ABSTRACT
Why examine chintz bedding as evidence ofglobal trade? Why consider a weaver's loom or a petticoat when analysing social practice? What evidence can be teased out from common artefacts as indicators of past societies? These questions, and many others, have shaped new scholarship over recent decades and made respectable the use of material objects in historical analysis. Anthropologists, archaeologists and museum curators have long employed artefacts in their work, but the questions they posed were often different from those debated by historians. Art historians always engaged with objects of different sorts. 1 But with those exceptions, historians typically privileged written records above all else as sources ofinformation and inspiration. Two major trajectories of historical enquiry led to the merger of object study and history: the first was the intense examination of consumer practices and the changing material environment. Many studies depended on probate inventories in the early modem era, listing the goods ofthe deceased and, almost inevitably, some researchers turned to objects to augment their understanding. The second dynamic force was women's history.2 Historians of women's work and women's worlds brought a new perspective to the study ofdaily life, particularly the creation and uses oftextiles; in combination with cultural studies, researchers in these fields incorporated new perspectives in the reading ofhistorical objects.
