I'm a historian focusing on material culture who uses material culture as evidence. That is to say, while I use archival materials and documents to support my research, "actual" material objects are at the centre of my work (scientific instruments).
Among the historians I interact with frequently, I find I am quite rare (although there are many people like me in my field, but overall we are quite few). Some people indeed write about material culture, or use it illustratively in their writing, but far fewer people actually use museum collections (for example) as evidence. The use of material culture by historians as evidence continues to be written about as a somewhat niche or underdeveloped corner of history--outside of anthropology and archaeology, of course.
I'm curious to hear a few stories from other non-anthr/arch historians who may have an interest in material culture and have used material things, or considered using material things, as evidence. I'm including large-scale things (like buildings, sites and landscapes) as well as typical museum collections (musical instruments, household items) and the use of the material aspects of standard archival materials such as types of paper, booklets, ink types etc.
Do you believe that material culture is valuable to the average historian? Why do so few historians use material things--is it really because they lack training, or because they're not used to thinking that way, or because archives are "easier"? Does the standard output of a historian (i.e. articles, books) mean that typical historians find it difficulty to meaningfully incorporate material culture in their work?
I'm only an archaeology student (who has done a handful of history modules), so if I'm not qualified to answer this I'll delete it. However I've found in my time that so many of the history lectures I've received could be answered by looking at material culture.
Instead of arguing over so called "primary" sources, who are often hundreds of years out of date, there is often material evidence that is not considered that could answer the questions.
I believe that so many historians could benefit from archaeological training and thinking, and material culture is easy to incorporate into text in a meaningful manner. But these are the musings of an archaeologist.
There is a certain drunk-on-power aspect to our present ability to search for, organize and wield vast amounts of information. Really, the question comes down to: what questions do you want answered with your material culture? There is an enormous satisfaction to be able to look at the object itself in order to see narratives that would never get written, but is it important? I recently got to look at a gunstock that was maybe 1/4 done, circa 1850. I looked at the barrel channel, and it was straight and very rough- the look of curly maple that's seen a plane. Why plane curly maple? Because it's the fastest way to make an even barrel channel. For this, the plane would have had a three-bevel blade, to match the barrel. I saw that the top of the fore end had been left flat and relatively wide- which indicated that, very likely, it had been a plane with a depth stop. There were scribed layout and center lines on the stock- probably done with a mortise gauge. The ramrod channel had also been cut- likely, I knew now, laid out with that mortise gauge and, since it had grain tearout like the barrel channel, done also with a plane that had a depth stop. That groove was used to guide the long drill to make the ramrod hole- in a present gunsmith's shop, it's still done that way. And the hole had been drilled-wrong. The drill had wandered off. For some reason, the gunsmith had then tried to drill the hole again- and this time, not only did the drill wander off, but actually broke out of the side of the stock. That stock was now useless.
I could now reconstruct the procedure that had been used for the first part of stocking the rifle: something that no one would ever bother to write down and, in 1850, would never try to photograph. And I had a mystery: why did the stock survive? It was now good only for maybe making a hatchet handle, knife grips, or fuel for the woodstove. This I have no way of knowing :the few documents from this shop reveal nothing. And I really love the fact that I don't know, and never will. But this small bit of information, a worm's eye view, is going to likely be pretty useless if you want to answer a vibrant intellectual question, like, how would the professional space, the business space, of the gunsmith shop be signified to the greater community? Would it be gendered, and if so, how? Were there other gunsmith shops that also had such signifiers? I confess I can't answer questions like that with this examination of the gunstock, and I certainly can't use the information to show off my intellect. Or show it off at any more than a mediocre Sherlock Holmes kind of way..perhaps if I could tell the gunsmith was right-handed, what would that matter?
I am not a historian. Can material culture suggest questions a historian wouldn't have thought of otherwise?