Examples Of Material Culture Research Articles

Historical Revisionism and Economic Impact on Forgeries. An initial proposal.

The initial hypothesis of this theoretical article is that correlations exist between historical revisionism and economic impact on art forgeries. After stating that forgeries have the intention to deceive and their existence is due to the positive values associated with them, we clarify that historical revisionism has an impact on material culture, its display, and its exchange. We state that artworks and art forgeries are examples of material culture. Nevertheless, we describe the art market as one with information problems and a lack of incentives to publicly categorize something as a forgery. Therefore, we conclude that historical revisionism can impact the production of forgeries, but its exchange and display follow an equal dynamic to its original.

The medIeval Dashbulag settlement

The article deals with the archaeological excavation of the Dashbulag settlement located in Shamkir district in the west of Azerbaijan. The step-by-step progress of the archaeological excavations conducted in the medieval settlement of Dashbulag, the discovered production and farm buildings, household devices, numerous and diverse examples of material culture are described in detail in the article. Archaeological excavations in the village-type settlement with a planned structure were carried out in three stages in 2004, 2005 and 2014 years. Based on the observation of the sediment of the cultural layer during the archaeological excavations carried out at the settlement, which consists of one cultural layer (the thickness of the layer is 1-1.5m depending on the relief), and the analysis of the actual materials uncovered, it was established that a village-type settlement with a free-plan structure existed here in the Middle Ages. Life in the medieval village of Dashbulag, built in the 9th century, was intense until the beginning of the 13th century, gradually declined after the Mongol campaigns, and continued until the end of the 18th century with some intermittent breaks. Remains of civil and economic buildings, rich handicraft products discovered as a result of archaeological excavations in the medieval settlement of Dashbulag are evidence of the economic and farming life of the medieval inhabitants of the area, as well as pottery, metalworking, glassworking, bone-processing, etc. allows to follow the characteristics and development dynamics of art fields. The analysis of the artifacts gives reason to say that the art fields in the medieval village of Dashbulag did not lag behind, on the contrary, some regions went further than the village-type settlements.

The Reflection of Examples of Material Culture in the Classical Works of the Eastern-Islamic Renaissance on Archaeological Materials

The Islamic Renaissance achieved extraordinary successes in the social, political, economic and spiritual life of the eastern world. During this period, new works on a number of sciences were created, and cultural and aesthetic thought entered a new stage of development. Scientific discoveries and works of such geniuses as Fergani, Firdavsi, Nizami, Biruni, Abu Ali ibn Sina, Mahmud Kashgari, Ahmad Yasevi led to revolutionary changes in the development of human thought. The Renaissance also led to the transformation of various states of the East into centres of science and culture, including Azerbaijan, the cities of the Blue River, Khwarazm. This article examines the traces of archaeological and material-cultural monuments reflecting the ancient past of the peoples in the works of Renaissance classics and determines their place and importance in the development of scientific and cultural thought in the eastern world, in the establishment of relations of societies with different cultures. Descriptive and comparative methodology was used to achieve this goal. The original basis of the article is the works of the classics of the Eastern Islamic Renaissance.

One of the important examples of material culture: roads

One of the important examples of material culture: roads

The Image of Kazakh Society in the Studies of Russian Ethnographers during the Russian Empire: on the Example of Material Culture

The Image of Kazakh Society in the Studies of Russian Ethnographers during the Russian Empire: on the Example of Material Culture

Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy by Hannah Marcus

Reviewed by: Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy by Hannah Marcus Jane Stevens Crawshaw Hannah Marcus. Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. xii + 356 pp. Ill. $45.00 (978-0-226-73658-7). One of the rich and revealing examples of material culture included in Hannah Marcus’s new book on early modern Italian censorship is a mid-eighteenth-century woodstove. It takes the form of a bookshelf which displays volumes by leading figures of the Protestant Reformations. A banner on the stove reads “Library consecrated by fire” and the figure of a priest gestures expressively atop the piece (p. 200). The dynamics of destruction and construction, purification and pollution, [End Page 267] damnation and salvation are shown, in this piece, to be vividly coexistent. The same is true of Marcus’s excellent study, which demonstrates the manifold ways in which these forces and ideas shaped the religious, intellectual, and cultural life of the Italian peninsula during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet, as this careful and considered volume shows, the culture and processes of censorship, through which religious authorities sought to negotiate the new divisions and heresies codified during Europe’s Reformations, were complex and contested. Marcus’s study concentrates on the attitudes and actions adopted toward books that were written and read by physicians in early modern Italy, as well as the book collections they amassed. It recognizes that, in relation to medical learning, the Catholic Church often had neither the ability nor the desire to prohibit texts in their entirety for reasons of perceived utility and influence. Indeed, what emerges is a characterization of censorship as an ongoing, reciprocal, and negotiated endeavor. Alongside the publication of indexes of prohibited books, Catholic authorities developed complex systems for licensing and expurging texts. This latter approach, described by Cardinal Agostino Valier as “trimming off all that is superfluous and pernicious and putting together what good there is from one and the other” (p. 85), had a significant influence on the material form of books, the knowledge they contained, and the communities of authority and expertise which were required to adjudicate on those “pernicious” and “good” elements. The book explores these themes in an introduction, seven chapters, and an engaging epilogue. Chapter 1 explores the rich intellectual and personal connections that linked Protestant and Catholic scholars across the European “medical republic of letters” and the ways in which these relationships were used to try to circumvent restrictions imposed by the Roman indexes of prohibited books from 1559. Despite efforts to ban books outright, there were extensive calls to “correct” medical texts and facilitate Catholic readership. Chapter 2 highlights the practical challenges involved in this work of expurgation. During the 1590s Catholic authorities attempted to utilize the expertise of scholars at the University of Padua to carry out this work for medical texts. The few incentives and contested oversight for this burdensome and complex task meant that these efforts failed. This was not always the case, however. Chapter 3 considers the case of the physician Girolamo Rossi of Ravenna who was an arduous and willing censor for the Roman Inquisition. Chapter 4 moves from the focus on the readers and censors to the compilation of their work in the published Roman Index of expurgations in 1607. Chapter 5 assesses the structure for licensing readers to access prohibited medical books, establishing the widespread use of this process on the basis of surviving licenses and, more commonly, inscriptions in the early pages of medical books. The impact of censorship practices on the material form of books is continued in chapter 6, which demonstrates the range of ways in which a book might be expurged: by cutting out key pages, sections or names, pasting over the same or using ink to transform characters, black out sections and deface names and images, sometimes explicitly as an act of damnatio memoriae. Yet for all of these efforts to consign people and ideas to be forgotten, the years of Catholic censorship coincided with a period of book collecting that was underpinned by [End Page 268] the ideal of a “universal library” and drive for...

A Potter's Progress: Emanuel Suter and the Business of Craft

A Potter's Progress: Emanuel Suter and the Business of Craft

Curating the Contemporary: A Case for National and Local COVID-19 Collections.

With its rapid spread, intensity, duration, global geographic reach and cross‐sectorial disruption, the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic is so profound that it will become the focus of public exhibitions in the future. Now is the time is to collect examples of material culture associated with COVID‐19. Some of the material is generic to healthcare, but some is specific to responses to COVID‐19 in the medical and community sphere (e.g. social distancing). A substantive number of objects only exist in the digital sphere. Expanding on concepts initially developed for the collection of items associated with natural disasters and terrorist events, this paper (i) outlines the need for the establishment of local and national collections before items become too scarce and (ii) provides a sample multi‐phase collections and collections management framework.

Making Arrangements: The Curation of Grief in the Home Studio (Faire les arrangements : la conservation du deuil dans le studio à domicile)

This is an article co-produced by the contributions of two authors from different professional disciplines—art psychotherapy and ceramics at Ulster University, Belfast School of Art (Northern Ireland). The purpose of this collaboration is to promote the attributes of material culture (materials of life that are meaningful and fulfill our needs) as a signature pedagogical practice within art therapy. Material culture contributes to art therapy in its appreciation of possessions as personal archaeology representing a life story, ancestral legacy, and an autobiographical archive. The influence of material culture upon art therapy training at Ulster University is transformative, in terms of interdisciplinary team teaching and creating with personal belongings. An appreciation of each person’s material culture supports relevancy within art therapy practice by encouraging service users (participants) to embrace their worldly goods as psychological and artistic possessions. In this acknowledgement of material culture, the art therapist is not the authority in terms of what materials to provide, but rather supports the use of home as studio and gallery. The following is an example of material culture’s contributions to art therapy teaching in relation to loss and commemoration.

Pärandtehnoloogiline käsitööuurimus: lähenemised ja väljavaated / Craft research and traditional technologies: practices and perspectives

The article provides an overview of the practices and perspectives related to craft research and traditional technologies as studied and taught in the Estonian Native Crafts Department in University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy. Academic craft research is discussed in the context of neighbouring disciplines in the humanities, such as ethnology, semiotics, archaeology, art history, and conservation, amongst others. Against this background, the distinctive traits of craft research are foregrounded. The article also aims to position Estonian craft research amongst its peer disciplines. We hope that it sparks constructive discussion and further cooperation with interested partners in order to advance craft studies in general.
 Within the framework of an academic institution, craft research inevitably involves difficulties that need to be overcome as academic knowledge is traditionally considered to be abstract, and not skill-related. Traditional craft skills are part of intangible cultural heritage, therefore it is important to pay them due respect in research and higher education.
 The Committee of Craft Terminology was established in 2016 at the initiative of the Estonian Native Crafts Department. The definition of craft skills they work with is: the combined set of manual, bodily and intellectual practices that form part of intangible cultural heritage, the usage of which produces examples of material culture. It is acknowledged that traditional craft skills are not objectively given, but are constantly constructed by the masters of craft as well as by researchers. In craft research orientated to traditional technologies the following objects of study may be listed: artefacts, technologies, materials, tools and workshops, master skills. The chief research questions are: how are artefacts made?, what skills does this require?, what are the reasons behind doing certain things? This article focuses on the application of practice-led research, drawing on examples from four outstanding MA theses defended at the Estonian Native Crafts Department of UT VCA.
 Ethnographic research has provided a firm platform for the development of Estonian craft research. The importance of skills and their documentation was already acknowledged as a vital aspect in understanding local material culture in the 1920s at the beginning of systematic ethnographic data collection by the Estonian National Museum. The questionnaires sent to the members of the network of the museum’s correspondents all over Estonia have yielded a great deal of interesting information about various craft-related practices. And, to date,not all of this material has been exhaustively studied.
 The most interesting ethnographic studies concerning traditional technologies combine thorough fieldwork, skilful use of written responses from correspondents, outstanding observational skills, and a deep knowledge of local dialects and folklore.
 Especially interesting developments in the study of old technologies have been initiated during the past few decades by archaeologists using experimental methods. When dealing with ancient artefacts whose makers can no longer be observed or interviewed and for which there is archival information, novel methods have to be employed. Experimental creation, chemical analyses, or study under a microscope may supply interesting data about the artefacts in question, the ways they were made and the material they were made from.
 Practice-led research usually starts with the question ‘How is it made?’, and the first stage of data collection comprises ‘close observation’, which involves a detailed mapping of all the physical and observable parameters of the object under study, including drawing up a technological description with notes about its wear, defects, repairs, and so on.
 A craft researcher should be a skilled craftsperson him- or herself in order to be able to pose meaningful questions about the technological aspects of the objects being studied. A craft researcher can detect, describe and reconstruct the methods of making of an old artefact in a way that will make it possible to repeat that original process of making, bequeathing us a material object technologically similar to the original.
 How might craft research contribute to the humanities in general? This article offers three keywords: materiality, bodily knowledge, and environmental sustainability. The co-operation between master and his/her material is crucial in skilled craft activities. The notions of embodied knowledge and embodied cognition that originate in phenomenology, as well as the concept of tacit knowledge associated with Michael Polany, are cornerstones in the understanding of traditional crafts. Environmental sustainability is a key question that will increasingly shape human activity. Studying traditional technologies, tools, materials, skills and crafts provides a much-needed basis in the general turn towards a more sustainable lifestyle
 Keywords: Craft research, practice-based research method, material culture, craf

Εκ δυσμών το φως; Εξελληνισμός και οριενταλισμός στην Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία (μέσα 19ου–αρχές 20ου αιώνα)(Χάρης Εξερτζόγλου) [Light from the West? Hellenism and Orientalism in the Ottoman Empire (mid-nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century)] by Haris Exertzoglou

Reviewed by: Εκ δυσμών το φως; Εξελληνισμός και οριενταλισμός στην Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία (μέσα 19ου–αρχές 20ου αιώνα)(Χάρης Εξερτζόγλου) [Light from the West? Hellenism and Orientalism in the Ottoman Empire (mid-nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century)] by Haris Exertzoglou Elektra Kostopoulou (bio) Haris Exertzoglou (Χάρης Εξερτζόγλου), Εκ δυσμών το φως; Εξελληνισμός και οριενταλισμός στην Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία (μέσα 19ου–αρχές 20ου αιώνα) [Light from the West? Hellenism and Orientalism in the Ottoman Empire (mid-nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century)]. Athens: Ekdoseis tou Eikostou Protou. 2015. Pp. 247. Cloth €19. Almost four decades after the publication of the late Hayden White’s Metahistory (1975), Haris Exertzoglou’s engaging study reminds us of intellectual history’s endless potential to capture the nature of historical writing. In both format and content, the book mirrors itself structurally in its own deliberations. The book is divided into seven consecutive chapters, all of which revolve around the same central issue: the intellectual vista of Greek Orthodox communities in the late Ottoman Empire, as shaped by their understandings of East and West. Exertzoglou’s protagonists do not identify fully with either category. Their narratives form acts of translation that borrow from the abovementioned polarity in order to negate it de facto. Hence, they try to define themselves by creating an original in-between space of intellectual existence. At times, they wrestle with external dogmatisms. At times, they produce their own. The resulting tension is the central focus of the book, which discusses modernity as the expression—and the synthesis—of imperfect divisions. Already in his Prologue, Exertzoglou reminds us that Greek Orthodox thought was an integral part of the late Ottoman Empire. This approach challenges the isolationist tendencies that continue to characterize Modern Greek Studies. Moreover, it reveals that the exclusive association of Ottoman history with Islam originates in—as well as reproduces—problematic ideological, methodological, and political stereotypes. Given that the author himself meticulously traces the intellectual entanglements of the existing literature, the limited length of this review cannot do the book justice. Suffice it to say that reading Exertzoglou’s work side by side with the classic contributions of Selim Deringil (2000) and Ussama Makdisi (2002)—to mention only two indicative [End Page 404] works that resonate with Exertzoglou’s analysis—affirms that Ottoman intellectual history should neither focus merely on Islam nor merely on the central dynasty or the capital city. This main premise becomes clear in the Introduction and Chapter 1, which examine the intersection between nationalism, colonialism, and empire in the Greek Orthodox intellectual universe. The narrative focuses on the tension between East and West, as understood by the book’s protagonists, namely, Greek Orthodox intellectuals. To them, the West was identified with progress, industrialization, modern infrastructure, and the secularization of education. Did their anti-Western tendencies automatically imply a black-and-white contrast between modernity and tradition? Quite to the contrary, Exertzoglou argues. For the book’s protagonists, this very tension became modernity. In other words, they tried to reconcile Western progress with their own understanding of tradition. By implication, they did not accept Western modernity as universal; rather, they proposed that the integration of Greek values with Western progress produced the only version of modernity with universal value. Building on the above argument, the second chapter discusses the example of material culture along the lines of binary perceptions; in other words, it focuses on the objects, resources, and other ponderable manifestations of East versus West. Western modernity centered on technological innovation and industrial capitalism. Hence, it established an uneven relationship with the East in the abovementioned spheres. Far from remaining the passive terrain for Western expansion, however, some Greek Orthodox communities and urban strata found a new sense of agency in the production and theorization of material culture. They claimed a central role in communal education, defending a convenient hybrid of material progress and traditional values. By doing so, they transformed—without erasing—the traditional role played by religion in educating the nation. Greek Orthodox intellectuals equated the study of Greek letters, under the guidance of urban middle-classes, with an inner-civilizing mission for Ottoman lands. They presented antiquity, in particular, as proof of their own cultural superiority over the West, despite the fact that they drew inspiration from the West’s own appropriation of ancient Greece. As discussed in Chapters 4 and 5...

The way to a heart: Food for love

Abstract The connection established between pleasure and food has a long history in recipes for love. Cooking literature has reflected and shaped our ideas about home cooking as well as romance and can be read as a historical source for understanding those ideas as they were expressed in the past and in terms of what has endured over time. Considering cooking as a language that expresses love advances our understanding of the preparation of food as an emotional performance. The way to a heart, like love itself, is also historical rather than timeless. The shift in focus from advice to single women on how to win a man, to the newlywed on culinary skills to ensure a happy married life through to blogs promoting food as seduction, highlight changes in gender roles and sexuality that reinforce the significance of culinary literature as examples of material culture that reflect their time and place and the changing meanings of home cooking and love.

Museum cultural collections: pathways to the preservation of traditional and scientific knowledge

Museums of natural and cultural history in the 21st century hold responsibilities that are vastly different from those of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the time of many of their inceptions. No longer conceived of as cabinets of curiosities, institutional priorities are in the process of undergoing dramatic changes. This article reviews the history of the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, Alaska, from its development in the early 1920s, describing the changing ways staff have worked with Indigenous individuals and communities. Projects like the Modern Alaska Native Material Culture and the Barter Island Project are highlighted as examples of how artifacts and the people who constructed them are no longer viewed as simply examples of material culture and Native informants but are considered partners in the acquisition, preservation, and perpetuation of traditional and scientific knowledge in Alaska.

A Migrant Culture on Display: the French Migrant and French Gastronomy in London (19th to 21st centuries)

The large contemporary French migrant population – estimated by the French Consulate at around 300,000–400,000 in the UK, the majority living in London and the South-East – remains ‘absent’ from studies on migration, and, in a study of migrant food history in Britain, is considered not to have left traces as a migrant community. Over the centuries, the presence of various French communities in London has varied significantly as far as numbers are concerned, but what does not change is their simultaneous ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ in accounts of the history of the capital: even when relatively ‘visible’ at certain historical moments, they still often remain hidden in its histories. At times the French in London are described as a ‘sober, well-behaved […] and law-abiding community’; at other times they ‘appeared as a foreign body in the city’. This article reflects on the dynamics at play between a migrant culture associated with high cultural capital (so much so that is often emulated by those who are not French) and the host culture perception of and relationship to it, in order to consider what this may ‘mean’ for the French (and Francophone) migrant experience. French gastronomy and culinary knowledge is taken as an example of material culture and of cultural capital ‘on display’ specifically in the activity of dining out, especially in French restaurants, or in those influenced by French gastronomy. The social activity of dining out is replete with displays of knowledge (linguistic, culinary), of cultural literacy, of modes of behaviour, of public identity, and of rituals strictly codified in both migrant and host cultures. Dining out is also an emotional and politically-charged activity, fraught with feelings of suspicion (what is in the food? what does the chef get up to in the kitchen?) and of anxieties and tensions concerning status, class and gender distinctions. This article considers the ways in which the migrant French citizen of London may be considered as occupying an ambiguous position at different times in history, simultaneously possessing cultural capital and needing to negotiate complex cultural encounters in the connections between identity and the symbolic status of food in food production, food purveying and food consumption.

A Migrant Culture on Display: the French Migrant and French Gastronomy in London (19th to 21st centuries)

The large contemporary French migrant population - currently estimated by the French Consulate at around 300-400, 000 in the UK, the majority living in London and the South-East - remains 'absent' from studies on migration, and these apparently 'a-typical' migrants are considered in a study of migrant food history in Britain not to have left traces as a migrant community. Over the centuries, the presence of various French communities in London has varied significantly as far as as numbers are concerned, but what does not change is their simultaneous 'visibility' and 'invisibility' in accounts of the history of the capital: even when relatively 'visible' at certain historical moments, they still often remain hidden in its histories. At times the French in London are described as a 'sober, well-behaved... and law-abiding community' at others, they appeared as a 'foreign body in the city'. This article reflects on the dynamics at play between a migrant community associated with high cultural capital (so much so that it is often emluated by those who are not French) and the host culture perception of and relationship to it in order to consider what this may 'mean' for the French (and Francophone) migrant experience. French gastronomy and culinary knowledge is taken as an example of material culture and of cultural capital 'on display' specifically in the activity of dining out, especially in French restaurants, or those influenced by French gastronomy. The social activity of dining out is replete with displays of knowledge (linguistic, culinary, cultural literacy), of modes of behaviour, of public identity, and of rituals strictly codified in both migrant and host culture. Dining out is also an emotional and politicallly-charged activity, fraught with feelings of suspicion (what is in the food? what does the chef get up to in the kitchen?), of status, of class and gender distinctions. This article considers the ways in which the migrant French citizen of London may be considered as occupying an ambiguous position at different times in history, at once in possession of knowledge and of the need to negotiate complex cultural encounters in the connections between identity and the symbolic status of food (in food production, food purveying and food consumption).

Cultura materiale e nuovi valori: il caso della moda etica

The article explores the phenomenon of ethical fashion from the beginning to nowadays as an example of material culture where the role of new values is particularly visible. Fashion, long-considered the most frivolous/useless/negative way of consumption, is framed by the author through the categories usually employed when explaining the passage from rational productive modernity to the aesthetic consumer culture of postmodernity. Ethical fashion seems to contrast this dichotomous mentality and expects to integrate aesthetic innovation and morals, sustainability and shared welfare, production and consumption. A new Ethical Imagination, supported by advanced digital instruments and the recent sharing economy values, drives toward work/consumption solutions that promise to subvert old hierarchies and alienated relations as well as gender bias.

Examining the Presence of Symmetry within Acheulean Handaxes: A Case Study in the British Palaeolithic

This paper examines the relationship between the presence of symmetry and the Acheulean biface within a predominantly British Lower Palaeolithic context. There has been a long-standing notion within Palaeolithic studies that Acheulean handaxes are symmetrical and become increasingly so as time progress as a reflection of increasing hominin cognitive and behavioural complexity. Specifically, the presence of symmetry within Acheulean handaxes is often seen as one of the first examples of material culture being used to mediate social relationships. However, this notion has never been satisfactorily tested against a large data set. This paper seeks to address the issue by conducting an analysis of some 2680 bifaces across a chronological and geographical span. The results from the sample presented here are that symmetrical bifaces do not appear to have a particularly strong presence in any assemblage and do not appear to increase as time progress. These results have significant implications for modern researchers assessing the cognitive and behavioural complexities of Acheulean hominins.

Chair

Anne Massey’s Chair contributes to the cultural perspective on the design of objects; in particular, it adds its voice to those who argue that the chair is neither natural nor health-promoting, but rather a cultural artefact that naturalizes social relations. For example, the author describes how chairs are used to ‘order and control’ social groupings in pubs, cafes, theatres and cinemas in England and France. She notes that the Modern Movement ordered ‘the very public interior spaces of the modernist buildings and their inhabitants, using the design and careful placing of chairs’ (p. 65). Best of all, she notes the ‘slightly edgy, fetishistic underlying theme that has always existed in modernist chair design—cruelly contorting the body into unnatural poses…’ (p. 202). Chair scholarship falls broadly into several categories: art and art history, social and cultural history (in many different countries including China, Japan, France, Germany, Australia and England), ergonomics, and construction and manufacturing. This book has a toehold in both socio-cultural history, and art history, along with the author’s own contemporary experience with chairs, especially those in hospital waiting rooms. A larger body of scholarship examines many different kinds of objects as examples of material culture and this book can be considered a contribution to that domain. Someone reading for the first time about chairs as a social apparatus could enjoy this book as an introduction, especially since it has diverse and interesting illustrations every few pages.

Cookbook: A New Scholarly View

Cookbook: A New Scholarly View

Talking about “Iconic Books” in the Terminology of Book History

“The book” in its many guises today provides fertile ground for the study of the many disciplines and professions in which it has played a central part. Long recognized as significant as a carrier of text, the book has lately been seen also as an example of material culture. A consideration of the book’s physical properties and uses can provide new insights into the practices and unarticulated beliefs of a cultural community. Here we consider the potential of “the book” for insights into the study of religion. The focus is on “iconic” books, a subset of books that seems intuitively recognizable as a genre, but is variously understood by the writers of the essays in this collection. It is not only the nature of iconicity that begs for definition here, but also, more specifically, the specific aspects of “the book” that cause it to be recognized as iconic. Does its iconicity spring, for example, from the beauty of the copy? The primacy of the edition and printing? The provenance of the object? As “the book” gains attention, the subject cries out for specific, stable, shared terminology to allow meaningful discussion of its elements across disciplines and fields. Such terminology can be found in the field of Book History, a discipline that has its roots in the world of Gutenberg and continues to flourish in the internet age. This paper discusses terminology. It explores various approaches to defining “iconic,” it traces the evolution of the terminology of book history, and it presents a sample of particularly pertinent terms from that discipline to clarify future discussions of aspects of an “iconic book.”