Nonrelativistic and Relativistic Continuum Mechanics

There is described a spacetime formulation of both nonrelativistic and relativistic elasticity. Specific attention is devoted to the causal structure of the theories and the availability of local existence theorems for the initial-value problem. Much of the presented material is based on joint work of B.G.Schmidt and the author (in Class.Quantum Grav.\textbf{20} (2003), 889-904).