Matthew H Johnson
Biographic Data
| ID | 109603 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew H Johnson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew H |
| FAMILY NAME | Johnson |
| SIGNATURE | JOHNSON M H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7809-3508 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 146 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
These Words Are My Own: Archaeological Theory in Dialect
English is the lingua franca not only for academia but also for almost all international infrastructures and global communications. It comes as no surprise, then, that the dominant and assumed normative voice in archaeology is standard British English (SBE) for narratives of various times and places. This language is ‘majoritarian’—by this we do not mean that it is spoken by most of humanity, but that it is the imposed ‘ideal’ others are measured…
Strength in Weakness
English Landscapes
The Goals of Archaeology, in Theory: What are we Trying to do
Bodiam Castle and The Canterbury Tales: Some Intersections
THE AIM OF THIS ARTICLE is to explore some of the biographical, material and ideological intersections between two of the most important cultural productions of late 14th-century England. The first is a monument in its landscape, the castle of Bodiam in East Sussex, and the second is a text, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. My analysis will begin with traditional biography: the historical exploration of links and intersections between the lives an…
Geography, political economy and the ‘personality of Britain’
This paper engages with the historical archaeology of the British Isles (With one or two exceptions, I follow the usage of Kearney 2006 in preferring the term ‘British Isles’ to ‘Atlantic archipelago’, preferring the more ideologically loaded, but familiar, term over the arguably more neutral but obscure term.) as a whole. It advocates an approach that foregrounds geography and political economy, via quite simple and traditional ways of mapping v…
A Political Ecology of the Medieval Castle
Recent work in castle studies has moved away from their military role, towards a stress on social life, aesthetics, symbolism, and "status." While this social-cultural turn is a marked advance, it has not always been thought through in an anthropological or theorized way; nor have social-cultural interpretations been related to everyday practices. Consequently, "social" analyses of castles have tended to be rather disembodied, and to be limited i…
A Visit to Down House: Some Interpretive Comments on Evolutionary Archaeology
Until the last few years, interpretive and Darwinian, selectionist, or evolutionary archaeologies have not had a troubled or adversarial relationship; rather, they have had very little relationship at all. Their visions of archaeology appear to be poles apart; the style and tone of the writings of either school are, it would seem at fi rst appearance, like chalk and cheese. If the last 20 years have seen a growing diversity and fragmentation of a…
English Houses, Materiality, and Everyday Life
My previous work developed a structural model for understanding English vernacular houses, stressing the way the house reflected wider household values. In this paper, I balance this account by starting with everyday life rather than formal structure. I examine material traces of dwelling within and around the house, rather than the presumed mental template that conditioned its building. I discuss material items that flowed through the house in s…
Reconstruction Art and Disciplinary Practice: Alan Sorrell and the Negotiation of the Archaeological Record
Alan Sorrell is best known today as a ‘reconstruction artist’, employed between the 1930s and the 1970s by the Ministry of Works and other bodies to produce reconstructions of ancient monuments and re-creations of ancient life. The archive containing many of his papers, working drawings, correspondence and other material was temporarily loaned to the Society of Antiquaries of London for study in 2010–11, and is now publicly accessible via the Sor…
What Do Medieval Buildings Mean
The aim of this article is to review and reconsider what scholars, including historians, archaeologists, and those in other disciplines, are trying to get at when they attempt a "social interpretation" of English late medieval domestic buildings. I focus on the definition and interpretation of "meaning," and I examine critically a series of concepts routinely deployed in social interpretations in the past, including my own work, such as type, zei…
Phenomenological Approaches in Landscape Archaeology
This review explores why phenomenology has been such a popular theme in landscape archaeology in the last two decades—and why it has also provoked anger and controversy. The article concentrates less on the philosophical essence of phenomenological traditions than on their practical applications and context, particularly within British landscape archaeology. Criticisms of phenomenological approaches are reviewed and suggestions for future researc…
Commentary: Archaeology as Travel and Tourism
On the nature of empiricism in archaeology
Empiricism' can mean many things; I discuss it here as the belief that the data speak for themselves, without the need for intervening theory. Empiricism in this sense would be considered by most to be simply naïve, but I argue that it remains one of the most widespread implicit theoretical positions in archaeology as a whole. This article examines the intellectual origins and cultural context of empiricism, and asks why it endures. I discuss two…
Making a Home: Archaeologies of the Medieval English Village
Ideas of Landscape
Response
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Archaeology and theoretical culture
First, a qualifier: the 'response-to-the-response' section of Archaeological dialogues is often the most entertaining part of the issue, but frequently the least intellectually rewarding. One feels Schadenfreude, partisan cheering and jeering, and bafflement in equal measure as contributors lock horns over this or that finer point of who has misrepresented whom. I am anxious to avoid readers reacting to what follows in such a manner, and so will …
On the nature of theoretical archaeology and archaeological theory
In this paper I want to make some general comments on the state of archaeological theory today. I argue that a full answer to the question 'does archaeological theory exist?' must be simultaneously 'yes' and 'no'. Yes, there is, demonstrably, a discourse called archaeological theory, with concrete structures such as individuals and schools of thought more or less substantively engaged with it; no, in that the claims for a distinctive way of think…
On the Particularism of English Landscape Archaeology
Ordering Houses, Creating Narratives
This chapter is about architecture and order. It is about different ways of creating order through ancient buildings and landscape, whether by building houses in traditional or different ways, or by writing about ancient buildings and landscape in traditional or different ways. It is thus about our understanding of the built environment around us and the way we actively structure that understanding, through moving within built space, altering tha…
Archaeology and ‘QAA subject review’: What did we learn
The authors recount their personal experience of the recent assessment of archaeology teaching in the United Kingdom
Historical, Archaeology, Capitalism
Commentary: Mute Passive Objects
Tom McNeill Castles in Ireland: Feudal power in a Gaelic World. xiii+261 pages, 132 illustrations. 1997. London: Routledge; 0-415-16537-7 hardback £35
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Practice and Political Centralisation: A New Approach to Political Evolution [and Comments and Reply]
Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective
On the nature of theoretical archaeology and archaeological theory
In this paper I want to make some general comments on the state of archaeological theory today. I argue that a full answer to the question 'does archaeological theory exist?' must be simultaneously 'yes' and 'no'. Yes, there is, demonstrably, a discourse called archaeological theory, with concrete structures such as individuals and schools of thought more or less substantively engaged with it; no, in that the claims for a distinctive way of think…
On the nature of empiricism in archaeology
Empiricism' can mean many things; I discuss it here as the belief that the data speak for themselves, without the need for intervening theory. Empiricism in this sense would be considered by most to be simply naïve, but I argue that it remains one of the most widespread implicit theoretical positions in archaeology as a whole. This article examines the intellectual origins and cultural context of empiricism, and asks why it endures. I discuss two…
Reconstruction Art and Disciplinary Practice: Alan Sorrell and the Negotiation of the Archaeological Record
Alan Sorrell is best known today as a ‘reconstruction artist’, employed between the 1930s and the 1970s by the Ministry of Works and other bodies to produce reconstructions of ancient monuments and re-creations of ancient life. The archive containing many of his papers, working drawings, correspondence and other material was temporarily loaned to the Society of Antiquaries of London for study in 2010–11, and is now publicly accessible via the Sor…
The Archaeology of Inequality
The archaeology of inequality - material culture, domination and resistance, Rober T.Paynter and Randall H.McGuire struggling with pots in South Carolina, Leland Ferguson the continued pattern of dominance - landlord and tenant on the postbellum cotton plantation, Charles E.Orser Jnr material culture in Boston - the black experience, Beth Ann Bower the Northern Cheyenne breakout of 1879 - using oral history and archaeology as tools of resistance,…
What Do Medieval Buildings Mean
The aim of this article is to review and reconsider what scholars, including historians, archaeologists, and those in other disciplines, are trying to get at when they attempt a "social interpretation" of English late medieval domestic buildings. I focus on the definition and interpretation of "meaning," and I examine critically a series of concepts routinely deployed in social interpretations in the past, including my own work, such as type, zei…
English Houses, Materiality, and Everyday Life
My previous work developed a structural model for understanding English vernacular houses, stressing the way the house reflected wider household values. In this paper, I balance this account by starting with everyday life rather than formal structure. I examine material traces of dwelling within and around the house, rather than the presumed mental template that conditioned its building. I discuss material items that flowed through the house in s…
Vernacular Architecture: The Loss of Innocence
(1997). Vernacular Architecture: The Loss of Innocence. Vernacular Architecture: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 13-19
Commentary: Mute Passive Objects
The Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG): Origins, Retrospect, Prospect
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
A Political Ecology of the Medieval Castle
Recent work in castle studies has moved away from their military role, towards a stress on social life, aesthetics, symbolism, and "status." While this social-cultural turn is a marked advance, it has not always been thought through in an anthropological or theorized way; nor have social-cultural interpretations been related to everyday practices. Consequently, "social" analyses of castles have tended to be rather disembodied, and to be limited i…
Archaeology and theoretical culture
First, a qualifier: the 'response-to-the-response' section of Archaeological dialogues is often the most entertaining part of the issue, but frequently the least intellectually rewarding. One feels Schadenfreude, partisan cheering and jeering, and bafflement in equal measure as contributors lock horns over this or that finer point of who has misrepresented whom. I am anxious to avoid readers reacting to what follows in such a manner, and so will …
On the Particularism of English Landscape Archaeology
Archaeology and ‘QAA subject review’: What did we learn
The authors recount their personal experience of the recent assessment of archaeology teaching in the United Kingdom
Rethinking the Great Rebuilding
This paper traces the history of the debate over the ‘Great Rebuilding’of rural England, argued by W. G. Hoskins to date between 1570 and 1640. It examines Hoskins’original thesis and subsequent revisions by R. Machin and C. Currie from both an empirical and an historiographical point of view. It is argued that the rise and fall of the ‘Great Rebuilding’thesis was partly due to wider intellectual currents in the study of early modern history and …
Meanings of polite architecture in sixteenth-century England
Conceptions of agency in archaeological interpretation
The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States
The Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG): Origins, Retrospect, Prospect
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Meanings of polite architecture in sixteenth-century England
Experiencing The Past: On the Character of Archaeology. By M. S hanks
The Archaeology of Inequality
The archaeology of inequality - material culture, domination and resistance, Rober T.Paynter and Randall H.McGuire struggling with pots in South Carolina, Leland Ferguson the continued pattern of dominance - landlord and tenant on the postbellum cotton plantation, Charles E.Orser Jnr material culture in Boston - the black experience, Beth Ann Bower the Northern Cheyenne breakout of 1879 - using oral history and archaeology as tools of resistance,…
Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective
Rethinking the Great Rebuilding
This paper traces the history of the debate over the ‘Great Rebuilding’of rural England, argued by W. G. Hoskins to date between 1570 and 1640. It examines Hoskins’original thesis and subsequent revisions by R. Machin and C. Currie from both an empirical and an historiographical point of view. It is argued that the rise and fall of the ‘Great Rebuilding’thesis was partly due to wider intellectual currents in the study of early modern history and …
Practice and Political Centralisation: A New Approach to Political Evolution [and Comments and Reply]
Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650-1800
Houses and History
Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture in an English Landscape
Housing Culture is an inter-disciplinary study of old houses. It brings together recent ideas in studies of traditional architecture, social and cultural history, and social theory, by looking at the meanings of traditional architecture in western Suffolk, England. The author employs in an English context many of the ideas of Glassie, Deetz and other writers on the American colonies. In so doing, the book forms an important critique and refinemen…
Vernacular Architecture: The Loss of Innocence
(1997). Vernacular Architecture: The Loss of Innocence. Vernacular Architecture: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 13-19
Towards a world historical archaeology
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Tom McNeill Castles in Ireland: Feudal power in a Gaelic World. xiii+261 pages, 132 illustrations. 1997. London: Routledge; 0-415-16537-7 hardback £35
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Historical, Archaeology, Capitalism
Commentary: Mute Passive Objects
Archaeology and ‘QAA subject review’: What did we learn
The authors recount their personal experience of the recent assessment of archaeology teaching in the United Kingdom
Ordering Houses, Creating Narratives
This chapter is about architecture and order. It is about different ways of creating order through ancient buildings and landscape, whether by building houses in traditional or different ways, or by writing about ancient buildings and landscape in traditional or different ways. It is thus about our understanding of the built environment around us and the way we actively structure that understanding, through moving within built space, altering tha…
On the Particularism of English Landscape Archaeology
Response
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Archaeology and theoretical culture
First, a qualifier: the 'response-to-the-response' section of Archaeological dialogues is often the most entertaining part of the issue, but frequently the least intellectually rewarding. One feels Schadenfreude, partisan cheering and jeering, and bafflement in equal measure as contributors lock horns over this or that finer point of who has misrepresented whom. I am anxious to avoid readers reacting to what follows in such a manner, and so will …
On the nature of theoretical archaeology and archaeological theory
In this paper I want to make some general comments on the state of archaeological theory today. I argue that a full answer to the question 'does archaeological theory exist?' must be simultaneously 'yes' and 'no'. Yes, there is, demonstrably, a discourse called archaeological theory, with concrete structures such as individuals and schools of thought more or less substantively engaged with it; no, in that the claims for a distinctive way of think…
Ideas of Landscape
Making a Home: Archaeologies of the Medieval English Village
History (36 works) · Archaeology (26 works) · History (22 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Political science (14 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Art (12 works) · Geography (11 works) · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies (11 works)