Everyday Magic: Some Mysteries of the Mantlepiece

Main Article Content

Ralph Mills

Abstract

Small mass-produced objects, such as ceramic figurines, that may have been displayed on mantelpieces, are found in working-class nineteenth and early twentieth century archaeological contexts. Above the hearth, at the heart of the home, objects located on the mantelpiece could be said to be central in reflecting a number of aspects of the lives of those who placed them there. These could include identity, resistance, memory and superstition.

Article Details

Section
Articles (PEER REVIEWED)
Author Biography

Ralph Mills, Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art Design

Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art Design

References

Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell (eds), Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically, Routledge, London, 2006.

Anna Wierzbicka, 'The "History of Emotions" and the Future of Emotion Research', Emotion Review, vol 2, no 3, 2010, pp269-73. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073910361983


Barbara Rosenwein, 'Worrying about Emotions in History', The American Historical Review', vol 107, 2002, pp921–45. https://doi.org/10.1086/532498


Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Sage, Los Angeles, 1979.

Bruno Latour, Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass, 1987.

Bruno Latour, We have never been modern, translated by Catherine Porter, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass, 1993.

Clifford Geertz, 'Deep hanging out', The New York Review of Books, vol 45, no 16, 1998, pp69-72.

D. Hicks and M. Beaudry (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010.

Daniel Miller, Stuff, Polity, Daniel Miller, London, 2009.

Dianna Coole and Samantha Frost, 'Introducing the New Materialism', in Dianna Coole and Samantha Frost (eds), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2010, p7.
https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392996-001


Elizabeth Edwards, 'Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image', Annual Review of Anthropology, vol 41, 2012, pp221-234. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145708


Gosden and Yvonne Marshall, 'The Cultural Biography of Objects', World Archaeology, vol 31, no 2, 1999, pp169-178. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1999.9980439


Haidy Geismar, 'The Photograph and the Malanggan: Rethinking Images on Malakula, Vanuatu', The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol 20, 2009, pp48-73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1757-6547.2009.00003.x


Igor Kopytoff, 'The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process', in Arjun Appadurai (ed), The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp64-91.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819582.004


Jody Joy, 'Reinvigorating object biography: reproducing the drama of object lives', World Archaeology, vol 41, 2009, pp540-556. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438240903345530


Leanne Shapton, 'Important Artifacts', Realisms in Contemporary Culture: Theories, Politics, and Medial Configurations, vol 2, 2013, p124-145.

Lynn Meskell (ed), Archaeologies of Materiality, Blackwell, Oxford, 2005, p84.

Lynn Meskell, Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class Etcetera in Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, Oxford, 1999.

Matt Edgeworth (ed), Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations, Altamira Press, Lanham, MD, 2006.

Patricia Spyer (ed), Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, Routledge, London, 1998.

Roland Barthes, 'The Reality Effect', in Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York, 1986, pp141-148.

Sara Ahmed, 'Happy Objects', in Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds), The Affect Theory Reader, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2010, pp29-51. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392781-002


Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2004, pp8-9; 83.

Stephen Bann, The Inventions of History: Essays on the Representation of the Past, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1990.

Susan Kus, 'Materials and Metaphors of Sovereignty in Central Madagascar', in Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden and Colin Renfrew (eds), Re-thinking Materiality, McDonald Institute for Archaeology, Cambridge, 2005.

Susan Matt, 'Current Emotion Research in History: Or, Doing History from the Inside Out', Emotion Review, vol 3, no 1, 2011, pp117-124. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073910384416


Susan Tarlow, 'The archaeology of emotion and affect', Annual Review of Anthropology, vol 41, 2012, pp169-85. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145944


Susanne Kuchler, 'Materiality and Cognition: the Changing Face of Things', in Daniel Miller (ed), Materiality, Duke University Press, 2005, pp206-231. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822386711-009


Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490514


Timothy Ingold, The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill, Routledge, London, 2000. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203466025


Tony Bennett and Patrick Joyce (eds), Material Powers: Cultural studies, history and the material turn, Routledge, London and New York, 2010.

William M. Reddy, 'Historical Research on the Self and Emotions', Emotion Review, vol 1, no 4, 2009, pp302-315. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073909338306


Yannis Hamilakis and Aris Anagnostopoulos, 'What is Archaeological Ethnography?', Public Archaeology, vol 8, nos 2-3, 2009, pp65-87. https://doi.org/10.1179/175355309X457150


Zuzanna Jakubowski, 'Exhibiting Lost Love: The Relational Realism of Things', in Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence.