Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 March 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0039
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 March 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0039
Introduction
Scholarly interest in artifacts is on the rise for reasons both narrowly academic and broadly social. Yet far from being a Johnny-come-lately, research in material culture boasts a venerable genealogy. Scholars in a variety of disciplines from archaeology to textile history have long examined the objects produced by human beings in the past as well as the present, albeit from diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Some emphasize the physical objects themselves—how they are designed and produced, and the materials out of which they are made—while others study them as means to the end of understanding ideas, beliefs, and values of the societies from which they issue. Along with other humanists and social scientists, historians have increasingly begun to engage with this research and with its sources. Ethnohistory, an anthropologically informed approach that studies written documents, artworks, folklore and oral sources, ethnographic information, and artifacts, has been at the forefront of efforts to uncover material culture objects of nonliterate or nondominant populations, usually indigenous or non-European. This recent historical scholarship has been particularly interested in the complex relationships between material objects and societies: how things and people in the past have mutually shaped one another. As always, historians are also interested in when those relationships have changed and why—and when and why they have remained the same. The Atlantic, and particularly the Anglophone North Atlantic and Caribbean, have been privileged sites of much of this historical investigation. In this respect, as well as in the many disciplines, theories, methodologies, and sources drawn upon, Atlantic material culture history strongly resembles Atlantic consumption history. The two fields likewise both attend not only to what and how many goods people acquired but also to the practices that their goods enabled them to develop. Hence, beyond the works listed in this article, the student of material culture is well advised to consult those in the Oxford Bibliographies article “Domestic Production and Consumption.”
General Overviews
As is true of most topics in the young field of Atlantic history, material culture has not yet benefited from a survey that encompasses all areas in that large basin nor from one grounded in a specifically Atlantic approach. Nevertheless, several works provide valuable perspectives and information. Braudel’s magisterial interpretation (Braudel 1982–1984) places Atlantic developments within a broad global context, while material culture innovations throughout the basin are at the center of the survey in Kupperman 2012. Gerritsen and Riello 2015 emphasizes intercultural transfers across the globe, notably including Atlantic societies. Ahlman and Schroedl 2020, Farnsworth 2001, and Sarti 2002 also focus on the early modern period, albeit only for the Caribbean and Europe, respectively. Similarly, Bauer 2001 attends to only one Atlantic region, and this book extends beyond the early modern era. Ethnically focused overviews that cross regional boundaries are particularly popular among historical archaeologists and ethnohistorians. Ogundiran and Falola 2007 and Singleton 1985 assemble articles concerned with the material culture of African diaspora peoples, while essays in Rogers and Wilson 1993 feature Native Americans in several parts of the New World. Together with national studies mentioned below (see Interpreting Material Cultures by Polity), these works offer a good introduction to the main trends of material culture development in the Atlantic world between about 1500 and about 1800.
Ahlman, Todd M., and Gerald F. Schroedl, eds. Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean: Contextualizing Sites through Colonialism, Capitalism, and Globalism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020.
Complementing Farnsworth 2001, essays explicitly engage with current scholarly attention to the effects of globalization on material cultures throughout the Caribbean, particularly those of free and enslaved African and African-descent people.
Bauer, Arnold J. Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Overview from the Columbian encounter to the present day. Substantial attention to the effects of the goods brought by European conquerors on Native Americans and the formation of hybrid identities and consumption practices.
Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century. 3 vols. New York: Harper and Row, 1982–1984.
The materials of daily life (food and drink, apparel, and dwellings), of production (tools and machines), and of warfare are major concerns of the first volume, titled “The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible,” of this grand work, one of the classics of early modern history.
Farnsworth, Paul, ed. Island Lives: Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001.
Part 1 surveys the state of historical archaeology in the Spanish, French, Dutch, and British Caribbean; Part 2 contains empirical essays on settlement patterns and cultural essays; Part 3 analyzes the assemblage of new Afro-Caribbean cultures out of disparate materials and practices.
Gerritsen, Anne, and Giorgio Riello, eds. The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World. London: Routledge, 2015.
Ten substantial articles on intercontinental trajectories of objects well known (tobacco, sugar, coffee) and less familiar (shagreen, coral, feathers) that generated novel material connections, knowledge, and cultures, c. 1400 to c. 1800.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Atlantic in World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Brief overview of early modern Atlantic history that emphasizes the changes in material culture in every part of the Atlantic basin consequent upon intercontinental trade, the introduction of technologies and crops from around the world, and the settlement and development of European colonies.
Ogundiran, Akinwumi, and Toyin Falola, eds. Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
A score of essays on the material cultures of Africans in West Africa and the Americas during the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. Features broad coverage of artifacts (e.g., residences, metallurgy, pottery) and of places on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as discussing current directions in African diaspora archaeology.
Rogers, J. Daniel, and Samuel M. Wilson, eds. Ethnohistory and Archaeology: Approaches to Postcontact Change in the Americas. New York: Plenum, 1993.
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4899-1115-5
Essays on the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, and North America examine how Amerindian societies coped with new people, goods, and diseases. Much attention is paid to adaptations in material cultures and their effects on behavior.
Sarti, Raffaella. Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500–1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
Expansive survey focused on the ways that material objects, notably houses and their furnishings, food, and clothing, and family structures mutually shaped one another. Examines experiences across the social spectrum but emphasizes peasantry.
Singleton, Theresa. The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1985.
Survey of research strategies, important issues, and findings about the material lives of both the enslaved and their masters in southeastern North America and the Caribbean. Case studies present substantive findings while also considering issues of methodology, theories, techniques of analysis, and research strategies in ethnographically inflected historical archaeology.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets