History and material culture : a student's guide to approaching alternative sources / edited by Karen Harvey.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Things that shape history : material culture and historical narratives / Giorgio Riello -- Ornament as evidence / Andrew Morrall -- Back yards and beyond : landscapes and history / Marina Moskowitz -- Draping the body and dressing the home : the material culture of textiles and clothes in the Atlantic world, c. 1500-1800 / Beverly Lemire -- Using buildings to understand social history : Britain and Ireland in the seventeenth century / Anne Laurence -- Object biographies : from production to consumption / Karin Dannehl -- Regional identity and material culture / Helen Berry -- Objects and agency : material culture and modernity in China / Frank Dik说ter -- Mundane materiality, or, should small things still be forgotten? Material culture, microhistories and the problem of scale / Sara Pennell -- The case of the missing footstool : reading the absent object / Glenn Adamson.

Harvey opens up the discussion on sources to those beyond the'traditional' textual ones, and into the material realm. Through 12 chapters different historians look at a variety of material sources from around the world and across centuries to assess how such sources can be used to study history.