Reviews

Heather Burke, Meaning and ideology in historicalarchaeology: style, social identity and capitalism ill anAustralian town. K1uwer Academic / Plenum Publishers,1999; pp. 280, hardback, US $79.95, ISBN 0 306 46066 1.

Heather Burke has produced a very important, perhapslandmark study using archaeological evidence to interpret andunderstand the evolving boundaries of class and status in thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her methodology isbroadly applicable to a wide range of data and considerablyextends our ability to ask questions about group and individualidentity using historical archaeology. Even if you are not afollower of a broadly Marxist approach to archaeology, ifideology, hegemony and the control of the means ofproduction leaves you cold, Burke's evidence shows that herapproach produces interesting and challenging interpretationsof the past. Even better, she got it without having to dig.

Burke examines ideology, in Marxist theory one of thecentral mechanisms by which capitalist society works toperpetuate systemic inequalities. By Marx's own definition acapitalist society is one where unequal access to power andcapital is institutionalised, and ideology is the principalmechanism that allows these inequalities to be accepted as thenatural order. Ideology has many components, including amaterial dimension. A simple example that Burke uses is theincorporation of classical elements in architecture to associateparticular groups with ancient authority to legitimise theirpower. Ideology is not a thing but the process of interactionthat occurs between classes, status and wealth groups andwithin groups. It functions to define groups and the place ofindividuals within social groups and communities. Who is inor out is ever changing. Tracing ideology through its materialform therefore allows Burke to track the relationships betweendifferent groups in society over time and across space.

Armidale is probably the right size for Burke's task. It isa reasonably large town and was so in the nineteenth centuryas well. Its role as a regional service centre gave it strongpastoral, merchant and worker classes as well as anindigenous underclass that was represented only on the fringesof town. The three urban groups owned and built houses thatreflected their sense of self through stylistic choices. ByBurke's definition of style, your sense of self is also stronglyinfluenced by your sense of everyone else and so the front ofyour house displays style in a way that placed you clearlywhere you want to be in relation to everyone else. A solid partof the front of the book is spent setting up and articulating herarguments regarding the relationship between style, socialgrouping and ideology. Her data sets are the houses, classgroups and strata. A total data set of222 houses was recorded,built from 1843 to 1930, along with infonnation on theirowner's stratum and class. The analysis focuses on the streetfrontage of the houses. The Aboriginal settlement, nowarchaeological if it survives at all, is unfortunately not a partof the study. Burke relies heavily on John Ferry's doctoralresearch on Armidale's history, and her main source on thestructure of Australian society are works by Connell andIrving.

I found a potential problem in her reliance upon a limitedrange of secondary sources. It may be necessary to use suchsecondary sources when dealing with a large data set but hersampling did not allow her to independently test the ascribedclass and status level. Burke does assess a number ofbuildings without owner information and the results suggestspecific groups, but she shows enough caution to indicate thatshe is aware of the potential circularity of her argument ofclass-material cu Iture-style-cIass.

The result of the collection from 222 structures and theirowners is a series of maps of traits that vary through time andspace in Armidale's regular street grid. The association ofspecific decorative building elements with either a class orstrata of society is mapped and Burke shows that particularelements are associated with particular classes. Through timeother groups adopt some of these elements, and this forms thebasis for her examination of the link between style andideology. Where she traces elements being adopted bydifferent classes Burke argues (simplified here) that suchelements exhibit style, i.e. they mark their creators/owners asmembers of a group, whether selected consciously or not. Theadoption by another group of the same stylistic elementsignifies that the second group is marking itself as not sodifferent from the first. Other elements become used assymbols to strengthen the demarcation, or present a broadpicture of similarity and identity within a group, such as theemphasis on symmetry within working class buildings.Depending on where you stand on these issues, these patternsare the product of the constant renegotiation of classboundaries through material expression, or somethingaltogether more mundane. They may be statisticallysignificant, but are they meaningful?

This is my second major concern with Burke's evidence.Burke does not discuss in any detail the dynamics by whichowners and builders chose their designs or had a repertoire ofdesigns and building elements made available to them. Herargument about the direct translation of group and individualidentity into style and then into brick or timber holds true to acertain extent, but the way that vernacular building (a wordBurke avoids for some reason) worked in her period of studydoes affect her conclusions. With worker housing, often kitbuilt or using mass-produced components, how does the rangeof available choices get used to reinforce the messages Burkeargues are made? Burke's sample buildings are all dealt withwithin the decade of their construction (where that date isknown). Once built, they no longer are part of her detailedargument. Her hypothesis deals only in a very weak way withthe dozens of existing houses that would sit between andaround any two of her new sample houses in each time period.According to Burke these older houses fonn a 'frieze' ofprevious social relations that form an ideological map of pastrelationships, but by her argument their owners cannot affordthat they remain static, especially when the spatial boundariesof the different groups moves as well. 1 found her evidencenot well developed on this point. A test of Burke's propositionwould be a study of houses that have actually had time to growup with an examination of the changes made by their variousowners, to see how their modification accords with what ishappening to new building stock at the same time. Her modelrequires that the changes to these should mimic or at leastreflect the same stylistic choices as the newer houses.

Without the context of detailed work on architecture andarchitects, design choices and the supply of building materialsBurke cannot always exclude these possibilities as alternativeexplanations for the changes and similarities that she finds.Although she notes that style is not always a communicator ofideology, the lack of this contextual detail leads her toadmitting potentially all elements as ideological devices.Clearly some are and others would not be, but she cannot tellwith the information to hand. There are occasional referencesto British middle and upper class use of architectural designand motif, but there are few mentions from either primary orsecondary Australian sources that would reinforce herinterpretations of the contemporary meanings and associationsshe ascribes to stylistic elements.

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Using the results of the sampling Burke identifies a rangeof ideological strategies at work in Annidale, includingcontinual jockeying for position between the pastoral andmercantile groups. She stresses the importance of this, and Ithink it is one of the real contributions of her study. Theprevious epic on the archaeology of ideology was MarkLeone's work on the William Paca garden. This is about oneman and the messages he is giving out through control oflandscape. The weakness of Leone's argument is thatideology is about the spaces between groups and individuals,and Leone's work has never been adequately able to extendinto that space. Heather Burke shows, in contrast, that ananalysis of an entire community through time (more or less) ispossible. The class and other relationships are not static anddo not cleave on a straightforward basis. It is also a nicecOITective to the American ideological obsession with theindividual as the key in all matters, and moving the focus backonto groups as active participants in social change.

The last part of the book deals with the modern heritage ofAnnidale's past. Having shown that the built heritage ofArmidale comprises a diversity of wealth, status andassociation Burke compares that to the messages given out bythe Armidale self-drive heritage tour. This, perhapsunsurprisingly, focuses on the upper strata, the nicer houses,and the more scenic streets. Missing are the timber houses ofworkers, the explanation of social complexity, let alone thestruggle of the masses for ownership of the means ofproduction. Some of the argument is a bit didactic, but theobservations are framed within the broad premise that modernideology uses the past to legitimise itself, and Burke does

Richard A. Gould, Archaeology and the Social History ofShips. Cambridge University Press, 2000; pp. 334,paperback $53.95, hardback $135.00, ISB 0 521 56103 5(hardback) ISB 0 521 56789 0 (paperback).

Dr. Richard Gould, although originally trained IIIethnoarachaeology, is considered by many underwaterarchaeologists - myself included - to be one of the leadingwriters and theorists in this particular branch of archaeology.

As editor of Shipwreck Anthropology (University of NewMexico Press, 1983) Gould greatly influenced the way manyarchaeologists perceived the management and interpretationof underwater cultural heritage. His influence has continuedthrough his more recent work in Bennuda and Florida.

So it was with great relish that I picked up Gould's latestoffering Archaeology and the Social History of Ships. Aninteresting note is that although the book is calledArchaeology and the Social HistOlY ofShips on the cover andtitle page, on the header of everyone of the 333 pages of textthe book is actually called Archaeology and Social HistOlY ofShips.

My first impression of the book was very favorable. It isnicely illustrated (although only with black and whitephotographs and line drawings) well referenced, has anexcellent 20 page bibliography and provides a general indexalong with a specific ship and site index. The book's chapterheadings were also clear and infonnative and alluded to allmanners of things in the text.

As I delved deeper into the book I became just a little bitdisappointed. Don't get me wrong. This is a good scholarlytext, it provides in one volume a sunm1ary of some of themajor underwater archaeology projects undertaken, theirfmdings and how these fmding relate to general historical andarchaeological theory. However I did not find this work asinteresting or as infonnative as Shipwreck Anthropology. This

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show convincingly that this is what is happening in Annidale.The past that is preserved and presented is of the pastoralistsand merchants at their nineteenth century peak.

Her conclusions look at the potential for furtherunderstanding of the role of style and stylishness (themeanings implicit in style when used as an ideological device)in the past and the present. Her arguments can be structuredas testable hypotheses that would provide ample opportunityfor either similar scale surveys in other places or for moredetailed work on particular individual houses.

Was I convinced? I am prepared to be. There is little inBurke's argument that rang as false, and my concerns aboveregarding her reliance upon already structured infonnationabout the owners and lack of discussion of the implications ofthe vernacular building industry are ones that can be dealt withthrough fmiher research and testing. I was paliicularlypleased to see archaeology being done on standing buildings,one of my personal bugbears. Because heritage legislationusually privileges the relic there is far less attention paid tostanding buildings than to their flattened counterparts.Although there have been significant studies of standingstructures by archaeologists, Burke's methodology is mostattractive in the relative simplicity of its approach. Irecommend this book to all historical archaeologists interestedin issues of class structure, ideology, material culture orreading building fabric.

Denis GojakNSW Department of Urban Affilirs and Planning

may be because the discipline has moved on since 1983, withthe work of Rednap, Gesner, Staniforth, Nash and others in thefield of underwater cultural heritage, and Gould does not seemto offer anything new to this debate in his latest book.

The book aims to compare past and present socialinstitutions and cultural processes in order to identify andstudy extinct sociocultural systems (p.6). This aim is well setout in the Introductory chapter and nicely demonstrated bycomparing the fates of the Marine Electric (1983) and the LaTrinidad Valencera (1588). The next three chapters look atInterpreting the Archaeological Record, UnderwaterArchaeology, the State of the Art and Ships and Shipwrecks:Basic Mechanics.

The first chapter examines some of the pitfalls ofarchaeological interpretations that fall victim to poor samplingtechniques or to using the historical record to set thearchaeological agenda. Chapter Two summarises the methodspresently employed by maritime archaeologists in surveyingand interpreting underwater cultural heritage and ChapterThree introduces the reader to the basic mechanics of shipdesign, and the physical and cultural geography of voyaging,along with a detailed analysis of site fonnation processes. Thislast topic is well illustrated by looking at a number ofshipwrecks on the Loggerhead Reef System in the DryTortugas ational Park in Florida - and is a subject area thatGould has specialised in for a number of years.

Gould devotes the next seven chapters to a sort of marinetechnological timeline in which he examines, among otherthings, various types of watercraft, methods and variability inship construction and social systems of exchange. This layoutis clearly developed chronologically, going from log dugoutsdating from 8000 BP in Chapter Four through to WWII navalbattleships in Chapter 10. However the author is careful tostate that these changes in ship and boat construction areadaptations to circumstance, to economic or material

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exchanges, reflections of past social institutions and culturalprocesses, rather than just straight forward lineardevelopmental changes in the way you build a ship or a boat.

It was also a great relief to see in these chapters someattention paid to indigenous voyaging, including voyages inthe Western Pacific and early Aboriginal voyages to Australia,even though this is poorly represented in the archaeologicalrecord.

Chapter II looks at The archaeology of maritimeinfrastructures. At first I thought it unusual to see a chapter onthis subject in a book titled Archaeology and the SocialHistOlY ofShips but I'm very glad the author saw the sense inincluding this area of study in a book which may be seen as asuitable text for a graduate course in archaeology. Manymaritime, shipwreck and underwater archaeologists ignore theimportance of maritime infrastructures - such as harbours,ports, shipbuilding and repair facilities and the cultural, socialand economic processes they represent. It's a bit like a landarchaeologist who looks at the remains of a building butignores the processes behind the brick laying and tile making- you only get part of the picture.

Grace Karskens, Inside the Rocks: The Archaeology of aNeighbourhood. Hale and Iremonger Pty Ltd, 1999;pp.240, 188 illustrations, paperback, $34.95, ISB868066664.

Tf ever we needed artefacts to speak, it is with the archaeologyof nineteenth century working-class districts that have beencharacterised as slums. To know that the image of theseneighbourhoods was largely the product of bourgeoissensibility that viewed them as places where lives were ledthat represented everything life should not be (a processbeautifully explored in Alan Mayne's The imagined Slum) isnot enough. There needs to be credible evidence that thingswere not what they seemed from the outside. Grace Karskenshas given us that evidence for the Rocks, Sydney's archetypalslum, its " retreat for filth and vice". Tn a thoroughlyaccessible, narrative style Karskens recounts the excavation ofthe Cumberland/Gloucester Street site and its results.Interwoven with the archaeological data are life histories,presumably collected over a much longer period than it tookto conduct the excavation (Karskens did her doctoral researchon the Rocks, published in 1998 as The Rocks: Life in EarlySydney), that add immeasurably to the strength of this viewinside a place that has so often been portrayed from theoutside.

Following a brief introduction, Karskens organises thebook into six chapters, more or less alternating between afocus on history and a focus on archaeology. But happily thearchaeology is never divorced from the historical context andeven more significant (and unusual) the history is neverdivorced from the archaeological evidence. Chapter Onemainly tells the stOly of two Rocks families, one headed byconvict Richard Byrne and the other by butcher George Cribb,residents of the Cumberland/Gloucester Street site in the1820s and 30s. The lives of the earlier inhabitants are alsodiscussed - the Aboriginal people who had reworked a sherdof Chinese porcelain into a sharp tool, and the early Europeanswho left a row of post holes, probably for wattle and daubhouses that lined the rocky ledges at the end of the eighteenthcentury. In Chapter Two Karskens describes in detail the typesof artefacts that belonged to convict or former convicthouseholds. While the exact provenance of specific things isnot clearly defined (under floors, in yards etc), theassemblages suggest a lifestyle that included the

The final chapter The future of undefwater archaeologyleads on and expands some of the ideas and concerns raised byGould and others in Shipwreck Anthropology, namely that thediscipline is threatened and challenged on a number of frontsincluding the wide scale commercial exploitation or salvage ofpoorly protected underwater cultural heritage, and theinability to cope with alternative pasts and special interestpolitics. Although all three areas are of concern toarchaeologists, Gould devotes most of the chapter to theproblems with treasure hunting. He cites a number of wellknown examples including the destruction of HMS DeBraak(1798) in the late 1980s; the Dutch East Tndia Company shipGeldermalsen (1752) in 1985 and the Brother Jonathan(1865) in the mid 1990s. He also has concerns over theadoption or appropriation of 'quasi-archaeology' by salvagecompanies in order to enhance the monetary value of sa Ivagedfinds and to give the business a scientific front.

Keiran HostyCurator

Australian National Maritime Museum

accoutrements of civil dining (English tablewares in matchingsets of bowls, dinner plates of various sizes), a generous dietof meat (probably cooked in soups and stews), equipment foreducating children, and glassware that suggested an oldfashioned pattern of sharing. Karskens makes the importantpoint that the presence of certain consumer goods does notmean that convict society shared the same attitudes towardsthings that we hold at the present time, but it clearly did holddifferent attitudes than those that have been attributed to it.

Chapter Three is a kind of bridging chapter to the laterperiod (ca. 1840 to 1890) which is described in depth inChapter Four. At mid century the Rocks was populated byskilled and unskilled workers from diverse ethnicbackgrounds. They were predominantly native-born Englishand Irish, but there were also mariners from as far away asPortugal and Italy and increasing numbers of Chinese. Insteadof seeing this "crowd" (the chapter is entitled Making theRocks: A Crowd of People) as an undifferentiated mass ofimpoverished souls, Karskens dwells on the differences: theIrish identification with their brethren's struggle forindependence seen through clay pipes marked "Repeal" andmedals and images associated with Catholicism; theconservative Chinese with their traditional cooking pots andmedicine vials; and transient sailors who left behind the toolsof their trade and partially carved whale teeth and jaw bones,remains from the art of scrimshaw, a sailor's pastime in thenineteenth century. Karskens seems detennined to avoid aclass characterisation of the Rocks: landlords, she says, werenot necessarily absentee members of the elite but just as oftenlived next door to their tenants. The residents' taste forconsumer goods, good manners, etc she takes as evidence of alack of interest in strategies of opposition or resistance. Butwhat is really stunning about this chapter is that thecomplexity of life in a neighbourhood known as a slum comesalive. Karskens has achieved for the Rocks what we need toachieve for the multitudes of other working-classneighbourhoods that have been obscured by middle-classfears and prejudices. She has unshrouded a place buried ingeneralities, and revealed the specific character that defies thestereotype.

The artefacts described in Chapter Five further contradictthe stereotype. There are sets of multi-coloured, transfer-printed dishes (a fascinating difference, incidentally, from

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what is found on contemporaneous urban sites in the UnitedStates), moralising china for children, hundreds of beads,buttons and fragments of cloth including fine quality silks.There are work boots for men, delicate shoes for women andlots of toys. The artifacts are phenomenal, the most unusualones (including a bone ring interpreted as a kind of pessary)are illustrated and there is a folio of colour photos in themiddle of the book. What is missing is any sense of quantityand provenance. But this is, of course, a book for a "generalaudience" and numbers would perhaps bog it down. As a bookfor a general audience it is fairly extraordinary. There is nosense that the analysis has been simplified or abbreviated. Ifanything, there is more information than a general reader, oranyone for that matter, can possibly digest in one reading and,for the scholar, there are ample endnotes and bibliography.What I miss is a more detailed discussion of the archaeology.With those wonderful miniature maps of the site showing theparticular properties under discussion, I would have likedmaps of the lots showing features and foundations. But youcan't have everything, especially in one modest-sized volumethat is full of other kinds of illustrations including many oldphotographs.

Inside the Rocks is an excellent book and a majorcontribution to the understanding of nineteenth century,working-class, urban neighbourhoods. That many peopleparticipated in (there were 400 volunteers) and visited theCumberland/Gloucester Street excavation is admirable, but

Susan Lawrence, Dolly's Creek: An Archaeology of theVictorian Goldfields Community. Melbourne UniversityPress, 2000; pp. 216, paperback, $39.95, ISBN 0522 849121.

Dolly s Creek An Archaeology of the Victorian Goldfieldsprovides insight into the lifeways of subsistence miners, theirfamilies and community. Susan Lawrence should becommended for her approach and choice of subject matter.The book is carefully crafted and extracts nuggets out of poorground. While exploiting the full potential of the subjectLawrence does not go beyond the limits of her data.

The introduction and first chapter invite a lay audience ora first year student to understand the study of archaeology.The introduction is the story of one man's death within thecontext of his community. This tragic tale begins and links the'inside out' archaeological history ofa 'poor man's diggings'.The role that subsistence diggings played in the gold fields ofAustralia, New Zealand and North America has been givenlimited attention in published texts. Dolly s Creek provides avery thorough working of the subject matter, taking it out ofthe realm of grey literature and delivering it to the public.

The author stands to one side through most of the book,orchestrating and engaging the reader as they follow thethreads of information. Slices of life are teased fromdocuments and artefacts. The approach is enjoyable, cleverand imaginative. The reader is given the opportunity todiscover the lifeways of the subsistence diggers piece bypiece. The archaeological findings are unravelled and thelimitations of archaeological infonnation explored. Some ofthe gaps are filled through the use of historical information,other segments of the story are left unwritten.

The community described is that of the second wave ofgold seekers. They were not the prospectors of the firstrushes, but instead experienced miners and entrepreneurs whowere supported by a network of towns and cities. Theestablished mining industry leased and controlled new ground.Limited ground was left for small claims. The 'poor man'sdiggings' provided a marginal subsistence for individuals andfamilies willing to practice a diverse range of economicactivities. This concept is extended to include the generations

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that a book of this quality was produced so quickly is next tomiraculous. The report on the excavation of a block within theFive Points, a similarly notorious working-class district inNew York City, has yet to be printed and a book is only agleam in its principal investigator's eye. But the data on theRocks suggest that the two neighbourhoods were far fromidentical. Even the Irish seemed to express their identity inone place differently than they expressed it in the other. No"Repeal" pipes were recovered at Five Points and there werepractically no artifacts connected to the practice ofCatholicism although the majority of residents were recentlyarrived Irish Catholics.

The Rocks, and New York's Five Points as well, weredistinctive neighbourhoods that lend themselves particularlywell to archaeological study. Because previous views havebeen so distorted by words, a reliance on things becomes anasset. The things, of course, need to be interpreted in context,a task Karskens has done masterfully for theCumberland/Gloucester Street site, but their very authenticitynecessitates a new interpretation of the place from which theycame. If that interpretation can reach beyond the scholarlycommunity to the general public, as this volume is intended, itcould change people's understanding of city life - in thenineteenth century, and maybe even in the twenty-first.

Rebecca YaminJohn Milner Associates, Inc.

Philadelphia, US.A.

that followed and continued to work these small claims.

Lawrence explores the simplicity and complexity of the1860's mining community. Included are those who gainedeconomically from the agricultural pursuits of marketgardening, fruit growing, and ranching. Some of theseentrepreneurs were Chinese. The Chinese were largelyinvisible in the archaeological remains found at Dolly's Creekdespite the historical records that indicate their presence.Women were more visible. Gender and Victorian values areaddressed in several chapters. The role of women and menwithin the social web of the community and their domesticsphere or 'habitus' is explored. The role of women in thesubsistence economy and their contributions through theoperation of small businesses and agricultural pursuits aredocumented. Lawrence aptly notes that Australian society andsocial systems are an outgrowth of many of the attitudes bornon the poor man's diggings. The same could be said for NewZealand and the western U.S.

Lawrence addresses the standards of Victorian normativebehaviour to which women on the poor man's diggingsaspired. Propriety and respectability within canvas walls aresymbolised by crockery found in an archaeological contextand historical descriptions of the use of fabric or wallpaper tosoften the tent environment. The material presented ongentility and standards, while correct and applicable, couldbenefit from a careful editing to inject the elements of readerdiscovery apparent in the earlier chapters.

Dolly s Creek is very suitable for use as an historicalarchaeological textbook. It contains clear explanations of theresearch approach and data collection, the analysis, theory andsynthesis. The book would be particularly useful as a text inAustralia, New Zealand, and the U.S., where the context andthe timing of the mining activities are comparative. I wouldalso recommend Dolly s Creek as an introduction to historicalarchaeology.

Alexy SimmonsArcheologist

Simmons & Associates, Hamilton NZ

Mark Staniforth and Mike Nash, Chinese Export Porcelainfrom the Wreck of the Sydney Cove (1797). The AustralianInstitute for Maritime Archaeology Inc., SpecialPublication o. 12, 1998; pp. viii+46, paperback $20.00,ISBN 1 875 495 24 X.

Since the 1970s Chinese export porcelain has become anincreasingly familiar part of the corpus of pottery recoveredfrom Australian sites of the European period up to the 1840s.Eighteenth to early nineteenth century sites in Sydney andParramatta provide us with Chinese wares, which make up arelatively high proportion of the total ceramic record, andnaturally raise questions concerning the mechanisms ofinternational trade and the socio-economic place of suchwares in the community.

The Sydney Cove story is well-documented IIIcontemporary sources. Robert Campbell, of Campbell &Clark, the owners of the vessel, was to establish a firm inSydney at The Rocks shortly after the wreck (in the cove thatstill bears his name). His arrival perhaps marks the beginningof the international perception of Australia as a seriousmercantile entrep6t, a place of consumers and producers.

Staniforth and Nash provide a clear overview of the

Penelope M. AUison (ed.), The Archaeology of HouseholdActivities. Routledge, 1999; pp. 206, paperback, $54.95(+GST), ISBN 0-415-18052-X (hardback), 0-415-20597-2(paperback).

The Archaeology ofHousehold Activities provides a valuablenew resource for archaeologists interested in urban ordomestic archaeology. Attempting to understand domestic lifethrough the distributional analysis of material culture iscentral to the work and interests of the editor, so it is notsurprising that she should edit a volume on just this topic. Thisvolume of essays is the result of discussions over a number ofyears with interested participants, culminating in a colloquiumheld at the Archaeological Institute ofAmerica (AlA) meetingin San Diego in 1995. A wide range of sites are discussed,however the authors have chosen almost exclusively toconcentrate on the ordinary and mundane artefacts ofeveryday life and what these can tell us about householdactivities.

The editor opens by defining the areas of discussion whichare ultimately derived from her concern that there is a "lack ofgood contextualised material culture studies in Classicalarchaeology, particularly of artefact assemblages in domesticcontexts" (Preface). Examples from both the Old and ewworlds are used, with an emphasis on ancient societies, ratherthan the more recent past encountered by historicalarchaeologists in Australia. This volume of essays introducesa range of methodologies used to investigate householdactivities through archaeological analysis. These approachesare outlined in the introduction as including the relationship ofarchitecture to the internal function of a building, the use oftext in the interpretation of physical evidence, the use ofethnography, the identification of gendered roles within thehousehold, and the identification and function of artefacts.

The topics covered in this volume include the formationprocesses of artefact assemblages, and the use of ethnographyin Central America. The ambiguity of architectural space inthe identification of room function is covered in some detail,with case studies drawn from Classical Athens, Pompeii, northAmerica and the Australian goldfields. Each chapter thereforeaddresses a different aspect of the way archaeology identifieshousehold activities. The issue of past archaeologicalpractices and attitudes are addressed in several different ways.

studies to date on trade of export porcelain between China andAustralia, South Africa, the Indo-Pacific and the UnitedStates. An indication of the values of some of these wares inthe eighteenth century American market goes some waytowards an evaluation of their place in the consumer society ofthe first decades of Australian colonisation.

Staniforth and Nash examine all too briefly (thoughunderstandably so) the presence of similar wares from landsites and other wreck sites in Australia and South Africa,however, the pointers are there for further study. With itsseries of beautifully reproduced colour photographs of thewares and clear line drawings this work will become a muchwelcomed resource for any future study of sites whereChinese export ceramics are found.

The book is also a timely addition to the study of maritimearchaeology in Australia - part of the move away from thestudy of shipwrecks solely for details of their construction,and towards a better understanding of their potentialcontribution to commercial and social history.

Wayne JohnsonArchaeologist

Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority

Suzanne Spencer-Wood, and Marilyn Goldberg address theissue of the androcentric bias in archaeology from theClassical and Victorian masculinist traditions and how it hasaffected recent interpretations of the past. The problem ofinterpreting the internal functions of structures on the basis oftheir facade exacerbates difficulties in understanding thefunction and workings of a 'household'. Allison suggests thatin archaeological terms the concept of the 'household' hasbeen dominated by the architectural entity. Although roomfunction may be identified through the use of textual evidence,this can also be hindered by an often incomplete recording ofthe in situ cultural material. This issue is dealt with in detail byAllison who questions the way in which functions and nameshave been traditionally attributed to items of everyday use.Susan Lawrence addresses the issue of identification of genderfrom the perspective of her work on the Victorian Goldfieldswhere there are far less structural remains than at the ancientsites of the Mediterranean and Central America.

The problems for Classical scholars in the identification ofthe roles played by men and women within the internal spacesof the household has been a topic of debate for some time andfornls the basis of the discussions by Goldberg and Spencer-Wood. The portability of artefacts, such as looms, hasconfused the issue of spaces that can be identified as beingused by women, but not apparently by men. This problem isgiven another twist by Allison's questioning of theidentification offunctions attributed to specific artefacts basedon proposals made in the nineteenth century, which have sincebeen accepted as fact. Should we be re-assessing more thanthe roles played by men and women within the household? Inthe Australian goldfields the presence of women, and hencethe part played by them within the household, is indicated bya far more meagre assemblage of artefacts, within similarlymeagre structural remains. Although this discussion is thesole contribution from an archaeologist working in Australia,Lawrence's contribution adds to the broad based debate on thepalticipation of both men and women in household activities.

The internal and/or cultural function of space as indicatedby the externals of architectural form is also dealt with fromthe perspective of artefact assemblages and patterns of discardin the chapters by LaMotta and Schiffer, and McKee. McKeeidentifies some interesting secondary uses of artefacts and

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elements prior to discard, or abandonment. The chapter byRani T. Alexander explores Mesoamerican house lots inYaxcaba, Yucatan, Mexico. She employs comparativeevidence from contemporary Mayan household organisation,only to find that, although ethnography can provide a valuabletool for the archaeologist, the relationship is not always asstraightforward as initially assumed. Differences in populationdensity and cultural requirements indicate that conclusionsneed to be made with care.

Those contributors discussing aspects of Old worldarchaeology all share a common complaint: a lack of clearrecording of cultural material, and that many artefacts havenot been retained, let alone had their location recorded byexcavators in the past and indeed into recent times. The paperby Bradley, Ault and Nevett on Classical and Hellenisticdomestic assemblages demonstrates that little has changed, orthat change is slow in coming to the excavation of the smalldetails of everyday life. Their attempt to rectify thisarchaeological anomaly describes a change in attitude fromarchaeologist as treasure hunter to the approach with whichwe in the New world are more familiar. This approach is takenfurther in the fascinating paper by Meadows, who examinesthe identification of the Romanisation of Britain from theperspective of diet, cooking utensils and table wares. Usingdiet as an indicator for cultural change is fraught with

Sarah Tarlow, Bereavement ami Commemoration: AnArchaeology ofMortality. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999.pp.xiii+207, paperback, £15.99, ISBN 0 631 20614 O.

The study of dying, death and disposal is enjoying arenaissance. The popularity of cultural studies andpoststructuralism, along with a smattering of millennialism,has led to bookshelves brimming with recent publications'building upon and challenging the dominant works of JohnMorley, Philippe Aries and James Stevens Cur!.2 These latestcontributions to death studies are often interdisciplinary andhave emerged from a variety of fields, including art history,literary studies, sociology and historical archaeology, as wellas social and cultural history. Despite this renaissance, JulieRugg's recent appraisal of the historiography of Britishcemeteries highlights the many gaps still to be found incemetery research, including the history of the cemetery andgrief.' Rugg points out that until recently the cemetery wasoverlooked as a site of bereavement. Sarah Tarlow's historybegins to redress this oversight, placing the cemetery at thecentre of sentimental expression and bereavement.

In Bereavement and Commemoration: An archaeology ofmortality, Sarah Tarlow writes a history of death through ananalysis of changing memorial practices in Orkney from1560-1945. The story is one of bereavement, emotion andsentiment, focused upon the individual and their relationshipto the deceased. In writing this history, Tarlow leads byexample in arguing for a shift in theoretical emphasis in thehistorical archaeology of mortality towards the emotionalexperience of death and its representation in material culture.In doing so, she claims a place for historical archaeologywithin the interdisciplinary field of death studies, a claim thatis reinforced by the recent publication by the Council forBritish Archaeology.'

Bereavement and Commemoration is based upon Tarlow'sPhD thesis, Metaphors of Death in Orkney 1560-1945(University of Cambridge, 1995) and in places, particularly inthe first two chapters, it reads this way. This is not necessarilya bad thing, but will not suit all readers. Nearly half the bookfocuses upon the theoretical aspects of her study and itscontribution to the archaeology of death. The historicalanalysis of the material culture of death is confined to

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difficulties when despite "repeated requests over the years bybone, pot and plant specialists, archaeological remains arerarely integrated" in the final analysis (p.106). Is this lack ofinterest due to the sheer volume of history represented in thedepth of deposits where excavators can afford to pick andchoose what will be retained for their own purposes? InAustralia perceptions of a brief history with meagre remainsrequires that all artefacts are treated as equally significant inthe interpretation of the history of a site.

What makes this volume such a valuable source ofinformation is that it does not confine itself to a singleapproach, or to a single period. Whether the specific site is ofinterest to the reader or not, much can be gained by thearchaeological process and the interpretive methodologiesused by each contributor. My only criticism is that there couldhave been a glossary. Although some terms are explainedwithin the text, it may take some time to determine themeaning of others, particularly when there is a lack offamiliarity on the part of the reader. However this is a minorcriticism of an otherwise valuable contribution toarchaeological scholarship.

Jennie LindberghConsultant Archaeologist

Sydney

Chapters Four to Six. From a theoretical perspective, it is acomprehensive introduction and discussion of theories andtrends in the archaeology of mortality. This is of particularinterest to scholars outside the discipline, but may beredundant for those familiar with recent theoreticaldevelopments within historical archaeology.

The book opens with an evocative narrative of the deathand commemoration ofWilliam Mainland in 1894. In utilisingthis story Tarlow emphasises the importance of headstones asboth text and artefact. From this introduction, along with thesummary of changing commemorative practices in ChapterThree, the reader anticipates that she will rely heavily uponher material evidence to illustrate the emotional response todeath. Yet this is not the case. Despite having a database of3,021 memorials derived from a study of five burial groundsin Orkney, only a handful of monuments are highlighted. Thevery sense of emotion that she argues is expressed in themonuments is subdued at times by Tarlow's highly analyticaland theoretical approach to the subject. This may have beenovercome if she had provided more examples of epitaphs andmemorial designs to illustrate her argument concerning themetaphors of death.

Tarlow privileges what she terms "metaphors of death" asthe point of entry for understanding contemporary attitudes.She identifies three main metaphors - journey, sleep, andfading or dying flowers - which correspond to shiftingattitudes between the living and the dead. Given the emphasisplaced upon metaphor, it is surprising that she doesn't spendmore time analysing the meanings behind gravestonesymbolism. For example, Tarlow found that "twentiethcentury gravestones generally carry more symbolic decorationthat nineteenth century ones" (p.?3) rather than vice versa asclaimed by Cur!. Yet we never really find out why this is thecase. This appears for her to be incidental to the expression ofthe metaphor of sleep. This metaphor exemplified the newintimate and personal relationship between the living and thedead that had developed by the nineteenth century. It is, sheargues, "the most potent metaphor of nineteenth and twentiethcentury dead [and] is not the subject of icon or symbol, but isconveyed through the shape, arrangement and unified form ofthe grave." (p.?3) So why isn't the metaphor of sleep

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represented through symbol? This question is left unansweredtoo.

Tarlow is constantly aware of the centre/peripheryparadigm in her analysis of Orkney commemorativememorials, and is at pains to contextualise Orcadiandevelopments within British and European developments. Itis therefore all the more surprising that in looking at thebroader context of funerary sculpture she did not consult somekey comparative texts, such as those by Frederick and

icholas. 5 This may have inadvertently led her to generaliseabout trends that were peculiar to Orkney. Nevertheless,Tarlow provides a comprehensive survey of changingmemorial practices in Chapters Four to Six that challenges theconventional depiction of the gravestone boom as afashionable whim of the Victorians. Tarlow's key questionsare why was there a "gravestone boom" in the late eighteenthand nineteenth centuries? Why did the lower and lower middleclasses start erecting monuments?

Previous social histories of cemeteries andcommemoration, such as McManners, Weston, Litten andCurl6 have focused upon large cities, prominent cemeteriesand elaborate memorials. Orkney's remoteness from thesemetropolises, its placement on the periphery, allows Tarlow toquestion the role of taste, fashion and ideas in explainingchanges in attitudes towards death. From her study, sheconcludes that several popular explanations, such as status,social emulation, and rising secularisation of society areinadequate and cannot by themselves explain the gravestoneboom of the nineteenth century. Tarlow suggests an alternativeexplanation: that affective individualism changed therelationship between the living and the dead and led to thedesire to erect headstones in the nineteenth century. Thegravestone became a "public expression of deep, personalfeelings". At the same time the kirkyard was decreed a sacredspace, grave visitation became popular, and burial plots wereviewed as belonging to the purchaser in perpetuity.

Bereavement and Commemoration makes a valuablecontribution to the history of cemeteries, commemorativemonuments and attitudes towards death in Britain. Tarlow'sconclusions about the role of sentiment in commemorativepractices and the centrality of religion complement andreinforce Pat Jalland's recent history, Death in the VictorianFamily.' While Jalland focuses upon mourning practices in thenineteenth century British middle class, like Tarlow sheapproaches the subject from the position of experientialhistory and emphasises the role of the Victorian andEdwardian family as the "primary institution ... in which themeaning of individual deaths was constructed and transmittedacross the generations." (p.2) Tarlow's study also extends theearlier work of Clare Gittings whose analysis of funeralshighlighted the role of the growing sense of individualism inthe early modern period.s The emphasis upon the metaphors ofdeath by Tarlow is an illuminating theoretical framework, andcan be usefully applied to deconstruct funerary and mourningpractices as well as memorials. Finally, Bereavement andCommemoration uncovers some regional differences incommemorative practices, highlighting the need for furtherregional and cross cultural comparative cemetery studies.

Lisa MurrayDepartment ofHistory

University ofSydney

For example see Gary Ladennan, The Sacred Remains:American Attitudes toward Death, 1799-1883. : YaleUniversity Press, ew Haven 1996.

Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford 1996.

Kathy Charmaz, Glennys Howarth and Allan Kellehear(eds) The Unknown Country: Death in Australia, Britainand the USA, MacMillan Press, London 1997.

Margaret Cox (ed.) Grave Concerns: Death and Burial inEngland 1700-1850. CBA Research Report 113, Councilfor British Archaeology, York 1998.

Karl S. Guthke, The Gender ofDeath: A Cultural HistOfYin Art and Literature, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge 1999.

Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings (eds) Death in England:An Illustrated History, Manchester University Press,Manchester 1999.

2 Philippe Aries, The Hour ofOur Death, Oxford UniversityPress, Oxford 1981.

James Stevens Curl, A Celebration of Death: Anintroduction to some of the buildings, monuments, andsettings offunerGly architecture in the Western Europeantradition. 2nd ed. London, B.T. Batsford 1993.

John Morley, Death, Heaven and the Victorians, StudioVista, London 1971.

3 Julie Rugg, '''A few remarks on modern sepulture":current trends and new directions in cemetery research',Mortality, 3 (2)1998,111-128.

4 Margaret Cox 1998.

5 Frederick Burgess, English Churchyard Memorials,SPCK, London 1963

Nicholas Penny, Church Monuments in RomanticEngland, Yale University Press, ew Haven 1977.

6 John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment:Changing attitudes to death in eighteenth-century France,Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.

Julian Litten, The English Way of Death: The commonjimeral since 1450, Robert Hale, London 1991.

James Stevens Curl, A Celebration of Death: Anintroduction to some of the buildings, monuments, andsettings ofjill1erary architecture in the Western Europeantradition. 2nd ed. B.T. Batsford, London 1993.

David A. Weston (ed.), The Sleeping City: The stOly ofRookwood Necropolis, Hale & lremonger Sydney, 1989.

7 Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford 1996.

8 Clare Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in EarlyModern England, Croom Helm, London 1984.

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