History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Re-Evaluating Egalitarian Design In Contemporary Danish Society, Alice Baughman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines the discourses and practices of egalitarian architecture in contemporary Denmark. Denmark’s long standing comprehensive welfare system promotes, for all citizens, equal access to education, healthcare, and public services, and other opportunities. Similarly, its own brand of socially progressive, egalitarian architecture encourages spatial designs intended for use by all people regardless of social disparities. Drawing on a range of sources from government documents to architectural magazines to design projects themselves, this study defines the historical development of this discourse going back to Modernist and Functionalist movements in the 1930s. By revealing the cultural and demographic assumptions on which …

Pompeiian Mill-Bakeries: Spatial Organization And Social Interaction, Madeleine Rubin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines bread production and the daily lives of those who worked in mill-bakeries during the first century CE. Bread was the staple food across the ancient Mediterranean; however, there is little textual evidence about those who produced the bread that fed the Roman Empire. The most significant body of evidence relating to the lives of mill-bakers is the archaeological remains of mill-bakeries from the city of Pompeii, preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. This thesis analyzes the spatial organization of bread production within these mill-bakeries and applies the methodologies of spatial syntax – a …

Priestesshoods As Expressions Of Civic Identity, Isabella Kershner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis offers a comprehensive examination of the role of priestesshoods in shaping the civic identity of women in Classical Athens. It challenges the traditional narrative that confines Athenian women to the domestic sphere by highlighting their public and influential roles in religious practices. Through a meticulous analysis of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic evidence, the study traces the journey of Athenian females from childhood rituals to the esteemed positions of the High Priestess of Athena Nike and Athena Polias, revealing how these religious roles served as both a spiritual passage and a civic curriculum.

The thesis argues that these priestesshoods …

The Cult Of The Nymphs: Identity, Ritual, And Womanhood In Ancient Greece, Ivana Genov

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Examining archeological and epigraphic evidence in its historical context, in this thesis I explore the Cult of the Nymphs venerated across ancient Greek poleis. I analyze the nymph’s profound cultural and historical impact that is often overlooked in the study of ancient Greece. Nymphs were female deities thought to embody ecological sites, such as fountains and springs, and became fundamental to polis identity. Their locations were often central to city plans, and their faces, depicted on coinage, became representative of the city itself. In the community, nymphs were integral to rituals for major life events, most often in the lives …

From The Studio To The Field: André Breton’S ‘Hopi Notebook’, Katharine Conley

Arts & Sciences Articles

André Breton’s visit to the Hopi villages of Arizona in 1945 had an impact on his view of the world and of the objects he collected. His response to what he witnessed in the month when the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was reflected in the notebook he kept on his trip, known as the “Hopi Notebook,” and in the poem he began writing that summer, “Ode to Charles Fourier.” His belief in the liveliness of repurposed things, haunted by their former lives, was particularly pertinent to the Hopi katsina figures he collected on his trip …

Landscapes Of Silence At The First Baptist Church, Victoria R. Gum

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg is often presented as a “town which time passed by” (Yetter 1988:30). This narrative implies that the museum landscape reflects the actual past and that restoration efforts simply returned the town to the way it used to be. However, the Restoration was accomplished according to specific ideological goals. Colonial Williamsburg was created as a shrine to traditionalist, conservative values (Greenspan 2002; Handler & Gable 1997; Lindgren 1989; Lindgren 1993) which are intrinsically linked to the global structure of systemic White supremacy. These values were enacted during the Restoration, as Black residents of the future …

An Unsettled History: Measuring Settlement Population And Sedentism In The Late Woodland Potomac River Valley, Matthew Anthony Borden

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This thesis investigates what information accumulations research can provide on settlement population and sedentism in the Late Woodland Potomac River Valley. Accumulations research is a flexible method that mathematically models the relationships between past populations and the archaeological record they leave behind using the discard equation. This study reviews the available data for several different variables in accumulations research, including settlement population, use duration (occupation length) and residential stability (seasonality), and uses the discard equation to evaluate the data. My research focuses on five archaeological sites in the Potomac River Valley, which was home to several different cultural groups during …

A Black Mount Vernon: Exploring Enslaved Homespace And Family At Mount Vernon Plantation, Heather L. Little

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This thesis utilizes a theoretical approach that draws on Whitney Battle-Baptiste's (2011) homespace framework combined with network theory and cultural geography to explore the enslaved community's domestic lives and social structures at Mount Vernon Plantation in the late 18th century. I argue that using homespace and network theory in conjunction with one another allows for a more complex and nuanced exploration of enslaved communities at a household level. Three datasets have been utilized that embody both quantitative and qualitative data. The first is archaeological data from the Mount Vernon excavations, obtained from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS). …

Behind The Brick Walls: On “Hearth” And Slavery At The William & Mary, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "The William & Mary was the second university in the U.S. after Brown University to establish a funded, institutional examination of its dark history of complicity with slavery and Jim Crow segregation. After resolutions from the Student Assembly and Faculty Assembly, the Board of Visitors in 2009 established the Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, named after Lemon, a man enslaved by the College..."

Writing At The Bray School: Part 2, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt: "In the last several years the contested question of whether Mrs. Wager taught writing at the Williamsburg Bray School has come up anew in several venues. In this follow-up to my earlier piece, “Writing at the Bray School,” I examine these recent developments..."

The Apocalyptic Mode In Contemporary Environmental Art, Victoria Erisman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Apocalyptic themes make up a growing trend in contemporary Western environmental art, especially art concerned with climate change. From art that revives the apocalyptic sublime of the nineteenth century Romantic and Hudson River School movements to photojournalism of current end-of-days disasters, apocalyptic motifs and subject matter have become significant in visual responses to and depictions of present environmental crises. This thesis examines the apocalyptic mode in contemporary environmental art, arguing that the apocalyptic mode ultimately creates more problems instead of spurring solutions to environmental injustices. Through engagement with existing scholarship on the history and efficacy of apocalypticism and catastrophism, as …

Asking For Forgiveness: Negotiating The Creation Of Memory Through Public Memorialization, Alyssa Castronuovo

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The practice of spatializing culture, or “examining space through theories of embodiment, discourse translocality, and effect,” localizes the global and separates hegemonic narratives of space from how it is actually utilized by the people who interact with it. Setha Low argues that this perspective is especially useful to the anthropologist committed to challenging the discipline’s historically eurocentric approach to studying culture. She writes that a spatial focus “[draws] on the strengths of studying people in situ, producing rich and nuanced sociospatial understandings.” This project began with an interest in theorists such as Edward Soja, Michel de Certeau, and Henri Lefebvre, …

The Architecture Of Clothing: Notions Of Public And Private Space, Savannah Orsak

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Space, as defined as a three dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction, is conversely bound through clothing, architecture, and other margins that organize humanhood for everyday purpose. Continually, clothing imposes and extends itself into everyday experiences and dictates notions of interaction between both people and objects. In this written body of work, my intention is to explore public and private spatial influences within clothing and the ways in which these influences can be curated to reflect and evoke notions of interaction and identity. Following three related studies on space, form, and curation, a survey …

Ife-Sungbo, Notebook No. 1, 2022, GéRard Chouin

Oduduwa & Ita Yemoo Archeological Site

No abstract provided.

Oduduwa & Itayemoo Transparencies, 2022, GéRard Chouin

Oduduwa & Ita Yemoo Archeological Site

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of Female Role In Ritual Cults To Ancient Greek Society, Georgia Thoms

Undergraduate Research Awards

"Ancient Greece from 2000 to 146 BCE maintained a gendered hierarchy, more specifically a patriarchy in which women were closer to the status of a slave than a citizen. In order to dive deeper into the philosophy behind the formation and importance of the patriarchy in the lives of women, three sites will be examined: the Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, the Sanctuary of Demeter at Corinth, and the complicated site of Andania. Each sanctuary houses an important cult that emphasizes the female role, whether that be through leadership or the complete exclusion of men. Each sanctuary provides architectural evidence …

Ife-Sungbo, Notebook No. 2, 2022, GéRard Chouin

Oduduwa & Ita Yemoo Archeological Site

No abstract provided.

Sustaining The Shell Middens: A Coastal Vulnerability Assessment Of Shell Midden Sites Within The Nansemond River Tributary, Mary Lawrence Young

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Throughout history, coastlines have commonly drawn human settlements. However, modern environmental processes (i.e., shoreline erosion, sea-level rise, land subsistence, inundation) threaten to destroy much of our remaining global coastal heritage. To prevent the further loss of archaeological contexts, this study seeks to develop a coastal vulnerability index through geospatial analysis to assess the vulnerability of 35 precontact shell midden sites along the Nansemond River in Suffolk, Virginia. The Nansemond middens offer a long-term history of how coastal inhabitants interacted with their surrounding landscape, with occupation of the area ranging from the Early Archaic period through Contact. This research considers various …

Lost In Space? Reconstructing Frank Willett’S Excavations At Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Rescue Excavations (1957–1958) And Trench Xiv (1962–1963)Lost In Space? Reconstructing Frank Willett’S Excavations At Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Rescue Excavations (1957–1958) And Trench Xiv (1962–1963), Léa Roth, Gérard Chouin, Adisa Ogunfolakan

Arts & Sciences Articles

From December 1957 to January 1958, Frank Willett conducted a “rescue” excavation at Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife (Nigeria), to investigate the fortuitous discovery of rare brass artifacts by laborers preparing the land for a construction project. Ita Yemoo soon emerged as a significant site, and Willett conducted subsequent archaeological campaigns between 1958 and 1963. The site became famous for its “bronzes” and several terracotta heads excavated in situ, which became icons of Ife’s “florescence” period during the 13th and 14th centuries CE. However, the fame of the site contrasts with the absence of detailed published material on its archaeology. In this …

"These Their Women Bear After Them, With Corne, Acorns, Morters, And All Bag And Baggage They Use:" An Archaeological History Of Indigenous Households Along The Rappahannock River, Virginia, Josue Roberto Nieves

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation summarizes all research findings pertaining to 2017-2018 Archaeological Excavations at Camden Farm, Virginia. The goal of the project was to seek out a previously unexcavated Indigenous house site within the property’s “Post-Contact” (i.e.,1646 - ~1720 A.D.) Rappahannock Indian village in order to analyze structural morphology and the suite of artifact assemblages relating to domestic production, consumption, and exchange practices. Findings were compared to a previously excavated house site from the same village, in addition to similar domestic contexts dating between the “Late Woodland II” and “Contact” (A.D. 1200-1650) periods from the Virginia’s James River valley. The results of …

“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …

"Epic Poems In Bronze": Confederate Memorialization And The Old South's Reckoning With Modernity In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Grace Ford-Dirks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Scholars of the American South generally end their studies of Confederate memorization just before World War 1. Because of a decline in the number of physical monuments and memorials to the Confederacy dedicated in the years immediately following the war, scholars appear to regard the interwar era as a period separate from the Lost Cause movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, to fully understand the complexity of developing Southern identities in the modern age, it is essential to expand traditional definitions of Confederate memorialization and the time period in which it is studied. This paper explores …

The Line Of Dichotomy: Standpoints And Meaning In Anne Truitt's Art, Charles J. Parsons

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Some of Anne Truitt’s formal strategies—such as using the separate faces of the work to force the viewer to engage in it sequentially—build or depend on real or literal facts of the “situation” of the artwork. If this is the case, how do such works escape being reducible to their objecthood, their literal properties of size and shape? And how do they produce effects that are not mere experience or mere affective response? The answer I offer is that they depend on conventions and interpretation.

Much of my analysis focuses on the ways Truitt makes her intentions visible through form, …

Archaeology Saves The Bay: The Sustainability Of The Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery, Mary Young

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper addresses the progression of oyster harvesting practices in the Chesapeake Bay watershed through three distinct periods—the Late Archaic, Middle Woodland, and Historic—framed within ideas derived from historical ecology, resilience theory, and sustainability. A critical examination of approximately 4000 oyster shells from Site 44YO0797, an archaeological site located along the York River, indicates that Native fishers harvested Chesapeake oysters sustainably on a millennium timescale. Common resource management practices allowed Native oysterers to actively foster resilience within the fishery through harvest habitat variation over time (i.e., focus shifting from offshore to nearshore reefs). The Chesapeake oyster fishery thrived until the …

Abraham Hondius's Dog Market: Early Modern Animal Imagery In Transition, Sarah Roberts

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Though today animal painting is frequently associated with English painters like George Stubbs and Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, its foundations lie in the earlier work of Dutch and Flemish painters. The work of these earlier artists marks an important (if little recognized) transitional phase in popular attitudes and understandings of animals. By the 1670s, the Rotterdam-born painter Abraham Hondius had immigrated to London, leaving the Dutch Republic and its declining art market for England where the market for paintings was rapidly expanding in the late seventeenth century. Abraham Hondius’s 1677 painting The Dog Market, which entered a museum collection …

Oduduwa College, Notebook No. 3, 2021, GéRard Chouin

Oduduwa & Ita Yemoo Archeological Site

No abstract provided.

Oduduwa College, Notebook No. 2, 2021, GéRard Chouin

Oduduwa & Ita Yemoo Archeological Site

No abstract provided.

Oduduwa College, Notebook No. 1, 2021, GéRard Chouin

Oduduwa & Ita Yemoo Archeological Site

No abstract provided.

Oduduwa College Transparencies, 2021, GéRard Chouin

Oduduwa & Ita Yemoo Archeological Site

No abstract provided.

W&M’S Memorials To Benjamin S. Ewell, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"As far as I can tell, Benjamin S. Ewell, the College’s sixteenth president (1854-1888), has been memorialized at William and Mary more than any other person. That is not surprising given his long tenure as president, his dedication to the College, and his titanic efforts on its behalf, especially in the decades after the Civil War..."