History through material culture

HISTORY THROUGH MATERIAL CULTURE

IHR RESEARCH GUIDES

General editor: Lawrence Goldman

Series editors: Jonathan Blaney, Simon Trafford and Jane Winters

This series is for new researchers in history. By offering a practical introduction to a sub-discipline of history, each book equips its readers to navigate a new field of interest. Every volume provides a survey of the historiography and current research in the subject; describes relevant methodological issues; looks at available primary sources in different media and formats and the problems of their access and interpretation. Each volume includes practical case studies and examples to guide your research, and handy tips on how to avoid some of the pitfalls which may lie in wait for the inexperienced researcher.

The guides are suitable for advanced final-year undergraduates, master’s and first-year PhD students, as well as for independent researchers who wish to take their work to a more advanced stage.

Already published

Using film as a source Sian Barber

HISTORY THROUGH MATERIAL CULTURE

LEONIE HANNAN AND SARAH LONGAIR

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Leonie Hannan and Sarah Longair 2017

The right of Leonie Hannan and Sarah Longair to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 1 7849 9126 5 paperback

First published 2017

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in ITC New Baskerville Std by

Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Introduction

1  Approaches to the material world

2  Planning a research project

3  Developing a methodology

4  Locating sources: understanding museum collections and other repositories

5  Analysing sources

6  Writing up findings

Afterword

Select bibliography and resources

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1  Rowntree’s ‘Dairy Box’ tin.

1.1  Woodcut of the Wunderkammer room, from the book Dell’historia naturale by Ferrante Imperato (Naples: C.Vitale, 1599).

2.1  Diagram illustrating range of questions that can be asked of an object, and subsequent avenues to pursue.

2.2  Benjamin West, Joseph Banks (1773).

2.3  Andrea Mantegna, Adoration of the Magi (c. 1495–1505).

2.4  Olowe of Ise, Palace of the Ogoga of Ikere (c. 1900).

2.5  Loving cup with two handles, with portrait of Horatio Nelson, flanked by trophies with inscriptions including the phrase ‘England expects every man to do his duty’ and a verse praising Nelson (c. 1820).

3.1  A sketch by Vivienne Richmond of a pair of hand-stitched drawers found in the English Girls’ Friendly Society Archive.

4.1  (a and b) Chinese spoon (top and underside) found on the East African coast, showing the accession number marked on the underside.

5.1  Object analysis protocols.

5.2  (a and b) Object records. Sketch of earthenware pot by Joey O’Gorman.

5.3  Pair of chopines (c. 1550–1650).

5.4  Pair of chopines (c. 1600).

5.5  Pair of chopines (c. 1590–1610).

6.1  (a, b and c) Sample object label format and two examples.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over many years, we have both been fortunate to work with a great number of colleagues, students and visitors in museums, galleries, universities and collections whose insights have informed our understanding of the material world and have therefore been fundamental to the writing of this book. We would like to express our deep gratitude to all of these inspiring people, who are too numerous to name individually. During this period of work, we have been particularly indebted to colleagues and friends at UCL Museums & Collections, Queen’s University Belfast, the British Museum and the University of Lincoln for their support.

While we have been compiling this guide, several people have generously given up their valuable time to advise on aspects of the text or to discuss particular issues. Our thanks go to Katy Barrett, Laura Basell, James Davey, Mark Gardiner, Lydia Hamlett, JD Hill, Deborah Howard, Bryony Millan, Claire Reed and Rebecca Wade. Vivienne Richmond also kindly gave her permission for us to reproduce her sketch of a pair of hand-stitched, prize-winning drawers, for which we are most grateful.

Working with our editor Emma Brennan and the team at Manchester University Press has been a very positive experience and they have made the challenging task of writing such a book both enjoyable and rewarding. The series editors at the Institute of Historical Research and the anonymous readers have provided invaluable, astute and constructive advice, which has helped enormously towards making a growing and dynamic field such as material culture history accessible for our readers.

We first came to know one another when we participated in the 100 Hours project, funded by UCL’s Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects in 2013. This experiment in material culture research (the brainchild of Leonie and of Kate Smith, now at the University of Birmingham) brought together ten researchers to work on ten objects, for 100 hours. Together, we encountered an intriguing array of objects, approaches and people, and the participants have become valued colleagues and friends, who have all influenced the text of this book in different ways. This experience also laid the foundations for our own working partnership. The 100 Hours project would not have been possible without the particular support and enthusiasm of the late Professor Lisa Jardine. We hope that she would be pleased with this book both as an outcome of our collective study of objects and as a method of supporting future students in making the study of the material world central to their historical practice.

Belfast and London, June 2016.

GLOSSARY

This glossary explains terms used within and relevant to this book, giving accepted dictionary definitions (Oxford English Dictionary) or focusing upon their usage in material culture scholarship as appropriate. Words in italic refer to terms defined elsewhere in the glossary.

INTRODUCTION

As long as humans have made material things, material things have shaped human history. They were the things people in the past sat on, wore, ate from, hunted with, treasured, wrote upon, wrote with, traded, exchanged and longed after. Material things influence our needs and define our aspirations; they express our ideas, encode value and convey messages (Figure 0.1). For historians, finding ways to access the values and meanings embodied within material things brings the past into clearer focus.

For many of us, it is the things of the past – whether encountered in the attic, in the museum or in the landscape – which first inspired our interest in history. This interest might be prompted by an aesthetic appreciation of an object, an emotional engagement with its owner or simply a memory of that moment of discovery and the curiosity it prompted – what is it, why is it here and what does it mean? This is one form of engagement most of us can relate to when we consider the charm of a treasured artefact. As Sherry Turkle has put it, ‘We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with.’¹ But then there are also the ordinary things, the overlooked, the everyday – they fill our worlds, make our routine actions possible (or obstruct them). We cannot – as Lorraine Daston has emphasised – even ‘imagine a world without things’.² Material culture frames all of our actions and experiences and is constitutive of them. Material culture sheds light on our production and consumption of goods, our power relations, social bonds and networks, gender interactions, identities, cultural affiliations and beliefs. Material culture communicates all kinds of human values, from the economic or political to the social and cultural. And whilst historical objects cannot offer a direct and clear window on past worlds they are a powerful form of evidence, and a ‘provocation to thought’³ they are as complex, deceptive, partial and multi-layered as textual survivals.

0.1 A Rowntree’s ‘Dairy Box’ tin (purchased 1953). This product containing assorted chocolates was launched by Rowntree’s, a British chocolate business, in 1937. Confectionary was rationed during the Second World War, a regulation which remained in place until 1953. This box belonged to a former colonial officer, purchased en route to West Africa for his first posting shortly before the end of rationing on confectionary. He retained the box as a memento of his journey, in particular the memory of the ship’s shop allowing him to buy as much as he wished as rationing did not apply there. This was shown to Sarah Longair in 2016 as part of a British Academy / Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant project entitled ‘Objects of Colonial Memory’. Author’s photo.

Since the mid-1970s, disciplines across the arts, humanities and social sciences have experienced a real surge in interest in material culture, which is sometimes referred to as ‘the material turn’.⁴ This proliferation of work on the material world has inspired many historians, working across a wide range of subjects and periods of time. As a consequence, there is now substantial scholarship on the value of material objects for historical research, which often appears in the form of edited collections. Seizing the moment when historical material culture studies is now well established, this student-orientated research guide illuminates how we as historians can engage with material sources in practice. In the preceding paragraph we outlined how exciting and important material culture can be. In the chapters that follow, we will show how you can turn instinctive curiosity into rigorous historical research. What follows is, therefore, a practical introduction for students and researchers who wish to use objects and material culture as primary sources for the study of the past. Throughout this guide, you will find case studies that offer tangible examples of current historical work – their questions, methods and analyses – but it is intended to be read alongside published research on material culture. In the references and suggested reading (located at the end of each chapter) you will find avenues for further enquiry. Here, we use examples drawn from the early modern period through to the twenty-first century, from a wide range of geographical locations, and aim to challenge researchers to try new ways of working as well as providing the guidance necessary to do so. Histories of the