The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture (Oxford Handbooks)

"The past has left a huge variety of traces in material form. If historians could figure out how to make use of them to create accounts of the past, a far greater range of histories would be available than if historians were to rely on written sources alone. People who do not appear in writings could come into focus; as could the concerns of people that have escaped writing but whose material things belie their desires and actions. This book explores various ways in which aspects of the past of peoples in many times and places otherwise inaccessible can come alive to the material culture historian. It is divided into five thematic sections that address history, material culture, and-respectively-cognition, technology, symbolism, social distinction, and memory. It does so by means of six individually authored case studies in each section that range from pins to pearls, Paleolithic to Punk"-- Cover The Oxford Handbook of HISTORY AND MATERIAL CULTURE Copyright Dedication Contents List of Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: Why History and Material Culture? Material Culture, Material Pluralism Five Fields of History and Material Culture Notes Part I: HISTORY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND COGNITION Chapter 1: Words or Things in American History? Material Culture and How to Categorize the Past Material Culture, Historical Narrative, and the Problem of Scale Twists and Turns: Whither Material Culture? Material Culture, the Past, and Nostalgia Notes Bibliography Chapter 2: Artifacts and Their Functions* What Is Artifact Function and Why Should We Care? Two Theories of Artifact Function: Intentionalism and Conventionalism An Etiological Account of Function Conclusion: Some Hard Cases Notes Bibliography Chapter 3: Mastery, Artifice, and the Natural Order: A Jewel from the Early Modern Pearl Industry Natural Wonders: Pearls as Collectibles The Art of Mastering Nature Captured Treasures, Treasured Captives Notes Bibliography Chapter 4: Food and Cognition: Henry Norwood’s A Voyage to Virginia A Banquet in Transit Dining with the Werowance A Virginia Planter’s “Well Order’d” Table Notes Bibliography Chapter 5: On Pins and Needles: Straight Pins, Safety Pins, and Spectacularity Introduction A Tale of Two Exhibits The Underpinnings of Spectacularity Spectacular Gaps/Epistemological Folds Notes Bibliography Chapter 6: Mind, Time, and Material Engagement Material Engagement and the Extended Mind Problems with the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis Mind, Time, and Material Agency Epilogue Notes Bibliography Part II: HISTORY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND TECHNOLOGY Chapter 7: Material Time* Materiality and Temporality The Materiality of Time Temporal Strategies: Managing Time Conclusions and Implications: Timing Is All Notes Chapter 8: Remaking the Kitchen, 1800–1850 George and Mary Read’s Kitchen Samuel and Olive Stearns’ House Joseph and Betsey Maybury’s House Charity and George Stearns’ House Conclusions Notes Bibliography Chapter 9: Boston Electric: Science by “Mail Order” and Bricolage at Colonial Harvard Early Lessons in Cambridge: Playing with Exhalations The Leyden Jar Comes to Town Repurposed Glass Jars Home Built versus “Mail Order” Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 10: Making Knowledge Claims in the Eighteenth-Century British Museum* Notes Bibliography Chapter 11: The Ever-Changing Technology and Significance of Silk on the Silk Road The Ancient System during the Han Period in China (200 bce–200 ce) Central Asia, or the Sogdian System (First–Seventh Centuries ce) The New System of Tang Silk Production (Eighth–Twelfth Centuries) The European System of Silk Production (Thirteenth–Eighteenth Centuries) Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 12: Science, Play, and the Material Culture of Twentieth-Century American Boyhood The Freedom of Interwar Boyhood Experimentation The Dangers of Postwar Material Culture: Everybody’s a Child Here Conclusion: Science, Gender, and Protection Notes Bibliography Part III: HISTORY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND THE SYMBOLIC Chapter 13: The Sensory Webof Vision Enchantment and Agency in Religious Material Culture Defining Enchantment A Network Approach to Material Culture Between Relic and Image: Materializing Vision Veronica Since the Middle Ages Notes Bibliography Chapter 14: Sensiotics, or the Study of the Senses in Material Culture and History in Africa and Beyond Seeing Sensing Sensiotics Elaborated Sensiotics and a Yorùbá Sensorium Conclusion—Sensiotics beyond Africa Notes Bibliography Chapter 15: The Numinous Body and the Symbolism of Human Remains The Numinous Religion and the Body in the Study of American Material Culture An Engraved Portrait of Ann Wilkins George Whitefield’s Rib Notes Bibliography Chapter 16: Symbolic Things and Social Performance: Christmas Nativity Scenes in Late Nineteenth-Century Santiago de Chile Theoretical Framework Description of the Objects Votive Practices around the Nativity Scene Viewing the Nativity Scene The Relationship between the Crèche and Its Spectators Celebration and Ritual as Sources of Social Cohesion Conclusions Notes Bibliography Chapter 17: Heritage Religion and the Mormons Notes Bibliography Chapter 18: From Confiscation to Collection: The Objects of China’s Cultural Revolution Material Culture, Class Categories, and China The House Search and the Attack on the “Four Olds” Old Society in New Society Collecting after the Cultural Revolution Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part IV: HISTORY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND SOCIAL DISTINCTION Chapter 19: Persons and Things in Marseille and Lucca, 1300–1450 Notes Bibliography Chapter 20: Cloth and the Rituals of Encounter in La Florida: Weaving and Unraveling the Code Nettles and Velvet: The Language of Clothing Prior to Contact Painted Deerskins and Linen: Florida Natives Meet the Spanish Fleur de Lys and Spanish Wool: The French Encounters in La Florida Notes Bibliography Chapter 21: Street “Luxuries”: Food Hawking in Early Modern Rome* Notes Bibliography Chapter 22: Ebony and Ivory: Pianos, People, Property, and Freedom on the Plantation, 1861–1870* Notes Bibliography Chapter 23: The Material Culture of Furniture Production in the British Colonies Notes Bibliography Chapter 24: Material Culture, Museums, and the Creation of Multiple Meanings The Biography of Museum Objects Entwining Texts and Objects Numinous Objects The Culture of Museums Museums as Sacred Places Collecting and Exhibiting Scottish Identities Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part V: HISTORY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND MEMORY Chapter 25: Chronology and Time: Northern European Coastal Settlements and Societies, c. 500–1050 Material Culture, Memory, and Identity Construction in Coastal Zones, c. 450–600 Coastal Societies and Cycles of Maritime Orientation through Time around the Southern North Sea and Kattegat, c. 650–1000 Material Culture, Representation, and Memory in Port Towns, c. 900–1050 Concluding Remarks Notes Bibliography Chapter 26: Materialities in the Making of World Histories: South Asia and the South Pacific Flexible Palm Leaves Resonant Genealogies Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 27: Mapping History in Clay and Skin: Strategies for Remembrance among Ga’anda of Northeastern Nigeria Spirit Vessels Ga’anda Historical Narratives Mapping Memory in Skin Modeling Memory and History in Clay Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 28: Remember Me: Sensibility and the Sacred in Early Mormonism Mormons, Memory, and the Tangible Mormons, Sentimental Friendship, and Plurality Mormons, Patriarchy, and the Sacred Notes Bibliography Chapter 29: Housing History: The Colonial Revival as Consumer Culture* The Literary Industrial Complex Consumed by the Past A Landscape of the (Historical) Imagination Notes Bibliography Chapter 30: Collecting as Historical Practice and the Conundrum of the Unmoored Object Figural and Textual Representation: Materializing Nathan Hale The Hale Homestead: Space, Place, and Performance Biography and Autobiography: Nathan Hale and Henry Solon Graves Antiquarian or Dilettante? Autobiography, Posterity, and the Infidelities of Portraiture Space, Place, and Performance (Again): Putting Nathan Hale on the National Map Material Texts: Inscribing the Ideal Friendship of Hale and Wyllys Final Words, Persistent Things Conclusion: Future Antiquaries Notes Bibliography Conclusion: The Meaning of Things* Notes Bibliography Index Most Historians Rely Principally On Written Sources. Yet There Are Other Traces Of The Past Available To Historians: The Material Things That People Have Chosen, Made, And Used. This Book Examines How Material Culture Can Enhance Historians' Understanding Of The Past, Both Worldwide And Across Time. The Successful Use Of Material Culture In History Depends On Treating Material Things Of Many Kinds Not As Illustrations, But As Primary Evidence. Each Kind Of Material Thing-and There Are Many-requires The Application Of Interpretive Skills Appropriate To It. These Skills Overlap With Those Acquired By Scholars In Disciplines That May Abut History But Are Often Relatively Unfamiliar To Historians, Including Anthropology, Archaeology, And Art History. Creative Historians Can Adapt And Apply The Same Skills They Honed While Studying More Traditional Text-based Documents Even As They Borrow Methods From These Fields. They Can Think Through Familiar Historical Problems In New Ways. They Can Also Deploy Material Culture To Discover The Pasts Of Constituencies Who Have Left Few Or No Traces In Written Records. The Authors Of This Volume Contribute Case Studies Arranged Thematically In Six Sections That Respectively Address The Relationship Of History And Material Culture To Cognition, Technology, The Symbolic, Social Distinction, And Memory. They Range Across Time And Space, From Paleolithic To Punk. La mayoría de los historiadores basan sus investigaciones principalmente en fuentes escritas. Sin embargo, hay otros rastros del pasado a su disposición: las cosas materiales que la gente ha elegido, fabricado y utilizado. Este libro analiza cómo la cultura material puede mejorar la comprensión del pasado por parte de los historiadores, en todo el mundo y a lo largo del tiempo. El uso adecuado de la cultura material aplicado a la historia depende de que los diversos tipos de objetos materiales se traten no como ilustraciones, sino como testimonios primarios. Cada objeto material -y hay muchos- requiere la aplicación de herramientas de interpretación adecuadas. Tales herramientas se solapan con conocimientos académicos propios de disciplinas relacionadas con la historia, pero a menudo ignoradas por los historiadores, como la antropología, la arqueología y la historia del arte. Los textos de este libro, que desde el Paleolítico hasta el Punk, están organizados temáticamente en seis secciones que abordan respectivamente la relación de la historia y la cultura material con el conocimiento, la tecnología, lo simbólico, las diferencias sociales y la memoria