The Rhetoric of Things: Historical Archaeology and Oral History

This paper examines precisely how objects assume meanings in archaeological interpretation and a dimension of everyday life and experience that exists on the fringes of self-consciousness. Archaeologists interpret the meanings of material things in ways that have often sought to erase the ambiguities of material symbolism in conventional linear narratives, but oral memories routinely struggle with the meaning of things and underscore their complex and ambiguous meanings. The paper examines how the contributors to this volume illuminate the implications of oral memories on broader material culture scholarship both within and beyond historical archaeology.