Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxv:4 (Spring, 2005), 591-603.

Richard Grassby

Material Culture and Cultural History Many cultural

historians ignore the physical environment in which culture is
embedded. They elevate abstract ideas above things, symbolic
meaning above utility, and imagination above empirical facts.
They generalize from images and texts as though they were mate-
rial commodities, focusing on how the world was represented and
perceived, not on how it functioned or how it was physically or
emotionally experienced. Style is accorded more significance than
form or content; the method of representation is considered to
be as meaningful as the object. In the giddy world of symbolic in-
terpretation, goods have no practical use and the consumption
function has no basis in reality. An indulgent subjectivism creates
what has been termed the conceptual equivalent of the permissive
society.'
Material life is partly shaped by cultural imperatives. Social
reality has to be structured to be perceived and understood.
Whether it communicates through words or visual representation,
the cultural system relies on metaphor and symbolism. When lit-
eral language fails, people express ideas through metaphorical
analogies. Economists have their personal agendas and employ
rhetoric, metaphors, and allegories, as well as logic and mathemat-
ics. Historians often conceptualize in metaphors to relate concrete
facts to abstractions.2
Culture is, however, evinced in distinct forms generated by
Richard Grassby is a retired scholar currently residing in Hagerstown, Maryland. He is the au-
thor of Kinship and Capitalism: Marriage, Family and Business in the English-Speaking World,
158o-1740 (New York, 2001); The Idea of Capitalism before the Industrial Revolution (Lanham,
Md., 1999).

C 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary

History, Inc.

I Theodore K. Rabb and Jonathan Brown "Introduction," in Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg
(eds.), Art and History: Images and Their Meaning (New York, 1988), 5; Ernest Gellner,
"Knowledge of Nature," in Mihulas Teich, Roy Porter, and Bo Gustafsson (eds.), Nature and
Society in Historical Context (Cambridge, I997), I6.
2 Christopher Y. Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford, 1999), 7; Deirdre N.
McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (Madison, 1998; orig. pub. 1985), 19; Jacques Le Goff,
(trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman), History and Memory (New York, 1992), 121;
Roger Chartier (trans. Lydia G. Cochrane), Cultural History: Between Practices and Representa-
tions, (Ithaca, 1988), 96.

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592 RICHARD GRASSBY

human responses to opportunities in specific histo

Hence historians of material culture use artifacts, as w
evidence, to reconstruct the patterns of meanin
norms shared by members of society. As in archa
thetic theory, the formal system is both perceived
through material things.
What is the value and importance of this appro
problems of evidence and interpretation have to be
goods possess intrinsic meaning or is culture respon
ing it? Do people impose meaning on things, or do
it in them? Can the study of artifacts be integrate
theory? These questions arise in all cultures and pe
they will be considered primarily in relation to th
society of early modern England.3

ARTIFACTS AS EVIDENCE Historians of material cu

categorize, and compare the characteristics of a
structed objects that have survived in physical or r
form-their size, shape, color, design, weight, and
the help of literary and archival records they identify
the quantity, as well as the quality, of goods and
they were made, distributed, and related to each o
where they appeared; and who acquired them for
are artifacts subjected to archaeometric analysis of
structure and viewed in a specific temporal sequen
context. Goods are subjected to both etic and emic
study of their objective attributes and their signif
who used them. The ultimate objective is to mo
concrete data and grasp the more nebulous concep
Objects give material form to the rules and beli
those who trade, purchase, or use them. Those wit
utes can be grouped as a style or type characteristi
period. Unlike cultural anthropologists, material c
not be directly concerned with systems of belief a

3 This article draws on the author's unpublished study of the material c

business community, 1590-1740.
4 Daniel Miller, "Introduction," in idem (ed.), Material Cultures: Why
(Chicago, 1998), I9; D. J. Bryden and D. L. Simms, "Spectacles Impro
Annals of Science, L (1993), 27; Jules D. Prown, Art as Evidence: Writing
Culture (New Haven, 2001), 93.

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MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY 593

tivity, but they are certainly interested in goods a

tools of culture, and in the structural patterns by whic
organized into meaningful relationships.5
This approach engages the senses as well as the m
images and tactile objects help to recapture choses vecue
cal conditions of everyday life and the options for acti
ent groups. The exteriors and interiors of home
people met the basic needs of food, shelter, and
whether levels of comfort, privacy, personal security,
proved. Changes in the material quality of life in e
England have been demonstrated by a quantitative
time of both goods and services.6
The number, type, repetition, and distribution
different levels of society identify luxuries and dist
from needs. The emergence of a consumer society
century England tended to blur the distinction. Omi
gories from certain contexts indicate the preference
particular groups. By establishing where and when it
historians can identify patterns of selection as wel
variation from the norm, innovations, transfers from
and revivals. The juxtaposition of objects in space is
For instance, the relative position of graves in a
cemetery indicates social relationships and family co
Objects can be read as well as counted. Goods m
statements about the hierarchies of value. They car
personal information within a larger framework. Ina
communicate relationships and mediate progress th
cial world; their diffusion bridges cultural boundarie
centers with peripheries. Although artifacts are produc
ular moments, their persistence creates histories. In
formation and ideas, they can convey hidden cultur
moral standards, social fears, and emotionally laden

5 Mikhail M. Bakhtin (ed. Michael Holquist; trans. Caryl Emerson

Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin, 1981), 262.
6 Thomas J. Schlereth, Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence,
7 Ian W. Brown, "The New England Cemeteries," in Steven Lubar and
(eds.), History from Things (Washington, D.C., 1993), 140-159.
8 Grant D. McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the S
Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington, 1988), 19; Cary Carson, "Th
lution in Colonial British America," in Ronald Hoffmann, idem, and Peter
Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlo

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594 RICHARD GRASSBY

Possessions, if carefully interpreted, constitut

character, interest, and quality of life. The relative
and symbolic importance of goods can be gauged fr
portionate volume, mass, scale, and distribution. T
objects becomes clear within narrative contexts. Ar
the depth of image that artists create through linear
spective; for example, inventories of artifacts can r
teriors of early modern English houses that no longer
cases, like the archaeological site at Port Royal, Ja
was devastated by an earthquake, the interdepend
has been preserved completely intact.9
Material culture sheds light on how people unde
selves. Objects and their combinations can evoke t
of a house or room. Artifacts can convey a sensor
the past through sight, smell, touch, and texture. I
England, people were more occupied with things t
stractions; distance, quantity, and time were measu
Making sense of past experience requires replicatin
texture of life.10
Culture structures behavior and design. Furnitu
ing, for example, reflect specific attitudes to the body
sign can, like architecture, be seen as a cultural per
arrangement of furniture creates a unified visual and
of fixed settings; the larger pieces serve as symmetric
cented by smaller pieces. The position of chairs and
walls or in the center of a room, creates zones of ac
individuals can pose or interact. The layout determ
contact is restricted or facilitated and whether go
or displayed. Artifacts have both practical and sym
indicating changing hierarchies of value."

Robert B. St. George, "Introduction," in idem (ed.), Material Life in

(Boston, 1988), 8; Karin L. F. Calvert, Children in the House: The Mate
Childhood, 16oo-19oo (Boston, 1992), 4.
9 See, for example, the apothecary's shop, reconstructed by David
Inventories and Provincial Retailers," in Philip Riden (ed.), Probate R
Community (Gloucester, 1985), 96-97. Henry M. Miller et al. (eds.), The
teenth- and Seventeenth-Century British Colonization in the Caribbean, Un
(Tucson, 1996), 7.
10 Keith V. Thomas, "Numeracy in Early Modern England," Transactio
torical Society, XXXVII (1987), 122-123.
11 Mimi Hellman, "Furniture, Sociability, and the Work of Leisure,"
Studies, XXXII (1999), 417. This study of France illustrates the exagg
proach to domestic interiors.

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MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY 595

THE MEANING OF OBJECTS How can the significance

measured? Postmodern archaeologists deny that the an
of artifacts can result in a single meaning, since mean
intrinsically to various practices. Meanings are divers
is specific. According to Geertz, the specific pattern
systemic relationships between diverse phenomen
pressed either by artifacts or by performances. The inh
ing of goods is dependent on a knowledge of
perceptions external to the objects involved. People co
terial culture. Ideas, beliefs, and meanings interpose
between people and things. The value of goods in ear
England varied with individual desires, social ambitio
ket for exchange, and cultural prescription.12
Material culturalists have to take account of individual moti-
vation and the psychology of taste. The meaning of any object is
not separable from the opportunity and desire to acquire it. Sym-
bolic properties may be less influential than the personal search for
identity. In a consumer-driven society such as eighteenth-century
England, things are often more important for their associations and
their past histories than for their ostensible properties. Clothes and
jewelry perpetuate significant memories for those who wear them.
Possessions take value in collection and arrangement; the ultimate
referent is personal experience. According to certain scholars, the
physical solidity of artifacts provided a defense against a fleeting
memory and a precarious identity in a mutable world. The most
valued objects are usually those hardest to acquire. When goods
increase in volume and availability, they yield less satisfaction. But
value is usually created by the intensity of desire, not simply by
rarity, which may reflect only lack of demand.13
Goods also have social utility and mediate human relation-
ships; people want to symbolize and advance their status through
display and conspicuous consumption. Consumption in early

12 Tilley, "On Modernity and Archaeological Discourse," in Ian Bapty and Tim Yates
(eds.), Archaeology after Structuralism: Post-Structuralism and the Practice of Archaeology (London,
1990), 15I; Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 44. One attempt
to reconstruct the performances of a culture is Donna Merwick, Possessing Albany, 163o-1710o:
The Dutch and English Experiences (Cambridge, 1990), 3. Ian Hodder, Reading the Past: Current
Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology (New York, I99I; orig. pub. I986), 3, 6.
13 Peter Stallybrass, "Worn Worlds," in Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and idem
(eds.), Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture (New York, 1996), 3; Colin Campbell, "The
Meaning of Objects," Journal of Material Culture, I (1996), 94-97; Mark Csikszentmihalyi,
"Why We Need Things," in Lubar and Kingery (eds.), History from Things, 28.

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596 1 RICHARD GRASSBY

modern England was not just the voluntary pursuit of objects but a
compulsory social activity, vulnerable to changes in perception
and fashion, in which the manner was as vital as the fact of posses-
sion. The display of possessions has always demonstrated new
status, protected the existing hierarchy within and between
groups, and announced social standing and allegiance. Group
identity involves consumption and display. Elites strive to corner
the market in certain cultural products. Possessions may belong
initially to individuals, but in the long run, they can be accumu-
lated only by families or institutions.14
To economic determinists, material culture is created and
defined by the market. As Sahlins argued, the "differentiation of
symbolic value is mystified as the appropriation of exchange-
value." To traditional Marxists and to critical theorists, capitalism's
pecuniary culture and bourgeois society were based on the ex-
change of commodities for profit, more like fetishes than genuine
human needs. Some argue that in early modern England, capital-
ism incorporated culture into economics as a formal rationality;
culture became a commodity produced, distributed, and con-
sumed like other goods. Once individuals were no longer eco-
nomically self-sufficient, they measured their worth by what they
possessed. English paintings and printed works have been inter-
preted as metaphorical as well as literal representations of the
market. Indeed, the market in academic discourse has become
a metaphor of practices that cannot be felt or located with pre-
cision."5
Cultural historians have a reverse perspective; lifestyles and

14 Pierre Bourdieu (trans. Richard Nice), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of
Taste (Cambridge, Mass. 1984), xiii, 96, 229, 483; Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The
World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (New York, 1996; orig. pub. 1979), 4-
5, 73.
15 Marshall D. Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago, 1976), 213; Nigel Thrift,
"Owner's Time and Our Time," in Allan Pred (ed.), Space and Time in Geography: Essays
Dedicated to Torsten Hiigerstrand (Lund, 1981), 56; John Brewer and Anne Bermingham, "In-
troduction," in idem (eds.), The Consumption of Culture 16oo-18oo: Image, Object, Text (New
York, 1995), 14; Ben Fine and Ellen Leopold, The World of Consumption (London, 1993), 68;
Elizabeth A. Honig, Painting and The Market in Early Modern Antwerp (New Haven, 1999), I8;
Chartier (trans. Cochrane), "Introduction," in idem, The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of
Print in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1989), 9; Theodore B. Leinwand, Theater, Finance and
Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1999), 5; Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biogra-
phy of Things," in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), 72-73.

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MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY 597

tastes are not subjective or utilitarian but culturally d

Thus, they do not view the choice and preparation of
matter of individual taste and smell. To them, eating in
ern England was more a mental activity than a physic
costume more a manner of communication than a mean
ing warm and dry. The symbolic characteristics of ob
precedence over their physical properties. Constellatio
jects are formed by cultural norms; the design and arra
furniture reflect predetermined postures and allocation
Clothes in a drawer have no meaning, but when worn
come a uniform with social and moral implications. Cul
meaning and thereby economic value to new goods;
tablishes taste and directs individual desires and creati
cultural interpretation of material life is as one-sided and
the economic interpretation of material culture.16

LIMITATIONS AND CONSTRAINTS The study of material

early modern England encounters several problems.
physical evidence is ambiguous. Artifacts do not usuall
clear message, or even an adequate picture, of everyday
survival depends on so many random factors that no c
body of rules can be established to judge their represen
Finely crafted works made of durable materials were m
common than ordinary goods, which wore out from fr
Cheap utensils made of leather or wood disintegrated u
happened to sink into a marsh. Many products are eph
nature, either totally consumed or self-disintegratin
dent, chip, and oxidize. When their utility is reduc
technology or fashion, they are discarded as valueless. M
that survive belonged to the rich or to public bodies. V
record remains of what has been lost. Because museu
know the provenance of their artifacts, they tend to separ

16 Stephen Mennell, All Manner of Food: Eating and Taste in England (Urb
Kevin Walsh, "The Post-Modern Threat to the Past," in Bapty and Yates (eds.),
after Structuralism, 285. Marcia R. Pointon, Strategies for Showing: Women, Posses
sentation in English Visual Culture, 1665-18oo (Oxford, 1997), 53; Chandra
Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York, I983), 13; Edmund
ture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected: An Introduct
Structuralist Analysis in Social Anthropology (New York, 1976), 55. Eric K. Silverm
Geertz," in Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneu
Structuralism (London, 1990), 126.

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598 I RICHARD GRASSBY
from their context, assuming a uniform cultural background to
give coherence to their displays. Until recently, museums sought
the unique, significant, and noble to the neglect of the ordinary
and utilitarian. Paintings are revered for their aesthetic qualities
and creative originality, not for what they reveal about those who
commissioned or acquired them.17
Probate inventories of personal possessions survive in large
numbers for England, but they are unevenly distributed by period
and region. Those from after 1700, when the volume of personal
goods increased, are less common and less detailed. It is often
difficult to judge the design of furniture or to distinguish luxuries
from basic necessities or tools. Appraisers usually knew the market,
but their responsibility was to assess the resale value, not the qual-
ity, of goods; iron, brass, pewter, silver, and gold were usually
listed by weight. Despite the random effect of sudden death, in-
ventories also relate primarily to older persons and to one stage of
the life cycle.
Inventories also remove things from their proper context.
They can establish the existence and value of objects, but not their
personal significance. Nor are they comprehensive. Many com-
mon personal items were omitted because they had been be-
queathed by will, taken by a widow or relatives, or considered
trivial, ephemeral, or cheap; children's toys, clothes, small utensils,
and food routinely fell into this category. Clothes and utensils are
often bunched in parcels. Many items defy clear identification be-
cause of vague descriptions or strange spellings or nomenclature.18
Artifacts mirror both a producing and a consuming image.
Material goods are subjects and objects at the same time. Subjects
can be reified as objects and objects idolized as subjects. Artifacts

17 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago,
1983), 233; Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in Eng-
land, c. 1200-1520 (Cambridge, 1989), 207; Krzystof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs et
curieux. Paris, Venise XVIe-XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1987), 16; Donald Preziosi, "The Question of
Art History," in James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry Harootunian (eds.), Ques-
tions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines (Chicago, 1994), 221; Ivor
Noel Hume, "Material Culture with the Dirt on It," in Ian M. Quimby (ed.), Material Culture
and the Study of American Life (New York, 1978), 38-39.
18 The best guide to the strengths and weaknesses of English inventories is Vaisey, "Intro-
duction," in idem (ed.), Probate Inventories of Litchfield and District 1568-168o (Stafford, 1969).
See also Lorna Weatherill, "Probate Inventories and Consumer Behaviour in England, 1660-
1740," in Geoffrey H. Martin and Peter Spufford (eds.), The Records of the Nation (London,
1990), 268; Nancy C. Cox, "Objects of Worth," Material History Review, XXXIX (1994), 33.

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MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY 599

constitute both the evidence employed to reconstitu

and part of the very culture that they are supposed t
though most early cultures, like that of England bef
teenth century, tried to limit accumulation and cons
diffusion and influence of goods in practice proved
control. Objects were continuously renovated, redisc
ied, and given new values.19
Artifacts cannot reveal underlying cultural value
other evidence. They say little about intentions, whic
inferred from behavior, and their study does not gen
mine their personal meaning. A string of pearls may
worn for status or for sentimental reasons. To "read" inanimate
objects is speculative at best. The world as lived is different from
the world as thought.
Nor is there a foolproof method of distinguishing the literal
from the emblematic in any past work of art. Early modern Eng-
lish paintings may be simple depictions with no hidden meaning.
Whatever their interpretive bias, one of their functions was to re-
cord people and events. Neither the precise intentions of artists
nor the reactions of their proposed audiences can easily be deter-
mined. Symbolic images in the seventeenth century were usually
contested, frequently misunderstood, and always constrained by
reality. Works painted uyt den gheest cannot be differentiated from
those drawn naer het leven with any certainty. Contemporary artists
frequently copied pictures and depicted stereotypes. Art objects
were rarely intended to represent reality literally; they reflected
what artists wished to portray within the limits of their skills. Art-
ists were often reluctant to depict everyday life because they
wanted to elevate their status and address eternal truths and uni-
versal values. The decorative arts have always constituted a special
class of evidence, shaped by imagination as well as by craft tradi-
tion and the market.20
The analysis of a painting is often a presupposition. A study of
Boston merchant John Freake's portrait describes him as cosmo-
19 Jiirgen Habermas (trans. Thomas Burger), The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 37; David
Lowenthal in Tim Ingold (ed.), Key Debates in Anthropology (London, 1996), 2I I.
20o Ernst H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation
(New York, 1961; orig. pub. 1960); David Wallace, "Bourgeois Tragedy or Sentimental
Melodrama, " Eighteenth Century Studies, XXV (I991), 141; Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The
Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca, 2001), 31.

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600 RICHAR ( GRASSBY

politan, secular, self-confident, self-conscious, a

agant nor mean-solely on the basis of his clean
moustache and natural hair, and his well-cut b
clothes and jewelry: "The exquisite detail would
to deny the subject's pride in personal appeara
the materialistic pleasure brought him by his G
condoned prosperity." The artist was probably
the English didactic tradition to mark the wealt
sitter by treating his body and clothes as props
when painting self-made men. The limner who
trait in 1674 may have followed instructions fro
family about how to depict him. But without
dence, Feake's actual intentions or character def
may have hated the way that he had been repre
The study of objects does not reveal archety
trary, it suggests how easily a culture fragmen
often obscured a proper analysis of visual image
sidestepped the question of quality. Like econom
historians often describe what the world would be like if their the-
ories were correct. Such theories are simulated, not tested against
evidence; whatever validation or invalidation they acquire comes
in comparison with other theories, not empirical discoveries. The
facts are reconstructed from the theory, not the theory from the
facts. Without the discipline of empirical context, theoretical jar-
gon degenerates into gibberish: "'Enclosing' should be not only
localized, but contextualized in the heteroglot conditionality of its
feudal-capitalist interarticulation." Such jargon verges on self-
parody and sounds like the prophesies of the Azande witchdoctors
described by Evans-Pritchard, disembodied voices speaking in dis-
connected sentences.22

21 Ludmilla J. Jordanova, "The Representation of the Family," in Joan H. Pittoch and An-
drew Wear (eds.), Interpretation and Cultural History (New York, 1991), 115; Wayne Craven,
Colonial American Portraiture: The Economic, Religious, Social, Cultural, Philosophical, Scientific,
and Aesthetic Foundations (New York, 1986), 43. Lillian B. Miller, "The Puritan Portrait, Its
Function in Old and New England," in David D. Hall and David G. Allen (eds.), Seventeenth
Century New England (Boston, 1984), 171; Susan E. Strickler, "Recent Findings on the Freake
Portraits," Journal of the Worcester Art Museum, V (1981), 49-55.
22 Ann S. Martin and J. Ritchie Garnison, "Introduction," in idem (eds.), American Material
Culture: The Shape of the Field (Knoxville, 1997); Eric J. Hobsbawm, On History (London,
1997), 11o; McCloskey, "Economics as a Historical Science," in William N. Parker (ed.), Eco-
nomic History and the Modern Economist (Oxford, 1986), 66; Frances Borzello and A. L. Rees
(eds.), The New Art History (London, 1986), 35. The extract is from James R. Siemon, "Land-

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MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY 60I

Modern attempts to reconstruct how individuals thought and

acted in the early modern period are obstructed by the lack of im-
mediate, physical contact and the intervention of theory. Earlier
generations did not necessarily conform to the categories of mod-
ern intellectuals. Defining by metaphor is dangerous, and proving
by metaphor is impossible. During the seventeenth century, sev-
eral thinkers came to distrust metaphor and theoretical correspon-
dence, provoking what has been termed a crisis of represen-
tation.23

Despite these difficulties, establishing the quantity and variety of

movables in early modern England or their method of distribution
does not present much of a problem. Little was thrown away until
devoid of any use. The quality of goods can frequently be inferred
from valuations, allowing for price fluctuations caused by seasonal
shortages, interruptions in supply and distribution, and changes in
fashion and technology. Many possessions were itemized and ap-
praised with fastidious care. Many houses still stand, and vast num-
bers of physical artifacts and works of art still survive. Archaeo-
logical finds unearthed during excavations also supplement the
documentary evidence.24
Theory and empiricism can be regarded as mutually reinforc-
ing modes of historical study. Although the past is not an objective
entity, historical knowledge can be transmitted and insights ac-
quired and exchanged. No interpretation can be wholly subjective
because meaning must be shared. A hegemonic culture must be
persuasive and connect with the subjective experience of a partic-
ular group. Universalist theories of cultural determinism have
been successfully challenged by an ideographic or relativist ap-

lord Not King: Agrarian Change and Interarticulation," in Richard Burt and John M. Archer
(eds.), Enclosure Acts, Sexuality, Property and Culture in Early Modern England (London, 1994),
29. Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford, 1937),
169.
23 Thomas, "Ways of Doing Cultural History," in Rik Sanders et al. (eds.), Balans en
Perspectief van de Nederlandse cultuurgeschiedenis (Amsterdam, 1991), 77; Richard Pares (ed.
Robert A. and Elizabeth Humphreys), The Historian's Business and Other Essays (Oxford,
1961), 23; Burke, "Fable of the Bees," in Teich, Porter, and Gustafsson (eds.), Nature and Soci-
ety, 114.
24 Donny L. Hamilton, "Simon Benning," in Little (ed.), Text-Aided Archaeology, 39-53;
Paul A. Shackel, "Probate Inventories," ibid., 207; Peter J. Davey, "The Post-Medieval
Period," in John Schofield and Roger Leech (eds.), Urban Archaeology in Britain (London,
1987), 78.

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602 RICHARD GRASSBY
proach. If culture were self-justifying and omniscient, individuals
would have no language in which to discuss or modify it. The
new "New Historicists" have rediscovered the materiality of the
everyday. Applying the methods, rather than the theories, of liter-
ary criticism has yielded positive results.25
Historians, unlike social scientists, do not usually rely on for-
mal arguments or logical deduction from axioms. In the republic
of letters, historians rank with sophists rather than philosophers.
Historians straddle the gulf between culture and reality, arguing
that culture structures, and is structured by, practice over time and
that individuals construct their understanding of the world on the
basis of reality. Unconstrained by rigid parameters or by syn-
chronic models, they have the tools to study the nuts and bolts of
life and explain the process of change.26
Abstract generalizations from literary sources or theoretical
readings of images are not sufficient to understand a historical cul-
ture, like that of early modern England. The attitudes, intentions,
and values of contemporaries require pragmatic study of their be-
havior, their possessions, their various pursuits, and their interac-
tion with the environment. The mentality of those who left no
personal records can be inferred only from the hard, measurable
evidence of the physical artifacts that surrounded them.
The most effective method of reconstructing material culture
is to combine written evidence-didactic and informational litera-
ture and archival documents-with the physical evidence of
buildings, artifacts, and images. Inferences can be tested against

25 T. Jackson Lears, "Concept of Cultural Hegemony," American Historical Review, XC

(1985), 590. Kirsten Hastrup, A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory (New
York, 1995), 183. Melford E. Spiro, "Some Reflections on Cultural Determinism," in Rich-
ard A. Shweder and Robert A. Le Vine (eds.), Culture Theory (Cambridge, 1984), 334-335;
Maurice Bloch, Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology (London, 1989), 6;
Raymond Boudon, The Unintended Consequences of Social Action (New York, 1982), 200; Pa-
tricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt (eds.), Renaissance Culture and the Everyday (Philadelphia,
1999), 5. Martin J. Wiener, "Treating 'Historical' Sources as Literary Texts,"Journal of Modern
History, LXX (1998), 620; David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington (eds.), The
Theatrical City: Culture, Theater and Politics in London, 1576-1649 (Cambridge, 1995).
26 Boudon (trans. Michalina Vaughn), The Uses of Structuralism (London, 1971), 140. Joseph
M. Levine, Autonomy of History: Truth and Method from Erasmus to Gibbon (Chicago, 1999),
lo9; John Smail, The Origins of Middle-Class Culture: Halifax, Yorkshire, 166o-178o (Ithaca,
1994), 42, 47; Merry E. Wiesner in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, (ed.), La donna nell'economia secc.
XIII-X VIII (Florence, 1990), 483.

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MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY 603

precise statements of intention in private papers and against a

behavior. People are culturally influenced but not culturally
structed. The social history of culture continuously interacts
the cultural history of society. The material aspects of cultu
should never be subordinated to its symbolic manifestations
road to myth is paved with metaphors.

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