Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500-1800 / Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings

書刊名 Title	Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500-1800. Material Cultural Studies Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings
作者 Author	1. Editor: Paula Findlen 2. Editors: Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson
出版社 Publisher	1. Routledge  2. Ashgate
出版年 Year	1. 2013 2. 2010
語言 Language	English
ISBN (10 / 13)	1. 9780415520515 2. 9780754666370
Bibliography Reference	(STC, Duff, GW . . .)
來源網址 Web Link	1. https://goo.gl/rrhi8v 2. https://goo.gl/54zQzb
評論者 Reviewer	Wang, I-Chun
撰寫日期 Date	July 1, 2015

Ø 書評 Review (中英文不限 Chinese or English) 

Their Histories is a collection of 17 essays; the topics range from China in Chinese Ming Dynasty, the use of clocks in the eighteenth century Europe to costume, artifacts and coins. The essays collected in this volume manifest various cultures and geographic locations in terms of exchange, circulation and consumption. Obviously the objects or things that were circulated around the world reveal the context of early modern history. The book Early Modern Things groupsthe essays into 6 sections, including The Ambiguity of Things, Representing Things, Making Things, Empires of Things, Consuming Things and The Power of Things.
Each of them consists of two or three essays revolving around the themes with case studies from the perspectives of economic history, anthropological reviews or documentary analysis of material culture in various parts of the world or the connections among them. 

The editors introduce the book as one that is “about the things people owned and the way they use them”. As Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson suggest, knowing people’s possessions helps understand the context of their everyday life. Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings is another significant contribution to material cultural studies. The book’s title “Everyday Objects” suggests the things that were used in everyday life of early modern people, such as ceramics, clothing, shoes, fabrics fans and musical instruments that involve gender, class as well as spaces as related to religious and political life. For scholars who are interested in cultural studies and historical philology, this book, with examples and cases studies, serves a guide to the everyday objects in early modern world. As the editors suggest, the essays on material culture not only suggest the mobility of people but also attribute to the social interactions through the functions and economic patterns of things.