Search

Microhistory is a part of historical research that focuses on the behaviours, practices, and perceptions of individuals and small communities, locating them in social, economic, and cultural frameworks. Although archaeology has already focused on similar attempts, microarchaeology seldom takes a female perspective. This article aims to discuss how microhistory can be used in historical archaeology, engendering past narratives, those which are usually so difficult to find from historical documents and archaeological sites, and introducing the concept of the ego-artefact, the artefacts we know to have belonged to specific people and which are almost biographical. By doing this analysis, we are individually reconstructing past narratives while including these stories in macronarratives.

Hundreds of beads are collected every year on the shores of the island of Mozambique, dating between the 16th and the 20th-century. They are recovered in the sand and strung into neckless to sell for the best offer. More than archaeological artefacts and important historical, social, economic, and cultural items, they have a dominant role in the island’s local economy today. These archaeological materials are dispersed in time but also in space since they originate from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The privileged geographical position turned this African island into a logistical support platform for transoceanic routes, a mandatory crossing point for ships of the Portuguese crown, and for the other European monarchies that traded in the Indian Ocean. The beads are a palimpsest of cultures and trades, not only in the past but also in the present, and they still play an important role in their relationship with local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing and defining behaviors is among the most challenging objectives of writing narratives about the past, especially when direct testimony and the evidence of agents' actions are long lost. Typically, archaeologists look at material remains to reconstruct daily activities, while historians read and interpret documents that articulate how agents interacted with their surroundings. Following an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeology and history, the purpose of this paper is to reconstruct how different types of agents co-existed on board Portuguese ships in the Early Modern Age, and how those relations can be interpreted as a household. These ships sailed across different oceans with different purposes and destinations, carrying people, animals, and things, all of which had a level of agency. All these agents led to the development of specific relations and ways of being, characterizing the particular dynamics and associations during voyages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: In the Early Modern age, Portugal was among the first European countries to engage in overseas trade and colonial ventures. The influx of new people and things rapidly transformed it into a multicultural country in permanent contact with the rest of Europe and the wider world. While we possess a vast amount of knowledge describing the overseas contacts and acquisition of goods from historical documents, in recent years archaeological excavations have begun to reveal direct evidence of these interactions. This includes thousands of people and objects such as ceramics, ivory and stone artefacts produced in overseas territories in Africa, South America and Asia. They were exported in vast amounts to several European countries, and are frequently found in archaeological excavations. These commodities were in part responsible for changing European perceptions of the world, its dimensions and cultural plurality. They also rapidly left their mark on European goods production, leading to changes in aesthetics and the introduction of new forms. This paper will discuss some of these objects in terms of how they reflect an Early Modern globalized world, and their influence on European daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides summaries of few studies on global post-medieval/historical archaeology. Several studies discussed include post-medieval archaeology in Portugal, archaeology of the Contemporary past in Poland, current state of Post medieval archaeology in Belgium, and the industrial revolution of the European Continent.

In the second half of the 19th century, the area known as Lezíria, in Portugal, started to use portable steam and traction engines in agricultural production. Out of more than a hundred original examples, all of them manufactured in England, little more than a dozen survive today, with different levels of preservation. This article studies these for the first time through an archaeological perspective, identifying their use and importance in different agricultural activities in the production of goods such as olive oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Excavation of an underwater site on Al Hallaniyah Island, Oman, conducted from 2013 to 2015, confirmed the presence of at least one early 16th‐century shipwreck. The location is believed to be where Vincente and Brás de Sodré’s Esmeralda and the São Pedro, both part of Vasco de Gama's second voyage to India, were wrecked in 1503. This article describes the ceramic and other domestic material assemblage. It is a study of the objects used by sailors on board in their daily lives. The non‐European ceramics also give indications of supplies, cargoes, and plunder acquired during the voyage. These aspects of the assemblage provide two different perspectives on the new era of maritime global trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1973, while recovering copper cargo from a 20th-century ship wrecked off the Ponta do Leme Velho on the south-east side of Sal Island, Cape Verde, explosives revealed an earlier ship cargo with dozens of Portuguese faience plates and bowls, glass beads and metal objects, including buckles, ammunition and copper manillas. The assemblage, including the ceramics and a marked silver tastevin, provide a site date between 1680 and 1700. The research presented here is a result of collaboration between CPAS and the authors in 2008 to analyse this assemblage in the context of late 17th-century maritime trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at a grafitto depicting a boat on a tomb in a medieval cemetery near Silves Cathedral in Algarve, Portugal. The graffito was found on a red sandstone block, probably a reused building stone, which delimited the tomb. According to the authors, the graffito is significant for its depiction of an Islamic boat with a concave keel. It is suggested that the graffito shows a qâriblqawârib boat, commonly seen in the port of Silves between the 10th and 13th centuries.

Portuguese post-medieval archaeology corresponds to the period between the early 16th century and the late 18th century, identified in the archaeological record through several distinct artefact categories, of which ceramics are the most abundant. New products such as thin-walled moulded coarsewares and faience are found together with imports from different European countries, China and other Eastern lands. Although sites and finds are mentioned in Portuguese archaeological and art-historical literature from the late 19th century, it only became a scientific discipline in the 1980s. This paper aims to provide a general view of investigations in post-medieval archaeology for more than a century, focusing on contexts and finds, but also looking towards the discipline's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present dissertation aims to identify, analyze, register and study the evidences of Portuguese Faience recovered in the British Isles. Seven hundred and thirty seven sherds were recovered, spread across twenty three cities and seventy nine sites, from late 16th century to early 18th century. Whenever their size, conservation and importance justify it, the vases were drawn, described and organized in the present corpus. The archaeological environment and recovered material culture allowed to include the Portuguese Faience sherds in social, economical and cultural British contexts. The shortness of studies concerning Portuguese Faience, in Portugal and abroad, forced us to start the analyses of the evidences in a tabula rasa of knowledge. Knowing production, resources and people involved were fundamental in the comprehension and interpretation of the archaeological evidences. Raw materials, production techniques, workshops and manufacturers were analyzed, trying to reveal all the technical and artistic information, which would help in the study of Portuguese Faience in the British Isles. Such information were taken from foreign treaties, describing the making of tin glaze ware in Italy, Low Countries and France, but equally from data taken directly from production areas. In this sense only the visualization of pots recovered in the production centres workshops, namely Lisbon, Coimbra and Vila Nova could confirm the origin of the vessels recovered in England and Ireland, giving secure parallels. The decoration was one of the most important features of Portuguese Faience and the one that researchers, especially Art Historians, dedicated more time since late 19th century. In the last decade, archaeology has given an important contribute to the Portuguese Faience studies, since new forms and decorations have been exhumed from archaeological contexts. These vessels differ from the sumptuous pieces stored in museums and private collections, considered as every day pots and giving a new insight to Post-Medieval pottery productions. The Portuguese Faience recovered in the British Isles has also contributed to the study of shapes and decorations, but especially to the chronology of vessels. The goal is to conclude the importance of the Portuguese tin glaze ware in English and Irish contexts, but also the consequences of the exportation to the Portuguese workshops and the type of trade. In pursuit of that goal it was necessary to read several documents registering the exit of pottery from Portuguese ports and its entrance in British cities. Archaeological and historical information were crossed, concluding that Portuguese Faience, although a recognized and frequently imported into England and Ireland was not acquired in large amounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]