Haley Stodart

Material Culture
Professor McCleary
17 January 2022
Essay 1: Material Culture Connection
It is surprising how often we use, appreciate, and navigate around objects during our

everyday lives and never question them. In fact, sometimes, we never even acknowledge them.

However, the objects that are a part of and surround our lives can tell us more stories than the

bookshelves within our homes. But how do we hear these stories? How do they relate to those

who own them? The location in which they were found? Or made? Or damaged? Or changed?

These are the questions that are addressed in Tangible Things: Making History Through Objects.

As a book, exhibit, and class, Tangible Things demonstrates how nuanced and connection-based

material culture is. Throughout the written narrative, three crucial notions resonated from the

pages: how we–as humans–speak to objects, how objects speak to us, and how it is difficult to

place these communications, or connections, into boxes or boundaries.

Predominantly in material culture, the value of an object is dependent on human

interaction, communication, and manipulation with it. In fact, “By manipulating [tangible

objects], humans articulate their own relationships with one another.”1 We organize our

relationships like we organize our collections: into categories. In life, they are family, friends,

work, fun, etc; in museums, they are anthropology and archeology, art, books and manuscripts,

history, natural history, and science and medicine.2 These categories are helpful and create an

easily understood organizational structure, but they are flawed; anything constructed by humans

will have to deal with the unpredictability of human nature. Just as our lives change over time, so

do the conversation and manipulations we have with objects and the categories we place them

1 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Ivan Gaskell, Sara Schechner, Sarah Anne Carter, Samantha Van Gerbig, and Samantha
Van Gerbig, Tangible Things: Making History through Objects (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 6-7.
2 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 15-16.
within (or without). All of this depends on how we speak to objects and how we view them.

When discussing a limestone mold with a carving in Things in Place, the authors note that “The

mold might serve as an example of metallurgy, so it would be fitting for categorization in

science and medicine, or anthropology and archeology. Yet if its aesthetic qualities command

attention, the stone might be thought to belong in an art museum.”3 Overall, objects’ placement

within museums all depends on how we speak to said objects by giving them meaning, value,

and use.

Sometimes the value placed on an object is often based on what the object can tell us

about the world in which we live. As the authors mention in the Introduction, “things and human

minds are mutually dependent: Things do not function or even exist independently of the way

humans think of them.”4 Objects may be preserved in museums because of the value we believe

they have to human history, science, or any of the other categories listed above, but they are

continually displayed and studied because of the stories and knowledge they can share, speaking

to us in their own unique way. As emphasized in Things in Stories–Stories in Things,

“Tangible things are inseparable from the stories people create about them as they find

them, make them, use them, and then use them again in different ways... [but] all human-

made material things have the potential to convey information–and in some cases, they

even convey viewers to another world or state of being.”5

By placing meaning onto an object, we allow that object to convey emotions to us, making us

feel and connect to things in a certain way. In the end, it is not necessarily the object itself that is

3 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 56.
4 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 10.
5 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 164.
important, but the emotion, memory, and states of being that object invokes (or speaks to us) that

matters.6

However, if we speak to an object by placing it in a category, what do we do when the

object eventually creates a discussion or understanding that takes it out of said category? This

troublesome inquiry demonstrates the final notion present in Tangible Things: the difficulty of

placing these conversations and connections of material culture within firm boundaries. Just

because an object fits within one definition or category in a museum collection does not mean it

cannot fit within another. Boundaries, within material culture, are never concrete, but humans

often make them because boundaries are comfortable and organized. Museums need to stress the

importance of looking beyond the common and comfortable boundaries: What else can we learn?

What else can they say?

In the exhibition “Tangible Things”, the authors tried to answer these questions in various

ways. For the “Things in Place” portion of the exhibition, they would place sections next to each

that contained overlapping objects.7 This helped create a flow throughout the exhibit and overtly

displayed connections that humans were familiar with. In the “Out of Place” portion, they did the

opposite of familiarity; they placed objects that may seem random, but actually connect to others

in the exhibit when viewed in a different light to encourage guests to explore further avenues of

thought.8 This was to demonstrate that “For all the decisiveness underlying the institutional

categorization of [objects], uncertainty regarding the finality of placement remains a constant

throughout…As soon as one delves into the character of an item, ambiguities open up and

6 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 171.
7 For example, “Anthropology and archeology included examples of writing or pictography systems, which in the
exhibition we placed on the boundary between this section and the adjacent one devoted to books and manuscripts.”
(26)
8 This matters, because “When boundary disruptions occur in a museum display, it can prompt viewers to
reconsider the character of the interloper and the category in which it was placed.” (115)
common sense begins to break down.”9 This just further emphasizes the imperative

understanding in the public history field that “as historians, our task is to reveal, understand, and

explain contingency. We aimed to demonstrate that, in any given set of circumstances, there is

never simply one viable or fruitful way of thinking or behaving.”10

As public historians, and as humans, we have to understand that material culture and

tangible objects have numerous values and meanings that are capable of creating connections

and conversations amongst and between humans and the world we live in. The exciting part of it

all is that this is an evergoing process; there are objects in the world right now that will one day

make their way to museums to continue and further these conversations. How they find their way

to museums is the interesting part; in Tangible Things, they highlight how “Happenstance, as

well as foresight, built Harvard’s collections. A Yankee reluctance to throw things away may

have preserved some of today’s most treasured items.”11 This quote really spoke to me, because

it indicated the power an average person has in history. We often hear of “great man history” or

the notion that people wish to “make their mark on history” as if one must do extraordinary

things to be remembered as extraordinary. However, how we go about our average lives, and the

people and objects we interact with, influence the ways in which we will all be remembered.

This is why museums and other public history must value and understand the power of everyday

people and their everyday things. Material Culture, as a historical practice and understanding,

help us share this power.

9 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 38.
10 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 134.
11 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, et al., Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, 160.