Object-centred approaches

One simple way of approaching our subject is to adapt the work of the American art historian Bernard Herman, a leading pioneer in the field of material culture studies. Herman has suggested that the study of things, broadly speaking, can be allocated to two distinct but overlapping approaches (Herman, 1992). In the first instance, he speaks of an ‘object-centred’ approach to the subject, one in which the focus of study is on the object itself. Here, we need to pay attention to the specific physical attributes of the object. The ability to describe the object – to engage, that is, with a list of descriptive criteria – is at the forefront of this approach. A typical checklist of the kinds of questions we might ask about an object include:

• how, and with what materials, was the object made?
• what is its shape, size, texture, weight and colour?
• how might one describe its design, style and/or decorative status?
• when was it made, and for what purpose?

By focusing on the object itself, we are thus being asked to concentrate on the materiality of things, or, in the words of historian Robert Friedel, to appreciate the simple fact that ‘everything is made from something’ and that ‘there are reasons for using particular materials in a thing’ (Friedel, 1993, pp. 41–50). Knowledge of this kind, for example, plays a crucial role for archaeologists and art historians in their attempt to place objects into broader categories or groups, or to identify the works of single artists or broader artistic or aesthetic movements.