A Cultural History of Objects

Description

How have objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years? Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. This set brings together over 50 scholars, in 1776 pages, to examine how the world of human subjects shapes and is shaped by the world of material objects. Chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The themes (and chapter titles) are: Objecthood; Technology; Economic Objects; Everyday Objects; Art; Architecture; Bodily Objects; Object Worlds. The six volumes cover: 1 - Antiquity (500 BCE to 500 CE); 2 - Medieval Age (500 to 1400); 3 - Renaissance (1400 to 1600); 4 - Age of Enlightenment (1600 to 1760); 5 - Age of Industry (1760 to 1900); 6 - Modern Age (1900 to the present). The Cultural Histories Series A Cultural History of Objects is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).

Dan Hicks is Associate Professor of Archaeology and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, UK. He has published five books including World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum (2013), The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (2010), and The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology (2006). Dan serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology and the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology. William Whyte is Professor of Social and Architectural History and a Fellow of St John's College, University of Oxford, UK. He is the editor or co-editor of eight books and the author of Oxford Jackson: Architecture, Education, Status, and Style (2006) and Redbrick: A Social and Architectural History of Britain's Civic Universities (2015). His current book project is The University: A Material History.