Material Culture Analysis

Material culture analysis is the systematic study of physical objects and artefacts — tools, clothing, buildings, gifts, commodities, everyday possessions — as evidence about the people and societies that make, use, exchange, and discard them. It treats things not as inert backdrop but as active participants in social life, carrying meanings, structuring practices, and binding people into relationships. Drawing on object-biography thinking and on Ian Hodder's account of human–thing entanglement, it asks what an object's form, history, and circulation can reveal about culture that words alone cannot.