The material body: Embodiment, history and archaeology in industrialising England, 1700 1850

This book combines the approaches of historians and archaeologists to explore past individuals as embodied subjects by examining the material and experiencing body in England, 1700–1850. It explores precisely how the biological, physical, environmental, cultural and social interacted in the production of the embodied experiences. The material body examines the embodied lives of men, women and children in England between 1700 and 1850. It is unique in bringing together the approaches of archaeology, history and material culture studies to understand the body during this period, which witnessed significant changes in people's living and working conditions.The chapters draw on an expanding skeletal record, combining this with an extraordinarily rich documentary, historical and material culture record. Contributors integrate case-studies of individuals with larger-scale, population-level research, broadening and deepening our understanding of embodied experience in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They examine not just elite bodies but ‘ordinary’ and ‘marginalised’ bodies – men, women and children of the middling sort and labouring poor, reproducing female bodies, disabled bodies, the old and young, and bodies that were stolen, traded and handled. A strong focus on identities, including age, gender, class and disability, demonstrates the influence of power relations.Embodied experience is delimited but not solely determined by the physical body. This ground-breaking book reveals precisely how the biological, physical, environmental, cultural, social and political interacted in the production of embodied experiences in the past. It represents a significant new direction in the history of the body in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This volume explores the possibilities of studying embodied subjects in the past through the sources and approaches of archaeology, history and material culture studies. It draws on collections of human remains, material culture and documentary evidence from Britain during the period 1700–1850, considering the themes of gender, rank, age, disability and maternity. Each chapter looks at the lived experiences of the material body, bringing together disciplines that share an interest in the material or embodied turn. Combining archaeological and historical data to reconstruct embodied experiences, the volume represents the first collection of genuinely collaborative scholarship by historians and archaeologists.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY) licence.