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 Linda Levitt on Monday, February 4, 2019

Snow Globes: From Art to Kitsch

Snow globes are childhood’s wintery dreamlands, so powerful an allegory that they appear in films, television series, and commercials to carry spectators into a holiday happily-ever-after. During the holiday season, should a snow globe not be readily available from a nearby toy chest or shelf, you can download a snowglobe app for both iPhone and Android, transforming your quotidian emails and social media sites. The ongoing popularity of these iconic pop culture objects, now transformed to the digital realm, gives pause to ask: why snow globes?

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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 Davidson MacLaren on Sunday, May 19, 2019

Registration Open and Scholarships Available: Introduction to Islamic Codicology Course, Cambridge, 23-27 Sept. 2019

Registration Open and Scholarships Available: Introduction to Islamic Codicology Course
23-27 September 2019
Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK

Registration is open for The Islamic Manuscript Association's thirteenth annual English-language Introduction to Islamic Codicology organized in partnership with Cambridge University Library, the University of Cambridge's HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, and the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation.

Discussion published by Katy Barrett on Monday, April 29, 2019

Elizabeth Edwards on 'Collections, Non-collections and Ecosystems: Case notes on photographic cultures in the Museum'

MGHG AGM and Lecture 2019

  • Thursday, July 4, 2019
  • 4:30 PM  6:30 PM
  • Dana Studio, Science Museum

Collections, Non-collections and Ecosystems: Case notes on photographic cultures in the Museum

Professor Elizabeth Edwards

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