Syllabus
Lectures will be held every other week. 1. Introduction to material and symbolic culture of late medieval and early modern Europe. 2.
What to do with all those things? Some new (archaeological) approaches to material culture. 3. Courtly love, dragons and Minnesang.
Archaeology of medieval material culture, pt. 1. 4. Saints, crosses and pilgrim shells.
Archaeology of medieval material culture, pt. 2. 5. Pre-industrial material culture and a (very) long medieval. 6.
From theory to practice. In touch with material culture.
Annotation
The aim of the lecture is to introduce students into archaeology of material and symbolic culture of late medieval and early modern Europe. First, we will discuss theory of material culture and new approaches that are rapidly evolving due to so called material turn in humanities.
The main focus of the course will be put on material culture itself – on archaeological artefacts, their meaning and ways of interpreting them. We will discuss European material culture fitting in the extended chronological frames of late medieval to pre-industrial times (12-18th cent.).