Consumption and material culture of poverty in early-modern Europe, c1450–1800

Abstract

The study of consumption and material culture has become a bedrock of European history in recent decades. The study of objects was developed by archaeologists and social anthropologists during the second quarter of the twentieth century. Owing to the fact that mostly only objects of value, adornment and beauty have tended to have survived to the present day, research on the poor's material culture is underdeveloped. The subject of food consumption has received renewed attention in Muldrew's work on labourers. The pace of change was generally slower than in England and did not affect the masses in some countries until the nineteenth century, but overall there were some important shifts in material culture, especially in north-western Europe. Inventories taken after death have been used extensively by scholars to study material culture in France. In spite of these persistent problems, the material lives of the poor broadly improved across early-modern Europe.