The H-Net Network on Material Culture and Vernacular Landscapes and Artifact Preservation will promote and support the study of objects, buildings, sites, structures, landscapes and other material cultural productions as part of the visual record of life.

We welcome announcements, CFP's, queries, contributions, and discussions of all things material! To add yours, click the orange "Start a Discussion" button above this text. 

We also welcome totally new projects. If you have an idea for a new on-going feature or a one time resource for the field, let us know. We are barely scratching the surface of what this website can do and we have a great staff of tech-minded folks at H-Net. If you've got a grand idea, we have people who can help make it happen. Podcasts? Video tours? Image galleries? Digitization projects? We can do those, and more! There are a few thoughts here, but the internet's the limit. Let us know what you're thinking.

And we tweet, too! https://twitter.com/H_Mat_Culture

You can see Recent Queries and Recent Discussions below, and Recent Announcements at the bottom of the page below the scrolling "Occasional Objects" images. All CFP's posted to the site can be found in the links on the right, as can Jobs in Material Culture Studies.

Recent Queries

Discussion published by John McCarthy on Monday, January 8, 2018

Confidentiality of Site Locations vs Public Interpretation

Archaeologists, having seen lots of destruction of sites due to looting, some of a commercial (rather than hobbyist) scale, tend to want to hold all information about archaeological sites (location, contents, etc.) as confidential, actually, as secret.  While this is somewhat understandable, this presents a significant challenge to public education and interpretation on archaeologial topics where often “place” and site content are key aspects of a site’s interpretive value.

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Recent Discussions

Discussion published by Jason Baird on Monday, February 15, 2016

Re: Material Culture Podcasts

Dr. Jon Kay--Director of Traditional Arts Indiana and Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures has been active in producing material culture podcasts. His series Artisan Ancestors has 40 episodes (so far) on a wide range of material culture topics. It can be found in iTunes and at the Internet Archive. He has recently begun hosting the Mathers Museum of World Culture's own podcast series Conversations on Culture. With students associated with Traditional Arts Indiana he has also produced a foodways podcast called Second-Servings.

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Occasional Objects series

The scrolling images to left are from H-Material-Culture's "Occasional Objects" series--a periodic informal examination of objects sent in by our subscribers. View the full collection, read the essays, and add your contribution here in Occasional Objects.

Recent Announcements

Discussion published by Katie Carpenter on Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Roundtable: Technologies on the Body

The Centre for the Study of the Body and Material Culture is hosting a round table on the theme 'Technologies on the Body'. 

The roundtable brings together scholars from different periods and places to reflect on the relationship between technologies and the body, focusing on specific technologies that are used with or become part of the body. Our speakers will examine the use of prosthetic limbs, cosmetic surgery and breathing apparatus - exploring the integration of objects, bodies and bodily processes.

Discussion published by Jennifer Black on Tuesday, October 23, 2018

H-Net Job Guide digest, 23 Oct Edition

The following jobs were posted to the H-Net Job Guide from
15 October 2018 to 22 October 2018.  These job postings are included here based on the categories selected by the list editors for H-Material-Culture.  See the H-Net Job Guide website at
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/ for more information.  To contact the Job Guide,
write to jobguide@mail.h-net.msu.edu, or call +1-517-432-5134 between 9 am and 5 pm US Eastern time.



ANTHROPOLOGY

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