An archaeology of lunacy: Managing madness in early nineteenth-century asylums

ISBN-13: 9781526126498 Publisher: Manchester University Press Publication date: 07/15/2019 Series: Social Archaeology and Material Worlds Pages: 200 Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d) An archaeology of lunacy is a materially focused exploration of the first wave of public asylum building in Britain and Ireland, which took place during the late-Georgian and early Victorian period. Examining architecture and material culture, the book proposes that the familiar asylum archetype, usually attributed to the Victorians, was in fact developed much earlier. It looks at the planning and construction of the first public asylums and assesses the extent to which popular ideas about reformed management practices for the insane were applied at ground level. Crucially, it moves beyond doctors and reformers, repopulating the asylum with the myriad characters that made up its everyday existence: keepers, clerks and patients. Contributing to archaeological scholarship on institutions of confin