explores the many ways objectsdefined broadly to range from Chippendale tables and Italian Renaissance pottery to seventeenth-century parks and a New England cemeterycan reconstruct and help reinterpret the past. Eighteen essays describe how to read artifacts, how to listen to landscapes and locations, and how to apply methods and theories to historical inquiry that have previously belonged solely to archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and conservation scientists.

Spanning vast time periods, geographical locations, and academic disciplines, leaps the boundaries between fields that use material evidence to understand the past. The book expands and redirects the study of material culturean emerging field now building a common base of theory and a shared intellectual agenda.