OVERVIEW

The general theme, historical and anthropological, of the teaching of History of material culture is that of the construction of the material world: the material realities of power and prestige, the material evidence of ritual and ceremonial, the material bases of cognitive systems and symbolic behavior.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course has two major learning outcomes: being able to reconstruct the concept of material culture and its history; being able to carry out a critical analysis of the evolution of the concept of material culture, from its material aspects to its cultural aspects, from production to consumption.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students in this class will learn about the processes that produce the things, analyzing the economic and social history of objects (from materials to maker and consumption to trash).  Students will also learn a method to critically analyze historiographic literature and sources, to critically read a text or a document, and to communicate with a scientific language the results of a reading or research.  On completion of the Material Culture Analysis unit students will be introduced to the topic of material culture analysis, and will gain knowledge of culture analysis theories, concepts, methods and issues. The students must also be able to present and critically discuss the proposed and / or recommended texts for the individual study activity.

TEACHING METHODS

The course is based on a seminar method. Readings and discussion of texts are part of the teaching.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course proposes a critical investigation on the evolution of the concept of material culture, from the material to the cultural dimension, from production to consumption. An introductory part will be dedicated to the reconstruction of the history of the concept of material culture, the methodologies currently used in the historical study of material culture, and the different ways in which historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and sociologists have used this concept (in Italy since the 1970s with two journals, Archeologia Medievale and Quaderni storici). The course will address two topics chosen by the students:  

1. The biography and the social history of objects between production, consumption, exchange, transformation, reuse, conservation and destruction. The idea is that objects, like people, have a life cycle and have the ability to accumulate and tell stories. Things are unstable, require care, and in social relationships they change their status through different forms of appropriation. The survey will also focus on the interdependencies between things and people in the construction of social reality: "We construct objects and objects construct us" (I. Kopytoff).  

2. Objects as cultural heritage. The concept of heritage embraces all traces of the past, remote or recent: artificial and natural traces, tangible and intangible. The teaching will deal with material objects and artefacts, and will question the ways in which they are absorbed and transformed  in the construction of heritage. With the following questions: what are the criteria for deciding what is useful to know, what to save, what is normal to lose; how the approach to heritage changes the way we interrogate the objects and material sources of historical research. The costruction of heritage is a possibility in the biography and social history of objects (theme 1).  Heritage is a cultural practice: "there is no such thing as heritage" (L. Smith).

The teaching is addressed to all students of the master's degrees of the School of Humanities. Frontal or distance teaching is seminarial: attendance is highly recommended. The articulation of the teaching provides for reading and discussion in the classroom or within a Forum of texts and documents. Itinere verifications are foreseen with written exercises in the classroom and / or at home. Based on the indicated bibliography and other texts that will be proposed during the course, students will have the opportunity to build individual study paths. The teaching materials will be available to students in AulaWeb.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

The biography and the social and cultural history of objects

AHR conversation: Historians and the study of material culture, in "American Historical Review", 2009 (pdf).

I. Kopytoff, The cultural biography of things: commodization as process, in A. Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, London 1988, pp. 64-91.

Ch. Gosden, Y. Marshall, The cultural biography of objects, in "World Archaeology", 31 (1999), pp. 169-178.

 A. Appadurai, TheThing Itself, in "Public Culture", 18 (2006), pp. 15-21. 

O. Raggio, Oggetti nella storia. Perché la storiografia è importante (tra storia e archeologia, in "Quaderni storici", 159 (2018), pp. 863-78.

The  objects as cultural heritage

AHR conversation: Historians and the study of material culture, in "American Historical Review", 2009.

L. Smith, Uses of Heritage, New York e London, Routledge,  2006.

A.M. Stagno, Gli spazi dell'archeologia rurale. Risorse ambientali e insediamenti nell'Appennino ligure tra XV e XXI secolo, Firenze, All'Insegna del Giglio, 2018.

The reading list, together with the lecturer's instructions are available on the Italian version of the web page and in AulaWeb.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

OSVALDO RAGGIO (President)

ANNA MARIA STAGNO

LESSONS

LESSONS START

March 16, 2021

Class schedule

MATERIAL CULTURE (LM)

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

 The exam is oral. The written tests in progress will be the subject of discussion and will contribute to the final evaluation. Written tests are not mandatory and are valid for the academic year of the course.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

 By the end of this session, students will be able to evaluate  the arguments they have read and put forward their own view. The oral exam and the discussion of the written tests in progress will verify the achievement of the learning outcomes. The main evaluation parameters are the quality of the exposition and vocabulary used, both in oral communication and in written tests, and the capacity for critical and comparative reasoning.