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

MATERIAL AND Richard Grassby and Cultural History Many cultural 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 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 signiªcance 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 .1 Material life is partly shaped by cultural imperatives. reality has to be structured to be perceived and understood. Whether it communicates through words or visual representation, the 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 and : Marriage, Family and Business in the English-Speaking World, 1580–1740 (New York, 2001); The Idea of Capitalism before the Industrial Revolution (Lanham, Md., 1999). © 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.

1 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, 1997), 16. 2 Christopher Y. Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford, 1999), 7; Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of (Madison, 1998; orig. pub. 1985), 19; , (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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 592 | RICHARD GRASSBY human responses to opportunities in speciªc historical contexts. Hence historians of material culture use artifacts, as well as written evidence, to reconstruct the patterns of meanings, values, and norms shared by members of society. As in and aes- thetic theory, the formal system is both perceived and interpreted through material things. What is the and importance of this approach and what problems of evidence and interpretation have to be overcome? Do goods possess intrinsic meaning or is culture responsible for creat- ing it? Do people impose meaning on things, or do they discover it in them? Can the study of artifacts be integrated with cultural theory? These questions arise in all and periods, but here they will be considered primarily in relation to the pre-industrial society of early modern .3

artifacts as evidence Historians of material culture describe, categorize, and compare the characteristics of artiªcially con- structed objects that have survived in physical or representational form—their size, shape, color, , weight, and volume. With the help of literary and archival records they identify and measure the quantity, as well as the quality, of goods and determine how they were made, distributed, and related to each other; when and where they appeared; and who acquired them for what use. Thus are artifacts subjected to archaeometric analysis of their internal structure and viewed in a speciªc temporal sequence and spatial context. Goods are subjected to both etic and emic analysis—the study of their objective attributes and their signiªcance to those who used them. The ultimate objective is to move beyond the concrete data and grasp the more nebulous concept of culture.4 Objects give material form to the rules and belief patterns of those who trade, purchase, or use them. Those with shared attrib- utes can be grouped as a style or type characteristic of a discrete period. Unlike cultural anthropologists, material culturalists may not be directly concerned with systems of belief and practical ac-

3 This article draws on the author’s unpublished study of the material culture of the English business , 1590–1740. 4 Daniel Miller, “Introduction,” in idem (ed.), Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter (Chicago, 1998), 19; D. J. Bryden and D. L. Simms, “Spectacles Improved to Perfection,” of Science, L (1993), 27; Jules D. Prown, Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture (New Haven, 2001), 93.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY | 593 tivity, but they are certainly interested in goods as symbols and tools of culture, and in the structural patterns by which artifacts are organized into meaningful relationships.5 This approach engages the senses as well as the mind. Visual images and tactile objects help to recapture choses vécues, the physi- cal conditions of everyday life and the options for action of differ- ent groups. The exteriors and interiors of homes reveal how people met the basic needs of food, shelter, and warmth and whether levels of comfort, privacy, personal security, and taste im- proved. Changes in the material quality of life in early modern England have been demonstrated by a quantitative analysis over time of both goods and services.6 The number, type, repetition, and distribution of goods at different levels of society identify luxuries and distinguish wants from needs. The emergence of a consumer society in eighteenth- century England tended to blur the distinction. Omissions of cate- gories from certain contexts indicate the preferences and values of particular groups. By establishing where and when items appeared, historians can identify patterns of selection as well as degrees of variation from the norm, innovations, transfers from other groups, and revivals. The juxtaposition of objects in space is often telling. For instance, the relative position of graves in a New England cemetery indicates social relationships and family conºicts.7 Objects can be read as well as counted. Goods make visible statements about the hierarchies of value. They carry social and personal information within a larger framework. Inanimate objects communicate relationships and mediate through the so- cial world; their diffusion bridges cultural boundaries and connects centers with peripheries. Although artifacts are produced at partic- ular moments, their persistence creates . In addition to in- formation and ideas, they can convey hidden cultural constraints, moral standards, social fears, and emotionally laden issues.8

5 Mikhail M. Bakhtin (ed. Michael Holquist; trans. Caryl Emerson and Holquist), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin, 1981), 262. 6 Thomas J. Schlereth, Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence, 1985), 12. 7 Ian W. Brown, “The New England Cemeteries,” in Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (eds.), History from Things (Washington, D.C., 1993), 140–159. 8 Grant D. McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington, 1988), 19; Cary Carson, “The Consumer Revo- lution in Colonial British America,” in Ronald Hoffmann, idem, and Peter J. Albert (eds.), Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 1994), 693;

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 594 | RICHARD GRASSBY Possessions, if carefully interpreted, constitute evidence of character, interest, and quality of life. The relative economic value and symbolic importance of goods can be gauged from their pro- portionate volume, mass, scale, and distribution. The meaning of objects becomes clear within contexts. Artifacts provide the depth of that artists create through linear and tonal per- spective; for example, inventories of artifacts can re-create the in- teriors of early modern English houses that no longer exist. In rare cases, like the archaeological site at Port Royal, Jamaica, which was devastated by an earthquake, the interdependence of objects has been preserved completely intact.9 Material culture sheds light on how people understood them- selves. Objects and their combinations can evoke the atmosphere of a house or room. Artifacts can convey a sensory of the past through sight, smell, touch, and texture. In early modern England, people were more occupied with things than with ab- stractions; distance, quantity, and time were measured physically. Making sense of past experience requires replicating the tone and texture of life.10 Culture structures behavior and design. Furniture and cloth- ing, for example, reºect speciªc attitudes to the body. Interior de- sign can, like , be seen as a cultural performance. The arrangement of furniture creates a uniªed visual and spatial rhythm of ªxed settings; the larger pieces serve as symmetrical anchors ac- cented by smaller pieces. The position of chairs and tables, around walls or in the center of a room, creates zones of activity in which individuals can pose or interact. The layout determines whether contact is restricted or facilitated and whether goods are stored or displayed. Artifacts have both practical and symbolic functions, indicating changing hierarchies of value.11

Robert B. St. George, “Introduction,” in idem (ed.), Material Life in America, 1600–1860 (Boston, 1988), 8; Karin L. F. Calvert, Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood, 1600–1900 (Boston, 1992), 4. 9 See, for example, the apothecary’s shop, reconstructed by David G. Vaisey, “Probate Inventories and Provincial Retailers,” in Philip Riden (ed.), Probate Records and the Local Community (Gloucester, 1985), 96–97. Henry M. Miller et al. (eds.), The Archaeology of Six- teenth- and Seventeenth-Century British Colonization in the Caribbean, United States, and Canada (Tucson, 1996), 7. 10 Keith V. Thomas, “Numeracy in Early Modern England,” Transactions of the Royal His- torical Society, XXXVII (1987), 122–123. 11 Mimi Hellman, “Furniture, Sociability, and the Work of Leisure,” Eighteenth Century Studies, XXXII (1999), 417. This study of France illustrates the exaggerated “cultural” ap- proach to domestic interiors.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY | 595 the meaning of objects How can the signiªcance of objects be measured? Postmodern archaeologists deny that the analysis of sets of artifacts can result in a single meaning, since meaning is linked intrinsically to various practices. Meanings are diverse, but culture is speciªc. According to Geertz, the speciªc patterns created by systemic relationships between diverse phenomena can be ex- pressed either by artifacts or by performances. The inherent mean- ing of goods is dependent on a knowledge of beliefs and external to the objects involved. People construct ma- terial culture. Ideas, beliefs, and meanings interpose themselves between people and things. The value of goods in early modern England varied with individual desires, social ambitions, the mar- ket for exchange, and cultural prescription.12 Material culturalists have to take account of individual moti- vation and the of taste. The meaning of any object is not separable from the opportunity and desire to acquire it. Sym- bolic properties may be less inºuential 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 signiªcant memories for those who wear them. Possessions take value in and arrangement; the ultimate referent is personal experience. According to certain scholars, the physical solidity of artifacts provided a defense against a ºeeting 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 reºect only lack of demand.13 Goods also have social utility and mediate human relation- ; people want to symbolize and advance their status through display and conspicuous consumption. Consumption in early

12 Tilley, “On and Archaeological Discourse,” in Ian Bapty and Tim Yates (eds.), Archaeology after Structuralism: Post-Structuralism and the Practice of Archaeology (London, 1990), 151; , The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 44. One attempt to reconstruct the performances of a culture is Donna Merwick, Possessing Albany, 1630–1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (Cambridge, 1990), 3. Ian Hodder, Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology (New York, 1991; orig. pub. 1986), 3, 6. 13 Peter Stallybrass, “Worn Worlds,” in Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and idem (eds.), Subject and Object in 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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 596 | 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 deªned by the market. As Sahlins argued, the “differentiation of symbolic value is mystiªed 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 proªt, 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-sufªcient, 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.15 Cultural historians have a reverse ; lifestyles and

14 Pierre Bourdieu (trans. Richard Nice), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass. 1984), xiii, 96, 229, 483; and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an 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 : Essays Dedicated to Torsten Hägerstrand (Lund, 1981), 56; John Brewer and Anne Bermingham, “In- troduction,” in idem (eds.), The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800: 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), 18; 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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY | 597 tastes are not subjective or utilitarian but culturally determined. Thus, they do not view the choice and preparation of food as a matter of individual taste and smell. To them, eating in early mod- ern England was more a mental activity than a physical one and costume more a manner of communication than a means of keep- ing warm and dry. The symbolic characteristics of objects take precedence over their physical properties. Constellations of ob- jects are formed by cultural norms; the design and arrangement of furniture reºect predetermined postures and allocations of space. Clothes in a drawer have no meaning, but when worn they be- come a uniform with social and moral implications. Culture gives meaning and thereby economic value to new goods; fashion es- tablishes taste and directs individual desires and creativity. This cultural interpretation of material life is as one-sided and limited as the economic interpretation of material culture.16

limitations and constraints The study of material culture in early modern England encounters several problems. First, the physical evidence is ambiguous. Artifacts do not usually offer a clear message, or even an adequate picture, of everyday life. Their survival depends on so many random factors that no consistent body of rules can be established to judge their representativeness. Finely crafted works made of durable materials were much more common than ordinary goods, which wore out from frequent use. Cheap utensils made of leather or wood disintegrated unless they happened to sink into a marsh. Many products are ephemeral by nature, either totally consumed or self-disintegrating. Objects dent, chip, and oxidize. When their utility is reduced by new technology or fashion, they are discarded as valueless. Most goods that survive belonged to the rich or to public bodies. Virtually no record remains of what has been lost. Because rarely know the provenance of their artifacts, they tend to separate them

16 Stephen Mennell, All Manner of Food: Eating and Taste in England (Urbana, 1996), 39; Kevin Walsh, “The Post-Modern Threat to the Past,” in Bapty and Yates (eds.), Archaeology after Structuralism, 285. Marcia R. Pointon, Strategies for Showing: Women, Possession, and Repre- sentation in English , 1665–1800 (Oxford, 1997), 53; Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York, 1983), 13; Edmund R. Leach, Cul- ture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected: An Introduction to the Use of Structuralist Analysis in (New York, 1976), 55. Eric K. Silverman, “Clifford Geertz,” in Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post- Structuralism (London, 1990), 126.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 598 | RICHARD GRASSBY from their context, assuming a uniform cultural background to give coherence to their displays. Until recently, museums sought the unique, signiªcant, 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 difªcult 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 signiªcance. 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 identiªcation 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 reiªed 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 : Social Change in Eng- land, c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), 207; Krzystof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux. Paris, Venise XVIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1987), 16; Donald Preziosi, “The Question of ,” 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 Litchªeld and District 1568–1680 (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.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY | 599 constitute both the evidence employed to reconstitute a culture and part of the very culture that they are supposed to explain. Al- though most early cultures, like that of England before the eigh- teenth century, tried to limit accumulation and consumption, the diffusion and inºuence of goods in practice proved difªcult to control. Objects were continuously renovated, rediscovered, cop- ied, and given new values.19 Artifacts cannot reveal underlying cultural values without other evidence. They say little about intentions, which have to be inferred from behavior, and their study does not generally deter- mine their personal meaning. A string of pearls may have been 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 reºected 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 Jürgen Habermas (trans. Thomas Burger), The Structural Transformation of the : An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 37; David Lowenthal in Tim Ingold (ed.), Key Debates in Anthropology (London, 1996), 211. 20 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 (1991), 141; Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca, 2001), 31.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 600 | RICHARD GRASSBY politan, secular, self-conªdent, self-conscious, and neither extrav- agant nor mean—solely on the basis of his clean-shaven chin, his moustache and natural hair, and his well-cut but not extravagant clothes and jewelry: “The exquisite detail would make it difªcult to deny the subject’s pride in personal appearance and his joy in the materialistic pleasure brought him by his God-blessed, Calvin condoned prosperity.” The artist was probably studio-trained in the English didactic tradition to mark the wealth and status of his sitter by treating his body and clothes as props—standard practice when painting self-made men. The limner who repainted the por- trait in 1674 may have followed instructions from the sitter or his family about how to depict him. But without corroborative evi- dence, Feake’s actual intentions or character defy the portrait. He may have hated the way that he had been represented.21 The study of objects does not reveal archetypes; on the con- trary, it suggests how easily a culture fragments. Theory has too often obscured a proper analysis of visual images and artifacts and sidestepped the question of quality. Like econometricians, cultural 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, Scientiªc, 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 , 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), 110; 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-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY | 601 Modern attempts to reconstruct how individuals thought and acted in the 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. Deªning 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 difªculties, 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 ºuctuations 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 ªnds unearthed during excavations also supplement the documentary evidence.24 Theory and 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 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 ’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 Schoªeld and Roger Leech (eds.), Urban Archaeology in Britain (London, 1987), 78.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 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 sufªcient 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 ,” American Historical Review, XC (1985), 590. Kirsten Hastrup, A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory (New York, 1995), 183. Melford E. Spiro, “Some Reºections on ,” in Rich- ard A. Shweder and Robert A. Le Vine (eds.), (Cambridge, 1984), 334–335; Maurice Bloch, , 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 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), 109; John Smail, The Origins of Middle-Class Culture: Halifax, Yorkshire, 1660–1780 (Ithaca, 1994), 42, 47; Merry E. Wiesner in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, (ed.), La donna nell’economia secc. XIII–XVIII (Florence, 1990), 483.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY | 603 precise statements of intention in private papers and against actual behavior. People are culturally inºuenced but not culturally con- structed. The of culture continuously interacts with the cultural history of society. The material aspects of culture should never be subordinated to its symbolic manifestations. The road to myth is paved with metaphors.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021