EAA 2023: Abstract

The subject of social inequality is very closely related to issues such as quality of life, material wealth or differences between the “standard” and “luxury” of archaeologically recorded material culture. The terms mentioned are of course not the same and cannot be used interchangeably, but they have many points in common and the research questions which can address them are also quite similar.
The experience provided by the archaeology of large urban centres, rich in complex contexts dating back to the Middle Ages, and the abundance of historical sources, sometimes difficult to correlate, shows the need for developing new methods in understanding and dealing with material culture from a very dynamic environment.
This paper aims to discuss some observations concerning the possibilities of analysing large assemblages of material culture to study the changes and complexities of social relations regarding luxury, standard and poverty leading to further understanding of the quality of life as well as tracing the inequalities. It focuses on two case studies. The first one concerns the interpretation of "scattered finds" from urban excavations of medieval and early modern Prague (Czech Republic) and Wroclaw (Poland), large urban centres of historical significance. The second is a test of these concepts which aims to analyse the material culture acquired during surveys at the contemporary, “living” flea market while the entire “total” context of those items is theoretically know.

Material Culture, Historical Archaeology, Contemporary Archaeology, Flea Market, Central-eastern Europe, Quality of Life

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

Jakub Sawicki¹