Material Culture Studies

In the nineteenth century, the sealing industry in the South Shetland Islands targeted fur seals for their skins and elephant seals for their oil. Yet, unlike fur sealing, elephant sealing in the region has received limited scholarly attention—particularly regarding its material dimensions. This article examines the equipment used in elephant seal exploitation, highlighting the potential of outfitting lists as sources for archaeological research. The analysis focuses on the outfitting list of the American
schooner Golden West, which visited the South Shetlands in 1873–74 and returned with elephant seal oil and other animal products. The study evaluates the diversity and abundance of tools taken aboard for elephant sealing, compares them with the gear used in fur sealing and whaling, and explores the relationship among these activities. It also discusses how the availability of elephant sealing tools may have shaped sealing crews’ exploitation strategies and the material traces they left behind.

The contribution provides a status quaestionis, based on both the written tradition and the archaeological evidence, concerning the settlement of Parthenope, founded by Cumae on the hill of Pizzofalcone in Naples as a maritime outpost for the control of the Gulf of Naples.

The article analyses double and triple age records of individuals in papyrus documents from Egypt related to the Roman census, including census registers and extracts from them. Some of these records contain discrepancies in the reported age of the same individuals. The consistent patterns observed can only be explained by verification and subsequent correction by officials. This administrative practice of verifying the demographic data in census declarations was implemented by the Roman state to ensure that no male individual evaded paying the poll tax to the fiscus during the entire taxation period-from the age of 14 until 62. The evidence suggests that this verification was conducted in person.

This research analyses the key role of historic clothing and textiles in European material culture. It examines how they influenced social identity, economic status and cultural manifestation. While past research has provided important insights through specialized studies of textile production, regional styles, or technical craftsmanship, it has regularly overlooked clothing and textiles as integrated and dynamic agents of wider social and cultural change across multiple periods and regions (Rybarczyk, 2018). A clear gap exists in synthesizing these elements to understand how European textiles directly contributed to shifting notions of identity, power, and social order. This study aims to address this gap by analyzing textile artifacts and garments from different periods and regions within a cross-disciplinary framework, thereby uncovering the complex connections and the economic and social forces behind their production and use (Munro, 1999; Medieval European Clothing, 2026). The research draws on existing literature and examines museum collections, combining qualitative and quantitative methods to catalogue and interpret textiles from the medieval period to the 19th century. The findings show that clothing and textiles clearly separated social classes, showed gender differences, and highlighted regional identities (Rybarczyk, 2018). The study detects patterns such as social stratifications enforced by textile laws, the effects of trade routes on fabric varieties and advances in weaving and dyeing (Munro, 1999). Clothing also carried cultural values and changed in response to new influences, linking it to broader social changes(Medieval European Clothing, 2026).In conclusion, historical clothing and textiles are key indicators of European social values and changes. Studying them provides a detailed cross-disciplinary look at history and material culture. By bringing together history, art history, sociology and anthropology, this work encourages further study of artifacts to better understand social systems and cultural change

Este artigo investiga o vestido de veludo preto etiquetado pela maison Worth, atribuído a Eufrásia Teixeira Leite e pertencente ao acervo do Museu Casa da Hera, Rio de Janeiro. Por meio de uma biografia cultural do objeto, analisam-se sua materialidade, historicidade e musealização. A pesquisa articula história da moda, museologia e cultura material para explorar os sentidos simbólicos da cor preta, a autoria do traje e sua relação com gênero, luto e distinção social no século XIX.

In this paper I will present a Minoan vase — a tall, pedestalled basin — which is very common in Southern Crete, especially at Phaistos in the First Palace or Protopalatial period (Middle Minoan IB-Middle Minoan IIB), corresponding to the XIX–XVIII cent. BC. The vase has been interpreted by the excavators of Phaistos, and especially by Doro Levi and Filippo Carinci, as a washing basin and called louter.
The vessel is a pedestalled basin consisting of a tall, tubular hollow pedestal on a large base and on the top a large bowl with a thickened and flaring rim. All the retrieved examples are high: they range from 47 to 63cm, and the basin has a diameter going from 40 to 57cm. The base of the pedestal can reach 28cm. This kind of vessel is usually plain, not painted, but below the basin, on the support, there are some diagonal relief bands, sometimes impressed, with possibly a double function: to decorate the vessel and to help the connection between the support and the basin.
The support may have two opposite holes, which are likely produced to favor the cooking of the vessel, as it is often attested for footed lamps or braziers. The exterior surface of the basin is rough, while the interior is covered with a thick slip, very smooth and sometimes burnished, which could have been used to make the surface waterproof.
In the next pages, I will first focus on the specimens found at Phaistos and their finding contexts, then on those retrieved from outside the Minoan site of Phaistos, which are few and mainly concentrated in Southern Crete. The aim is to better understand the function of this peculiar vase and its possible
connection with water. It will be argued that pedestalled basins could have been used as washing basins both for domestic use and for purification rituals on the occasion of ceremonial events.

Stone as a durable and symbolic material played a central role in the visual culture and social practices of Histrian communities during the last millennium BCE. This paper examines the fragmented stone sculpture from Nesactium (Croatia), focussing on its meaning, function and cultural context. Using the concepts of material agency and object biography, it shows how these monuments, in addition to their monumentality, structured space and belonging, shaped collective memory and social identities as well as ideological forms of expression and representation. Nesactium sculpture thus emerges as a visually articulated social practice with a multi-layered and multifunctional role within the community. Their production testifies to a high level of artisanship and strong links to the Italo-Adriatic cultural sphere.

Este livro convida o leitor a refletir sobre as trajetórias de objetos
museológicos, tendo como ponto de partida a coleção de armas africanas
reunida pelo viajante Mocquerys no século XIX e incorporada ao acervo do
Museu Nacional. A obra propõe uma leitura crítica e sensível sobre os
processos de circulação, apropriação e ressignificação desses artefatos, ilustrando as camadas de memória, poder e silenciamento que marcam sua presença nas instituições museais. Ao recorrer à metodologia da
biografia de objetos, a autora analisa não apenas as dinâmicas de aquisição e exposição, mas também os complexos caminhos percorridos por essas peças, do contexto africano de origem ao espaço museológico, passando pelas redes de comércio e colecionismo. Com uma escrita clara e envolvente, o livro oferece uma contribuição valiosa para os campos
da Museologia, Antropologia, História e Preservação, além de dialogar com
debates contemporâneos sobre decolonização e justiça social nos museus.

This chapter focuses on the Hamburg-based artist and calligrapher Hugo Meier-Thur (1881–1943), whose life and work have been almost entirely forgotten. The text is divided into three sections, the first of which is devoted to a brief overview of Hugo Meier-Thur’s life and his tragic end as a prisoner in the KZ Fuhlsbüttel in Hamburg. The second section presents his major work, the artist’s book *Welt-Wehe*, a graphic interpretation of the Expressionist poem by August Stramm (1874–1915). The third section is devoted to Meier-Thur’s creative method, which has been preserved through his own fragmentary writings, contemporary reports, and the recollections of his students.

‘Divinity in times of decadence…’, a non-materialist, anti-Enlightenment critique of the
Middle Eastern sacredness

Until the twentieth century, attempts to review the doctrines of Middle Eastern monotheisms and their essence fell into the trap of positivism: the view that man would describe the World and its phenomena fully scientifically by ’falling on his knees before small facts’. When the culture of the Occident began to associate the sacred exclusively with a faith from Asia Minor, doctrine of the belief in the one God, as the only one appropriate for everyone, the process of capturing human and non-human life on Earth started - continent after continent. Criticism of this faith existed from preconceived positions of obvious failure – from naturalistic and sometimes naively emancipatory positions: liberation from the yoke of religion, religious superstition, religion as anti-intelligence, etc. The closer to modernity, the more radically religion and science were stated in opposition. Thus, when rationalist centres criticised institutionalism (e.g. the catholic church) and invoked arguments, e.g. from the conduite of the Middle Eastern clergy and from the financial embezzlement that resulted, among other things, from links between throne and altar or pressure on public institutions under the pretext of ethical considerations, they did not shy away from attacks on religion itself as a source of all “evil”, indoctrination, etc. They thus deprived themselves of the right to have an opinions in matters of the sacred and religious beliefs - they made it easier for those intellectual centres they criticised to take the initiative. Enlightenment thought was bogged down in the paradoxes of quasi-religious arguments: in the impossibility of definitively explaining the phenomena of Life by the laws of natural science - God was replaced by nature, which is essentially no different from the abandoned God. Materialism was unable to implement its idea of social progressivism. It did not take into account, for example, the anthropomorphic intra-species diversity of perception. The quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in the title, points to the strong connection between the nature of religiosity and the prevailing order and political and social climate, and at the same time to the specific character of theism formed after the fall of Hellenism in Europe. He also points out the necessity of critiquing religious doctrines in their ontological, sacred architecture, and not only in the socio-political dimension. On the basis of, among other things, an analysis of Nietzschean philosophy and thought after the “death of God” in French post-structuralists (Barthes, Deleuze, Derrida, among others), the paper will cover the forming new type of criticism of religiosity from the Levant. The considerations approach the problem of the inadequacy of reductionist approaches, including detailed science, libertinism, naturalism linking religion with anti-rationalism, and can demonstrate the relevance of new interpretations; there is room for epistemological pluralism. The work is also an attempt to understand the mechanisms of totalizing the public sphere by one “right” paradigm and reflect on its sources and morphology.