History and material culture

Abstract

This chapter is an attempt to explain the ways in which historians can benefit from engaging with material artefacts and material culture. We have shown how limiting oneself to the written record might be a limitation. Objects, artefacts and material things from the past offer an opportunity to approach new topics and to develop new methods and new types of histories. We have shown how the discipline of history has long engaged with material objects and that today the methodologies adopted by historians are strongly influenced by other disciplines, first among which anthropology and archaeology. We have also tried to approach the topic in a rather practical way by using both modern and pre-modern examples and show what kind of questions and narratives we might ask of an object, and how practically one goes about to study artefacts especially in museums. The engagement with material culture remains complex and requires skills that are still outside the established toolbox of historians. Yet, more than ever, the discipline of history is keen to engage (one might say to re-engage) with its material past.