West Country Households 1550-1700
Conference of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology,
Friday 14 – Monday 17 September 2007
Exeter and Taunton, UK
Conference organisers: John Allan, Nat Alcock & David Dawson
During the last 30 years South-West England has been the focus of some of
the most interesting work studying the early modern house and household in
Britain. It is an area with a remarkable wealth of vernacular buildings
which have been the subject of much recent study. The area has also seen
some of the most productive excavations of early modern household goods in
Britain. Specialists in the region are working on its furniture history,
inventories, food history, household accounts, & internal decoration. The
purpose of the meeting will be to bring together researchers studying the
early modern house from these different perspectives, and to see whether
common ground emerges from their different approaches.
The first part of the conference will be based in Exeter, the South-West's
largest urban centre throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The city’s
documentation of this period is perhaps the most intensively studied of any
provincial town in Britain. Exeter has also been the centre of much recent
archaeological work. The second session will take place in Taunton,
Somerset, the home of a fine collection of household goods of this period,
including the recently-acquired Butler Collection of early modern cast
metal vessels (cauldrons, skillets, etc), which is the most important in
its field in Britain, and an excellent assemblages of post-medieval
pottery, including the Kenneth Barton Collection of everyday ceramics.
On the Monday of the conference, delegates will have the opportunity to
view the nationally important assemblages of early modern artefacts from
Exeter, with a large selections of the famous Plymouth collection of
imported ceramics, local pottery from the North Devon kilns, etc. It
should be emphasised that much of this material has not previously been
displayed, and that it is unlikely that the opportunity to view it will be
repeated in the foreseeable future.
Keynote Papers:
Dr Nat Alcock (Emeritus Reader, University of Warwick). The Development of
the Vernacular House in South-West England, 1500–1700
Prof. Mark Overton (Professor of Economic & Social History, University of
Exeter) Cornish Households 1600-1750: the Evidence of Probate Inventories
Prof. Mary Beaudry (Dept of Archaeology, Boston University) Materializing
Households: Approaches to Interpreting Homes and Home Life, 1550–1700
Full programme and further details:
http://www.spma.org.uk/events.php
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