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Introduction
11 NINETEENTH-
CENTURY DOMESTIC
ARCHAEOLOGY Keith Matthews
IN many ways the history of archaeology may be said to consist of a gradual realisation of the importance of ever more recent periods. While the early
antiquaries were concerned to explain the monuments which seemed to them to predate the Roman conquest, their later followers also sought to illuminate the Roman past. The nineteenth century saw a burgeoning of interest in medieval archaeology, and the last thirty years have seen the growth of post-medieval archaeology.
When the period covered by the term post-medieval may be considered to end is a matter of debate: some writers have chosen 1750 as approximating to the date when the pre-modem economy changed into the capitalist economy familiar today; others keep the date as usefully separating pre-industrial from industrial technology, although some have preferred 1800. The Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, though, has never set an end date for its interests, and its journal accepts papers on nineteenth-centmy topics.
The limits of archaeological study There are good reasons for considering archaeology to end in the present: in other words, as soon as something becomes past, and can be examined by an archaeologist as a manifestation of human material culture, then it is archaeology. The remains of yesterday's diimer are as valid a subject for archaeological study as the remains of an Upper Palaeolithic elk-kill site. To a limited extent ethnoarchaeology bridges the gap (Hodder 1991, 108). but this is a specialist field and one which examines cultures other than those of western Europe and their North American equivalents, presenting the subject of study as something exotic'. The importance of the archaeology of the recent past is something Americans have always appreciated (eg, Purser 1992), but English archaeologists have tended to be a bit scathing of their interest in recent periods, sometimes suggesting that it is only the result of not having any older material culture relevant to their ancestry.
This is, of course, snobbish nonsense. To believe that the nineteenth century - and indeed the twentieth - are fully understandable because of the survival of huge numbers of historical documents is ridiculous, and a denial of archaeological expertise and a particular archaeological viewpoint (Shanks & Tilley 1987, 208). The archaeologist's area of study is past society, as is the historian's; but archaeologists differ from historians in their use of the material remains of those societies as the means by which to reconstruct them. History can provide all sorts of information which archaeology caimot, but at the same time, archaeology produces information which documents caimot. The two disciplines should be complementary (Tabaczyfiski 1993, 3).
The Nineteenth Century in Context
Historical research has provided a great deal of information about the social conditions of the nineteenth century (eg. Hill 1977. Trevelyan 1978; Evans 1983). Much has been made of the stresses caused by industrialisation, population growth and the rise of the working classes as an urban group. A great deal of the housing of this period survives, and most of the towns and cities
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11: Nineteenth-century domestic archaeology - Matthews in the north-west are largely creations of the nineteenth century, but contemporary documents express little interest in the houses as material culture (Burnett 1986, 54). At the same time we remain lamentably ignorant of the daily lives of a large part of the population, its material culture, its standards of living.
Archaeologists are wrong to write off the top layers of urban sites as being of no interest. Much of the time this may happen because the top thirty centimetres contain so much information - stratigraphic, structural and artefac-tual - that many field archaeologists prefer not to have to attempt their careful excavation, analysis and interpretation. Often the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been regarded as periods of unprecedented destruction of the archaeological record, without appreciating that the destruction of earlier remains has occurred as a result of the creation of new archaeological sites (Chippindale 1983. 194).
It cannot be denied that the archaeology of the past two centuries is archaeology at its most complex: the vast increase in population led to the construction of many more houses than before (Burnett 1986, 56); the separation of the workplace and the residence led to the creation of distinct residential and commercial zones (Mrozowski 1991, 96); the quantity and variety of material culture available within society increased with capitalist modes of production and consumption (Purser 1992, 111); the pace and scale of redevelopment multiplied many fold. This is a difficult period for archaeologists to get to grips with because of the potentially huge quantity of data, but there are very good reasons why they should do so.
The nineteenth century is a period often regarded nostalgically as a kind of Golden Age for Britain: this was a time when Britain really was Great. This is reflected in the difiusion of a distinctively British material culture - the technology of industrialisation and transport - across the entire world. These aspects of nineteenth-century British archaeology have long held a fascination for archaeologists, particularly amateurs, as the vitality of industrial archaeology as a sub-discipline demonstrates.
Matthew Johnson has recently made a case for a study of capitalism through archaeology (Johnson 1993). He identifies four major areas which could be analysed to characterise the differences between the late medieval world and the capitalist systems of the West: changing patterns of food production and consumption have enormous repercussions on material culture; the commodi-fication of material culture by which it acquires meaning and value in capitalist terms; the growth of a perception of human individuality; and changes in the material culture of ritual. Although Johnson's proposals relate more to the growth of the capitalist system, the nineteenth century was perhaps its high point. A theorisation of the social changes it engendered (and is continuing to effect) can help to bring about a socially-relevant archaeology which celebrates the importance of individual human experience throughout history.
A Case Study: 9 High Street, Tattenhall
The gardens An evaluation site in Tattenhall in the summer of 1993 (Matthews 1993) consisted mostly of derelict gardens belonging to some early nineteenth-century properties in the village, which would usually be written off as having no archaeological potential whatsoever. In one or two instances the gardens had been abandoned for many years, whilst in others the abandonment was relatively recent
What was especially interesting was the discovery that the garden soil - a good rich topsoil up to half a metre in depth - was packed full with potsherds. L
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11: Nineteenth-century domestic archaeology - Matthews Many of these consisted of the familiar blue-and-white willow pattern transfer-printed wares which many field archaeologists have often thought of as not really worth collecting. However, there was the usual range of later post-medieval wares, probably of domestic forms (Edwards 1993, 23). It was difficult to explain away as the result of an occasional scattering of domestic rubbish as it was present in large quantities, accounting for 1% by volume of the deposit.
The first assumption, that this might be domestic rubbish, was rejected as there was hardly any animal bone, which is a good indication of kitchen rubbish. There was also very little other material than ceramic, except for clay pipes and glass which formed another important component. Domestic rubbish was probably disposed of in pits closer to the houses, as was the usual practice. The pottery may have been added to the stone-free soil in order to break it up. The local soils are clayey, and need improvement for cultivation: a layer of ash about 30 cm down from the top was probably also deposited for this reason.
However, the range of material makes it likely that, if an entire garden were to be excavated, a good representative sample of the range of domestic pottery used by the occupiers of the houses could be recovered. These houses are of a type about whose inhabitants we know very little: they consist of a group of nine terraced cottages of the two up - two down' variety, owned by Bolesworth Estates and tenanted to the poorer elements of society. Study of the pottery would give an insight into the availability of different types to a poor rural population, showing how this might have changed with time; it would show what types of pottery were used by the lower end of society; and it would enable a comparison to be made between an archaeological sample of the material culture of these people with what social historians have suggested they used.
A second - and rather surprising - discovery was that there were the descendants of cultivated plants surviving as weeds in some of the abandoned gardens. In addition to large plants such as trees, hedges and shrubs were medicinal and culinary herbs. These demonstrate that the original functions of the gardens were not purely decorative: they had a very practical use, too, in supplementing the diet and providing folk remedies for minor ailments.
There has been very little study of cottage gardens, despite their prevalence. Although the archaeology of gardens became fashionable during the 1980s. most of the work has concentrated on public gardens and those of great country houses (Taylor 1983. 66; Taigel & Williamson 1993, 134). The limited trenching atTaUenhall demonstrated the potential of this class of site as a source of information about the material culture of its users.
Structural evidence As well as the gardens and their deposits, there were a few enigmatic brick structures. Map evidence shows that they were originally paired two to a garden; they had an entrance on the path between the gardens and a door into the garden. Long and narrow, they would have been all but useless as tool-sheds, especially if they formed the only entrances to the gardens. One of the older residents stated that they had been used as pig pens during the Second World War. but this was clearly not their original function. As a form of vernacular architecture they appear to have been overlooked or at least little regarded by architectural historians, and their identification on other sites would add greatly to an understanding of their functions.
Rural life and nostalgia The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a burgeoning of literature about rural life. Much of this was sentimental in nature, contrasting the simple mral Utopias with dirty, busy town life (eg. Ditchfield & Quinton 1912. 93). At the same time, though, the middle class writers of these books have preserved details about the horticultural regimes which would be worth checking archaeologically. Because of the lone of the literature, which concentrates on tlie quaint and the picturesque, the degree to which horticulture
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11: Nineteenth-century domestic archaeology - Matthews supplemented the diet, for instance, is unknown, and the identification of double-digging and bedding trenches at Tattenhall suggests that potatoes were grown in the gardens.
Buildings, settlements and infrastructure Moving away from gardens to village and building forms, Hillier & Hanson (1984) have demonstrated the importance of space-relations within society, at one level, they determine the form of settlement layout, with the locations of roads and paths, access to buildings and so on. They have also shown how, at a smaller level, the internal arrangements of houses reflect the social practices and aspirations of their inhabitants and provided a mathematical model for expressing similarities and differences between structures. Although nineteenth-century large-scale maps may show the general layout of houses within a town, they do not tend to show the positions of doors or the internal layouts of buildings. Archaeology can provide these details, as well as examples of changes to internal layouts, such as the blocking of doors.
The improvements in sanitation which occurred during the nineteenth century are also difficult to trace in detail. Although accounts of local Boards of Health may survive, and at Chester they mention the replacement of metallic drains with ceramic pipes (Kenyon 1893 etc), the progress of these improvements is not known in detail. Recent drains are encountered on most archaeological sites and rarely examined in detail; their characterisation and precise dating can help to establish which areas were the first to be improved, which is a reflection on the relative prosperity of a residential area. The dates at which privies were first provided and when they were connected to mains sewers are rarely known, but can be suggested by archaeology.
Piped water was first introduced to Chester in the Roman period, but at a domestic level it was not until the establishment of the Water Company in 1826 that domestic piped water was made available to the population at large (}Aa!i\h.QViS forthcoming). Even then, provision to the houses in alleys and courts - the lowest end of the social scale - was by a shared stand-pipe. Individual supply came later, at dates which have to be suggested by excavation.
The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Homes
At the artefactual level little is known about the everyday pottery in use in the nineteenth-century home. Social history collections in museums have been dominated by collectors' pieces and decorative wares, acquired for art historical rather than social historical reasons, although this is beginning to change. Factory records may throw some light on which manufacturers were supplying the market, and trade directories may give hints as to which shops sold which goods. But how widely their products were distributed and to which areas is poorly-known. The work of classifying and describing the cheaper domestic pottery of the nineteenth century needs to be done as carefully as for earlier periods of liistory but, with a few noble exceptions (eg, Hughes 1992, 382), much of it ends up unanalysed and unloved.
At a theoretical level, the richness of the data can be used to test hypotheses about the meanings and uses of material culture. The social background of nineteenth-century life is sufficiently well-known to be able to link the material culture recovered by archaeologists with subcultures - such as industrial workers - and identify the differences which sociologists believe exist between these groups (Giddens 1993, 42). We can then seek to project these links further back in time in an attempt to identify and characterise similar groups in the more distant past. One application of this approach is the study of navvy settlements; often located in remote parts of the countryside, these L This column is left
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11: Nineteenth-century domestic archaeology - Matthews temporary settlements illustrate social relations both within the nawy subculture and between the navvies and the outside world, most notably their employers (Morris 1994).
Conclusions
Many archaeologists have been guilty of the rapid shovelling-away of nineteenth-century deposits, although the improved fieldwork techniques of recent years have led to the careful recording of much nineteenth-century archaeology. However, these records tend to end up unanalysed because there is not yet the will to publish sites of recent date (except in a few unusual cases). Many field archaeologists have not yet had sufficient experience of the careM excavation of these sites to be able to formulate a coherent strategy for analysing them. Preservation of nineteenth-century domestic deposits and features as intrinsically interesting does not appear to have been considered.
The most fruitful avenues of research in the archaeology of this period are probably those related to the material culture: the use and value of possessions in a capitalist economy, the ordering of social relations through those value-laden objects and the use of space, and the changing patterns of work. These are areas of study familiar to social anthropologists, but less so to archaeologists in the British tradition. We have much to learn from American approaches to historical archaeology in this respect.
At a time when there are still professional archaeologists in Europe who have difficulty coming to terms with post-medieval archaeology in general, it is unsurprising that the nineteenth century has not yet found a place in mainstream Brifish archaeology. The day will surely come, though, when archaeologists start to bemoan the wanton destrucfion of nineteenth-century deposits by their earlier colleagues.
Bibliography
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