School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 14
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableIdentification of polymer-based artefacts from the former Wheeler Residence at the Mernda archaeological site in Victoria, Australia: A comparison of attenuated total reflectance and reflectance spectroscopic techniques(International Council of Museums, 2021)The purpose of this investigation was to identify the polymers in artefacts recovered from archaeological excavations at the former Wheeler Residence using attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared and reflectance spectroscopy. The results from both techniques are compared and discussed. Identification will assist with the long-term management and storage of these polymer-based artefacts. Evaluation of these two sampling techniques included whether the physical characteristics and polymer type of the artefacts favoured the use of one technique over the other. The inherent challenges of archaeological artefacts such as cataloguing conventions, awkwardly shaped fragments and soil encrustations complicated the analysis. Of the 270 samples analysed, 67% were identified as containing ten different types of polymers, with the remaining 33% consisting of unidentified polymers, encrusted polymers in which only soil bands or other materials such as glass were identified. Although reflectance achieved better results for certain types of artefacts, it also revealed limitations. The identified polymers are compatible with the proposed occupation of the site from 1852 to the 1970s.
-
ItemShould we clean plastics like we clean paintings? A study in cleaning plasticised poly (vinyl chloride)(University of Cambridge Museums, 2023)Cleaning plastics poses a significant issue in cultural collections. Highly susceptible to attack from mech- anical, organic and ionic cleaning agents, it can seem impossible to find products that adequately clean plastic materials without causing damage in the process. This paper aims to address these issues. It explores how techniques, knowledge and decision-making processes used in painting conservation can be adapted and used to deliver sophisticated, inexpensive, and accessible strategies for cleaning plastics. Using plasticised polyvinyl chloride as a case study, this paper demonstrates how principles of pH, ion concentration, polarity, chelation, gel-formulations and colloidal interface can be used to arrive at optimal methods for cleaning plastics. Combinations of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy with attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR), optical microscopy, colourimetry and accelerated ageing were used to determ- ine the effectiveness of and damage levels of the cleaning processes being evaluated. Ultimately it was found that neat solvents, detergents and acidic or basic aqueous solutions should not be used unaltered but should rather be tailored specifically to the needs of the polymeric material being treated.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableOntology and knowing: A framework for conserving a rare musical instrument within and beyond the archive(International Council of Museums, 2023-09-18)Conserving cultures other than one’s own and working from the outside provokes questions of authority and the unknown in materials conservation. This paper focuses on identifying knowledge for cultural materials conservation of world culture objects, specifically a rare Indonesian musical instrument known as a bundengan. The study examines the ambiguous tensions surrounding a rare instrument located in an archive geographically isolated from its source community and how it acts as a social trigger to revive living heritage and performance practices, and to build culturally responsible communities of practice in conservation. An ontological framework to expand the knowledge of objects within and outside the archive is presented. The reiterative ontology draws on four disciplinary domains – archives, ethnomusicology, conservation, and performance – to build upon processual knowledge and networks of care, allowing deep connections with contemporary performance communities to emerge.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableBones of Contention: Social Acceptance of Digital Cemetery Technologies(ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY, 2023)
-
ItemCybernetic Funeral Systems(IEEE, 2021)Using Postphenomenology (one of many methods informed by Wiener's cybernetics) as an analytical approach, this paper examines three examples of robot participation in, and mediation of, funerals. The analysis of robot mediation of funerals challenges the idea that death rituals are exclusively human performances and experiences, and instead repositions them as cybernetic systems of entanglement and impact. The paper begins with an introduction to the relevance of postphenomenological theory, then moves to the case of CARL, a robot that enables remote participation in funeral ceremonies. We argue that the [Human-Robot-Funeral] relation and its variants are both engaging and alienating, through revealing-concealing, magnification-reduction and a more generalised enabling-constraining. Technological mediation is also evident in the case of Pepper, a robot that has officiated at funerals as a Buddhist monk. We describe similarities and differences in the way CARL and Pepper manifest the [Human-Robot-Funeral] relation. The final example is AIBO, a companion robot that becomes the locus of a funeral ritual. This offers a radical case that directly challenges humans' self-proclaimed exceptional ontology.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableA Post-Colonial Horrea Piperataria(ASCS, 2022)Rome’s Horrea Piperataria – or ‘Pepper Warehouse’ – receives little more than a passing mention in our discussions of the Imperial Forum. Given the minimal archaeological and textual record, this is not surprising. Within a century of its Domitianic construction, the horrea had all but burned to the ground. When the Basilica of Maxentius was constructed in the early fourth century, the horrea disappeared from view entirely. It would seem that Rome’s emporium of herbs and spices from across the Empire has little to tell us. But is that the whole story? Recent excavations beneath the Basilica have uncovered new details about the warehouse’s internal space. If we consider the visual literacy of Rome’s population, we can situate the horrea within an architectural typology and begin to uncover its presence within the city. And adopting a post-colonial lens both reconstructs the social experience of this site and interrogates its post-classical scholarly reception. Many locations across the Roman world possess an equally fragmentary record. Yet many also enjoy considerably more attention in the literature than the Horrea Piperataria. This paper will reveal the horrea as a site of multicultural exchange and social identity in a diverse ancient city. In this process, it will also question whether eurocentrism incorrectly shaped – or rather diminished – our view of the Horrea Piperataria as being of minimal importance in the imperial power landscape.
-
ItemDeveloping Museum to Museum Cultural Engagement Between Australia and Timor Leste(Swinburne Press, 2022-01-12)
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableModelling decay in stone heritage using Machine Learning(National Gallery, University College London and Imperial College London, 2022)
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableJames Stirling, first governor of Western Australia and imperial investor(Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery Project in collaboration with National Centre for Biography, 2021-03-18)Admiral James Stirling arrived on Noongar land in 1829 to proclaim it the British colony of Western Australia. Officially, he represented the British government. Unofficially, he represented the commercial interests of his family, a collection of British naval officers, East India Company administrators and directors, imperial merchants, shipping magnates, their wives and their descendants. Stirling pursued the colony as an investment opportunity, first with the Colonial Office and then through land selections, the manipulation of market conditions and private capital-raising schemes. This pursuit was shaped by three, interrelated social phenomena. Firstly, numerous strands of his family had become wealthy through transatlantic and Caribbean slavery. Secondly, British government incentives for establishing a colony on the western side of Australia strengthened at the same time as it was shifting away from the ‘slave colonies’ and certain forms of unfree labour. And third, this shift placed pressure on the Stirling family to secure new income streams to maintain affluence and power. This seminar will explore these dynamics and ask: in what ways does the intergenerational biographical method expand and enliven, or alternatively risk reducing, our understanding of the legacies of British slavery in the Australian settler colonies?
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableNational Biographies and Transnational Lives: legacies of British slavery across the empire(Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery Project in collaboration with National Centre for Biography, 2021-04-01)Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and slavery affected the lives and fortunes of many nineteenth-century immigrants to the Australian colonies. Some transferred capital directly from plantation economies to newly burgeoning settler colonial societies; for others, the connections were more diffuse. As historians have shown, the Australian colonies provided individual immigrants with an opportunity to refashion their existing reputations or even create them afresh. At the same time, collective colonial and settler identities were asserted in cultural, social, economic and political fora. This seminar explores dictionaries of biography as sites for the mutual constitution of individual and national (or colonial) identities. Alongside a consideration of how slavery and the slavery business feature in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Biographical Dictionary of Western Australians, it explores how Britain and its other settler colonies remembered, forgot, or suppressed, the legacies of British slavery in their national biographical dictionaries.