Abstract

Things That Matter. Material Culture in the Study of Early Modern History

The paper investigates the significance of things and material culture in the study of early modern history. The first part reconstructs the history of a model of a winch and shows that the object’s meaning stemmed from its materialisation of memories and emotions for its owner, from the representation of technological change, and from the way it functioned for emerging new knowledge of mechanics in the early seventeenth century. Histories of objects, as this section shows, cross-connect diverse research fields and produce narratives that reveal multi-layered realities. The middle part of the paper discusses the theoretical catalysts for the history of material culture, explores the existing fields of research, and inquires about the value of things as historical sources and the related methodological consequences. The last part argues that both the change of material culture and the way early modern men and women used, exchanged, and interpreted the things that surrounded them belong to the fundamental characteristics of the early modern period.