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Date: | Thu, 7 Feb 2019 20:27:45 +0000 |
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Dear Hist-Arch'ers,
For those of you who are not SAA members, I recently published an article in American Antiquity examining variability in dining practices among Victorian-era Chinatown households in San Jose (title and abstract are below).
If anyone is interested in an e-print pdf, please email me at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> and I'll be glad to send you the file.
Thanks,
--Barb
Voss, B. L. (2019). "The archaeology of serious games: Play and pragmatism in Victorian-era dining." American Antiquity 84(1): 26-47.
This study expands on Ortner's practice-based theory of "serious games" by interpreting artifacts through a continuum of intention: pragmatism and play. Decisions and actions are defined as pragmatic according to their desired outcome, while play, in contrast, is an attitude or disposition toward the action itself. Both pragmatism and play are examined in this study of dining-related material culture (ceramic tablewares) from a nineteenth-century Chinatown. The research reveals that Chinatown residents varied considerably in their approach to dining, some using the full complement of British- and American-produced earthenwares associated with Victorian-era genteel dining, whereas others primarily used porcelain vessels congruent with dining conventions in southern China. Other households blended the two types of ceramics, typically using Chinese porcelain vessels for individual table settings and British- and American-produced earthenwares for serving vessels. Chinese porcelains were typically purchased in matched sets; in contrast, British and American earthenwares were acquired piece by piece, contributing aesthetic variety to Chinatown table settings. Together, these findings indicate that most Chinatown households were establishing their own "house rules" that redefined dining through new practices. The continuum of intention represented by pragmatism and play affords an integrated methodology for bridging functional/economic and cultural/symbolic interpretive frameworks in archaeology.
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Barbara L. Voss, Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
450 Serra Mall, Bldg. 50, Main Quad
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305-2034
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
https://web.stanford.edu/dept/anthropology/cgi-bin/web/?q=node/75
https://stanford.academia.edu/BarbaraVoss
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