Difference between revisions of "The Lives of Colonial Objects"
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| − | While only one of the objects in this book is strictly archaeological the list of article authors shows archaeologists are well represented among people who can write about objects while drawing out their role in society, their social history and their relationship to historical figures - some well known and others remembered largely within their families. | + | While only one of the objects in this book is strictly archaeological the list of article authors shows archaeologists are well represented among people who can write about objects while drawing out their role in society, their social history and their relationship to historical figures - some of them well known and others remembered largely within their families. |
The range covered is large, the writing exemplary and the scholarship - with a few lapses - impressive. | The range covered is large, the writing exemplary and the scholarship - with a few lapses - impressive. | ||
Revision as of 23:02, 2 September 2015
The Lives of Colonial Objects
2015 Edited by Annabel Cooper, Lachy Paterson and Angela Wanhalla. Otago University Press 376 pages, ISBN 978 1 927322 02 4
Blurb
In this collection of 50 essays the authors, including historians, archivists, curators and Māori scholars, have each chosen an object from New Zealand’s colonial past, and their examinations open up our history in astonishingly varied ways.
Some are treasured family possessions such as a kahu kiwi, a music album or a grandmother’s travel diary, and their stories have come down through families. Some, like the tauihu of a Māori waka, a Samoan kilikiti bat or a flying boat, are housed in museums.
Others – a cannon, a cottage and a country road – inhabit public spaces but they too turn out to have unexpected histories. Things invite us into the past through their tangible, tactile and immediate presence: in this collection they serve as 50 paths into New Zealand’s colonial history.
While each chapter is the story of a particular object, The Lives of Colonial Objects as a whole informs and enriches the colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Mini Review
This is a POP page.
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While only one of the objects in this book is strictly archaeological the list of article authors shows archaeologists are well represented among people who can write about objects while drawing out their role in society, their social history and their relationship to historical figures - some of them well known and others remembered largely within their families.
The range covered is large, the writing exemplary and the scholarship - with a few lapses - impressive.
It is a finely produced book, well illustrated. A few of the historical photographs were poor to start with so reading the text makes it clear they were included for historical veracity.
This is a distinctly New Zealand book, but with a good many articles reflecting historical origins elsewhere. A book that anyone with an interest in out material culture will cherish.
