Anne Gerritsen - Writing Material Culture History

Writing History (second edition), Heiko Feldner, Kevin Passmore and Stefan Berger

Writing Medieval History, edited by Nancy F. Partner

Writing Early Modern History, edited by Garthine Walker

Writing Contemporary History, edited by Robert Gildea and Anne Simonin

Writing Gender History (second edition), Laura Lee Downs

Writing Postcolonial History, Rochona Majumdar

Writing the Holocaust, edited by Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Daniel Langton

Writing the History of Memory, edited by Stefan Berger and Bill Niven

Writing the History of Crime, Paul Knepper (2015)

Writing the History of Empire, Alexei Miller (2015)

Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello

Viccy Coltman

Kee Il Choi Jr.

Catherine Richardson

David Gaimster

Suzanne Findlen Hood

Kaori OConnor

Kathleen M. Adams

Dana Leibsohn

Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello

Christina Hellmich

Sandra Cavallo

Flora Dennis

Ann Smart Martin

John Styles

Ulrich Lehmann

Victoria Kelley

Manuel Charpy

Ethan W. Lasser

Lesley Ellis Miller

John McAleer

Jessica Hallett and Raquel Santos

Carolyn Sargentson

Dinah Eastop

Glenn Adamson

Hannah Greig

Kathleen M. Adams, Professor, Department of Anthropology

Loyola University Chicago, USA

Glenn Adamson, Director

Museum of Art and Design (MAD), New York, USA

Sandra Cavallo, Professor, Department of History

Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Manuel Charpy, Researcher, CNRS Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion

Universit de Lille 3, France

Kee Il Choi, Jr. Art Consultant and Historian

New York, USA

Viccy Coltman, Senior Lecturer, School of Art History

University of Edinburgh, UK

Flora Dennis, Senior Lecturer in Art History

University of Sussex, UK

Dinah Eastop, Curatorial Research Fellow, Collection Care Department

The National Archives, Kew, UK

Lesley Ellis Miller, Senior Curator, Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK

Suzanne Findlen Hood, Curator of Ceramics and Glass

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Virginia, USA

David Gaimster, Director

Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, UK

Anne Gerritsen, Reader in Chinese History, Department of History

University of Warwick, UK

Hannah Greig, Lecturer, Department of History

University of York, UK

Jessica Hallett, Historian of Islamic Art and Researcher

Portuguese Centre for Global History (CHAM), Lisbon, Portugal

Christina Hellmich, Curator in Charge, Arts of Africa, Oceania and The Americas and the Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art

deYoung Museum, San Francisco, USA

Victoria Kelley, Reader and Senior Lecturer

University for the Creative Arts, Rochester, UK

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, UK

Ethan W. Lasser, Margaret S. Winthrop Associate Curator of American Art

Harvard Art Museums, USA

Ulrich Lehmann, Professor

University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, UK

Dana Leibsohn, Priscilla Paine Van der Poel Professor of Art

Smith College, USA

John McAleer, Lecturer, Department of History

University of Southampton, UK

Ann Smart Martin, Stanley and Polly Stone Professor in Art History, Director of Material Culture Program

University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Kaori OConnor, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology

University College London, UK

Catherine Richardson, Reader in Renaissance Studies, School of English

University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

Giorgio Riello, Professor of Global History, Department of History

University of Warwick, UK

Raquel Santos, PhD Student and Assistant Researcher

Portugnese Centre for Global History (CHAM), Lisbon, Portugal

Carolyn Sargentson, Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK

John Styles, Research Professor in History, School of Humanties

University of Hertfordshire, UK

Claire Tang, PhD Student, Department of History

University of Warwick, UK

Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello

Just a few years ago, historians would have been sceptical about the value of engaging with objects or artefacts. The expression material culture was equally alien to historical studies and mostly confined to the realm of the investigation of the remote past (pre-historical and ancient) or non-Western societies. Today we speak instead of a material turn in history. On both sides of the Atlantic as well as in many parts of Australasia, historians seem to have experienced a Damascene conversion to material culture. And this is not just limited to historical research. At some institutions, students are now introduced to artefacts as readily as to manuscript and printed sources. History textbooks inevitably contain chapters dedicated to visual and material cultures.

This book is intended as a guide for students and teachers to understanding this new role played by material culture in history. We, as historians, are not the first to address this issue and we approach it with a particular view on how and why our field might benefit from an engagement with material objects.

But what is material culture? The term material culture is defined in different ways depending on

Meaning is a rather opaque concept. It emerges from the relationship between objects and people, but such relationships exist at the personal and individual level as much as they do at the public and collective level. For example, the childrens toys scattered on the floor in the front lounge serve as a first indication that children live in the house. These might have very different meanings: for the children who play with them, the parents who bought them, the friends who gifted them, never mind the producers and sellers of the items. Such toys can then be seen as tokens of affection that bind parents and children in a specific time and place. For the child, however, they might be treasured for very different visual and tactile properties that are appealing to a child, which in turn create a different set of meanings and memories. The toys scattered on the floor are therefore not just material objects but they point at the affective, social, cultural and economic relationships that form our lives.

This present-day example is useful for us to ask more historical questions: were there toys in a similar Objects themselves are not simple props of history, but are tools through which people shape their lives.

The simple acknowledgement that objects can serve as a way of understanding and appreciating the past, does not necessarily explain why and how historians should engage with them. There are many fine historical accounts that do not consider either objects or material culture. The engagement and usefulness of material culture depends on the questions that we ask. A researcher interested in analysing the historical process of imitation, usually between people from different social and cultural classes, also referred to as emulation, might well benefit from including in his or her study the objects and materials that formed part of this process. A scholar interested in the philosophical thought of Hegel, however, might find little help in engaging with material culture methodologies.