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

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 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 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. Historians can adapt and apply the same skills they honed while studying more traditional text-based sources even as they borrow methods from these fields.-- Provided by publisher