Armas en las casas burgalesas del siglo XVIII. Entre la funcionalidad y el exhibicionismo

Abstract

In domestic interiors in Burgos in the eighteenth century, the post-mortem inventories allow a deep analysis of a rather unknown and disturbing aspect of material culture, the ownership and use of weapons among the urban population of the old Regime. Not all socio-professional and socio-economic categories have access in the same way to firearms or «white» weapons and their availability changes throughout the century. Who owned the weapons? What was their weight on the volume of their fortunes? What accounts for their presence at homes? Personal and domestic protection, professional requirements, exhibitionism in the social hierarchy and ostentation, hunting needs? How much permeability and penetration did weapons know throughout the eighteenth century?