The Material History Lab at Northwestern University is an interdisciplinary and collaborative place for researching and teaching about objects and what they tell us about human experience over time. The lab is an incubator of ideas on new ways of thinking about history. It has four primary objectives: research, teaching, collaboration, and public outreach. The lab currently focuses on Africa’s material history over the past 2,500 years.
Why Material History?
We live in an object-centered world. Human consciousness unfolds through things. Human-made and natural objects are essential to the process of being and becoming. They shape the identities of individuals, families, nations, and other types of communities, including institutions and businesses. From the dawn of humanity, people have created special relationships with objects (e.g., in the form of body adornment) and use these to forge relationships with one another and other agents in the world, including spirit beings. Today, human societies all over the world are awash in things. However, some of these objects present challenges to human safety and the sustainability of our planet and everything in it (e.g., plastic), raising questions on what objects to own and interact with and how.
Given the indispensability of objects to human lives, they are vital sources for studying the past. In fact, they are the only tangible sources available to study the lives of most people in the past. Even today, the majority in the world have not documented their lives in writing but have several objects that we can use to tell the story of their everyday lives. For all these reasons, objects offer a window to understand the past, present, and future. Objects, their function, symbolic meanings, and the technologies associated with their manufacture are integral to understanding all ramifications of human history.
