Look at the artifacts on this web site, and around you, as reminders of the complexity of the past. When museums choose not to enshrine and isolate an artifact but instead open it up to new interpretations and different points of view, they provide opportunities to challenge and enhance our understanding of the past. Moreover, it is a reality that can and should be viewed from different perspectives. "Objects, in their tangibility," she writes, "provide a variety of stakeholders with an opportunity to debate the meaning and control of their memories." Artifacts are the touchstones that bring memories and meanings to life. Museum Director Elaine Gurian suggests that artifacts provide us a way into history. They frame the way we act in the world, as well as the way we think about the world." 1 To understand the past, we have to understand the artifacts of the past.īut they are also important to us as a way to approach the past. According to anthropologist Daniel Miller, objects "continually assert their presence as simultaneously material force and symbol. Artifacts, we believe, are, and were, important. There are two ways to answer this question. ![]() Why bother looking at artifacts, which can be hard to understand, when there are so many documents around, and when documents seem so much more straightforward? Why do museums save artifacts at all, when it would be so much easier just to save pictures of them? ![]() This Web site will tell you how to look closely at artifacts and how to think about the ways they shape and reflect our history. While textbooks focus on the great documents of the American past, or the important events, artifacts can show us another kind of history, another way of approaching the past. If we know how to look at them, they can be sources for better understanding our history. Looking at Artifacts, Thinking About HistoryĪrtifactsthe objects we make and useare part of American history.
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