History from things

History from Things explores the many ways objects - defined broadly to range from Chippendale tables and Italian Renaissance pottery to seventeenth-century parks and a New England cemetery - can reconstruct and help to reinterpret the past. Eighteen essays describe how to "read" artifacts, how to "listen to" landscapes and locations, and how to apply methods and theories to historical inquiry that have previously belonged solely to archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and conservation scientists. The contributors demonstrate that artifacts can be prime historical evidence that…