unexamined aspects of historic collections; namely the transformative practices - such as the conservation, packaging, labelling, cataloguing and illustration - by which lake-dwelling artefacts were salvaged, documented, and displayed. It uses this perspective to shed light on the social networks which motivated such practices, and develops a method of analysing the collections in dialogue with other contemporary representations, underscoring the variety of material contexts and media through which knowledge about lake-dwellings was represented and
swiss lake britain asks knowledge past make transmit role material_culture process taking case_study swiss collection acquire britain use selection collection primary_source_material social_network central development archaeology discipline project support widely_hold assertion scientific_knowledge form cultural_production emphasise material basis production trace leaf particular pay_close attention previously unexamined aspect historic collection namely transformative practice conservation packaging labelling catalogue illustration lake dwelling artefact salvage document display perspective shed_light social_network motivate practice develop method analyse collection dialogue contemporary representation underscore variety material contexts medium knowledge lake represent