About Us
The focus of this network is the role of materiality in past and present human life-worlds. Humans and their material environment have their own life cycles and rhythms, yet each shapes the other. While many of our researchers work derive from many different disciplines and work in very diverse temporal contexts, they all try to record and understand human action through the lens of its dynamic interaction with the material environment.
This signature area serves as a research hub that brings together these scholars at regular intervals in order to facilitate research engagement, connections and collaborations.
Themes and questions that we are addressing:
- How do people study the physical remains of the past in the present and for the future?
- How do they present them in museums, art institutions, and elsewhere?
- How do people perceive, construct, and manipulate the materiality of the past in their contemporary world and what were and are the supporting narratives on how we got here?
- Who are the authors and audiences?
- To what extent have material remains been abused or neglected to create narratives serving and legitimizing socio-political agenda, dominant as well as subaltern?
- In what ways can past cultural, geological and biological remains aid in understanding history and help to address key challenges to humanity moving forward?
- How do related fields, such as oral history and folklore, position people in their socio-cultural context?
- How do we study the interaction between landscapes and people and what can we learn from colleagues working in other disciplines?
Material studies of the past to the present offer us the ability to chart human history in deep time with the goal to understand the developments of human life worlds and to carry that understanding forward. But it is not enough to study the material record alone; it is also imperative that we conserve it. Global population growth, rapid development, rampant looting, and ideologically motivated and targeted destruction of ancient monuments are affecting the material culture record at an unprecedented pace. A robust, worldwide effort is needed to study and to preserve the past for future generations and to secure ways and methods to allow a wide audience to be included in its interpretations and presentations.