Object Biography Research Articles

From museum to school and back again: tracing the biographies of natural history objects, 1866–2024

ABSTRACT The article traces and examines the history of some of the specimens used in teaching in Swedish secondary grammar schools from the mid-nineteenth century up until today. Previous research has focused on empirical analyses of teaching materials and school collections, while this paper adds new knowledge to the history of education using an object-biographic approach. Whilst focusing on the history of two distinct specimens, a bird and a small collection of butterflies, and how these were circulated and recontextualised, the paper raises wider questions about how different actors are involved as meanings and knowledge content change. Through the object-biographic approach, we show that the use of natural history objects was multifaceted and had several purposes at the same time, ranging from research to education to providing status or being a hobby. The use of natural history specimens changed with reforms of the Swedish educational system. New teaching materials and new educational ideals were developed, and from 1960 onwards the importance of these objects decreased. We show how the specimens have taken on new meanings today as selected and displayed museum objects.

Tracing the Past: Microwear Analysis of Stone and Shell Beads Unearthed in Early Neolithic Burials at Samborzec, Poland

This paper presents a thorough analysis of ornaments discovered in two Neolithic burials at Samborzec Site 1, providing valuable insights into their origins and significance. The artefacts, retrieved over six decades ago in the burials of a woman and child, have undergone extensive examination, including raw material identification, microwear studies, and the analysis of red residues found on their surfaces. While most of the ornaments concerned were crafted from marble, two beads were identified as Spondylus shells. Chemical analysis of residues, primarily found on the marble ornaments, revealed the presence of cinnabar, a red pigment of foreign origin. The remarkable similarities in ornaments between the investigated burials strongly suggest the association of both with LBK communities. The presented studies offer valuable insights into their object biographies, from the acquisition of raw materials from distant regions through their manufacture, assembly, and prolonged use as personal items. In this context, our research emphasizes their belonging to a shared Neolithic tradition in Europe.

A community of practice approach to the management of metal resources, metalworking and hoarding in Bronze Age societies

The burial of metals in hoards is a trademark phenomenon of prehistoric Europe that may be counterintuitive to perceptions of value nowadays. For the first time here, we establish detailed biographies of a large corpus of hoarded metal objects, providing new insights into how societies in the second millennium BC engaged with their convertible material wealth. We move beyond previous research on prehistoric hoarding commonly focussing on separate questions such as what was placed in hoards, who selected the objects, what were the origins of materials, and where and when they were buried. Analysing ca. 200 metal tools and weapons, we use data reduction methods to define technological pathways in the long biographies of hoarded objects extending across the sourcing of materials, production, use, decommissioning, and deposition in the Carpathian Basin. We show how the differential treatment of materials and objects was strongly biased by social decisions across artefact types. We identify shared, standardised signature treatments that crossed over social-spatial boundaries. Our findings bring new insights on the interface between communal and elite wealth management at the intersection of technological reasoning and cultural beliefs in prehistoric communities.

Material historicity: Rethinking objects through the mis/recognition of a Catholic saint

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographic research in Santa Cruz Mixtepec, Mexico, this article investigates a local debate about the identity of a historic statue of a saint. It shows that historical and object biography approaches cannot fully account for the different ways that people draw on material evidence, religious understandings, and their own perceptions of the past when engaging with such meaningful objects. To more fully account for such processes, I develop the concept of ‘material historicity,’ which provides a framework that connects theories of materiality and historical consciousness. This framework will allow scholars to understand how objects and their material qualities provoke and enable creative and interpretive engagements with the past, and how these engagements interact with one another in the present. The case of the Mixtepec Saint shows that in addition to these analytical possibilities, attention to material historicity can also offer a politics that challenges the authority of secular, historicist interpretations of the past by allowing multiple perspectives to be considered on equal footing.

Objects, Olympics, and Femininity: Exploring the Impact of a 1924 Handheld Fan on Gender at the Games

Abstract On the second level of the Olympic Museum in Switzerland lives a handheld fan from the 1924 Paris Olympics featuring five sportswomen. The museum describes the fan as a souvenir from the Games and an advertisement for a French perfume company. However, this fan is much more than an advertisement or souvenir. Drawing upon new materialist theory, which envisions objects as lively, this article looks toward the ways the fan was productive in developing ideas around gender at the Olympics. Using an object biography, this research explores how the fan contributed to the New Woman femininity of the 1920s and currently produces a narrative of the International Olympic Committee as being a gender progressive organization. In so doing, it explores how an object that is often overlooked by many at the museum plays a powerful role in understandings of gender across the history of the Games.

Every Thing Can Be a Hero! Narrative Visualization of Person, Object, and Other Biographies

Knowledge communication in cultural heritage and digital humanities currently faces two challenges, which this paper addresses: On the one hand, data-driven storytelling in these fields has mainly focused on human protagonists, while other essential entities (such as artworks and artifacts, institutions, or places) have been neglected. On the other hand, storytelling tools rarely support the larger chains of data practices, which are required to generate and shape the data and visualizations needed for such stories. This paper introduces the InTaVia platform, which has been developed to bridge these gaps. It supports the practices of data retrieval, creation, curation, analysis, and communication with coherent visualization support for multiple types of entities. We illustrate the added value of this open platform for storytelling with four case studies, focusing on (a) the life of Albrecht Dürer (person biography), (b) the Saliera salt cellar by Benvenuto Cellini (object biography), (c) the artist community of Lake Tuusula (group biography), and (d) the history of the Hofburg building complex in Vienna (place biography). Numerous suggestions for future research arise from this undertaking.

Object Biographies, Object Agency and a Local Community's Encounter with and Response to Foreign Commodities: The Pithoi from LB Tel Burna as a Case Study

This study investigates the effects that an encounter with a foreign object can have on local traditions. Notions of object agency and object biographies will be utilized to address what happens when people become entangled with new things: the new context can have an impact on the newly introduced object, and those newly introduced objects can similarly impact locals and their traditions. The Late Bronze Age southern Levantine site of Tel Burna will serve as a case study, where a number of imported Cypriot pithoi were found alongside locally produced pithoi. It will be demonstrated that in their new context, the Cypriot pithoi were given new meaning and function. At the same time, the imported pithoi played active roles in the local potters of Tel Burna making pithoi. However, the local pithoi resemble local storage jars, so while the potters mimicked the concept of the Cypriot pithoi, they did so according to local normative forms.

Women, Empire, and Entomology: An Object Biography of Eleanor Glanville’s Pipevine Swallowtail, c. 1700

Today, the gentlewoman Eleanor Glanville (1655–1709) is often remembered as the first lady of British butterflies. In Glanville’s own lifetime, she gained a reputation amongst London naturalists as an astute collector of butterflies from the South West region of England. Yet, a turn towards Glanville’s material archive, namely, her extant specimens held at the Natural History Museum, London, reveals Glanville’s success as a collector of rare butterflies from the Americas and thus, her complicity in colonial collecting. This article provides an object biography of a single pipevine swallowtail or Battus philenor, c. 1700, labeled “Glandvill.” It follows the butterfly specimen from its obscure origins in the Americas, to Glanville’s residence in the Atlantic port city of Bristol, and to London naturalists’ cabinets of curiosities, where it would became part of a collection that helped found the British Museum, the first public museum of its kind. The life cycle of this object attests to the role that empire played in building one woman’s collection of insects and her contributions to the making of present-day museums. It also suggests that while empire opened up opportunities for some women naturalists, it did not necessarily advance their reputations as collectors.

Art and archaeology

We start this review in the sanctuaries of archaic and classical Greece. The book Between Deity and Dedicator is the PhD thesis of Sanne Hoffmann. Hoffmann's aim is to examine terracotta votive figurines through their entire lifecycle, following their journey from production to dedication to deposition within the sanctuary (fifteen of which are chosen, with a preponderance, never really fully explained, towards those of female deities). Theories of object agency and an emerging interest in object biographies are extremely well-chosen as the frameworks in which to discuss a set of objects that were surely imagined to have some sort of efficacy in prompting a response from the deity to whom they were dedicated. It is so often the case that introductions lay out long explanations of theories that are then never again mentioned in the rest of the book as the author gets stuck in to the ‘content’. Here, though, the theory is evoked effectively and explicitly at key parts throughout the thesis.

A study on creative object biographies. Can creative arts be a medium for understanding object–human interaction?

Abstract Object biography, amended and expanded by the newer and ontologically updated concept of object itineraries, is a well-established analytical tool for documenting human–object interactions. The present paper explores its intersection with art, and proposes the concept of Creative Object Biography, as a step forward in the discourse and as a means for articulating and sharing alternative narratives and imageries not only among specialists but also – and especially – with the wider public, aiming to render discussions on materiality relevant to diverse audiences. The paper uses as a case study a group of three every-day objects associated with the Vlach pastoral transhumance of northern Greece, whose entanglements and cultural itineraries functioned as the inspiration for the creation of three original short films.

Combing through museum collections. A “museomic” application of ZooMS

AbstractThis article presents the application of Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to osseous Longobard artifacts from the collection of the “Musei Reali di Torino” (MRT; Torino, Italy). Like most archaeological items made of worked bone/antler in museum collections, the raw material of such specimens is usually attributed to deer, often without accurate taxonomic attribution. Therefore, the main aim of the present investigation was to shed light on taxonomical aspects using biomolecular approaches.We first examined the collagen preservation of the artifacts, then we compared three sampling methods (invasive, eraser‐based, and bag‐based), and we evaluated the quality of the collagen fingerprint obtained. Overall, we found a good, albeit not optimal, biomolecular preservation status, even in heavily restored objects coming from the 19th‐century collections.Out of 37 specimens analyzed through matrix‐assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight–mass spectrometry (MALDI‐TOF‐MS) and nanoHPLC‐tandem MS, 31 yielded usable data. The results confirmed the widespread use of cervid as the osseous raw material for comb‐making in Longobard times in Piedmont, but we also found that bovine bones (Bos but also other taxa belonging to family Bovidae, such as caprines) and equid bones were exploited—demonstrating opportunistic use of animal resources. As far as the method is concerned, the ZooMS peptide markers useful to distinguish between bovids and cervids (m/z 1580 vsm/z 1550) (Buckley et al., 2009) are more frequently detected when analyzing bone chips, that is, with the invasive sampling method, rather than collagen extracts obtained using non‐invasive techniques. Nonetheless, the eraser method (eZooMS) seems to be a good trade‐off between invasivity and quality of the information obtained: eZooMS sampling does not leave visible marks on the object and therefore can contribute to facilitating the routine application of biomolecular methods in the daily practice of museum conservation laboratories. Indeed, an important outcome of the present study has been the establishment of a close collaboration between museum and biomolecular specialists.Taken together, our results suggest that the Longobards had a preference towards locally available resources, although this work did not highlight a clear association between raw material (deer, cattle, and other bovids) and object typology (in the case of combs) or function, except for buttons. The overall information obtained by this study confirms the potential of biomolecular approaches for reconstructing the biography of museum objects with a long and complex life and demonstrates the value of zooarchaeological study of museum collections.

Collaborative Approach to Updating Object Records at the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum

This paper examines a collaborative approach to the assessment and updating of object records held at the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum (DLB). The Museum is the primary repository of objects and documents relating to the life of David Livingstone (1813–1873). Livingstone is renowned for his travels throughout the African continent and subsequently, a third of the collection originates from Africa. The language used for both the classification and description of objects contained outdated, racist and colonial references to peoples, communities, and territories. Similarly, the omittance of acquisition information reflected dominant museum collecting practices of the ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. In order to dismantle these Western-centric cataloging conventions, DLB collaborated with local African diaspora community groups, international museums, and heritage organizations from Malawi and Botswana. A series of case studies illustrate knowledge production through oral history and object biography to create records that include multiple voices.

“The Great Historical Clock of America”: an object biography

“The Great Historical Clock of America”: an object biography

Provenance inconnu and other stories: developing engaging labels for ancient history collections

Storytelling lies at the heart of how museums share their collections with the public. However, not all stories are treated equally. Archaeological collections, with their small finds and fragmentary artifacts, find that many of their stories are relegated to the succinct, objective language of a label, necessarily truncating the rich associations that each object embodies. This does not allow much space for stimulating visitors’ imagination, and is even less conducive to motivating a critical approach. In cases where there are gaps in the object’s origins, the regular label format may give little to no clarification on the object’s life. As a thought-experiment in the possibilities of object biography, we chose the case study of a humble bronze figurine in Musée L’s archaeological collections. Despite its missing provenance and incomplete provenience, we developed a series of display interventions through which we could tell its story in the museum in new way.

COLLECTION-BASED RESEARCH ON A KAMPILAN SWORD IN JAMBI PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE MUSEUM

This article discusses the kampilan sword in Jambi People’s Struggle Museum. Kampilan is a traditional weapon originating from the Philippines but has spread to several regions in Indonesia, including Jambi. The kampilan sword collection is often overlooked, and there is not much information regarding these objects, despite the museum’s primary function is research and communication. Therefore, we conducted a study of a collection of kampilan swords to explore information related to these objects, allowing the museum to utilize and develop them in the future. The research model was based on the material culture study, using the social life of things and object biography approaches. Results indicate that, through these two approaches, new information and narratives about kampilan swords were successfully compiled. In the future, the museum can use these narratives to create new programs, create meanings and ideas related to struggle, and serve as the first step towards further research.

Erinnerungen. Ankauf, Umbau und Zerstörung der Villa Düsternbrooker Weg 40 in Kiel

The article summarizes the essential statements of a detailed description of the reconstruction and the interior of the house Düsternbrooker Weg 40 in Kiel, made by its owner Wilhelm Anschütz (1870–1954), full professor for surgery at Kiel University, after the sinking of the house during the bombing of Kiel in the night of August 26–27, 1944. Anschütz gives an object biography of the house from 1909 to 1944, reporting on the reconstructions and describing them in detail room by room, showing the associated interior partly with details of their origin and more precise form. This unique source of a subjective idea of a middle-class home in Kiel before the Second World War provides detailed insights into the living environment of the time and is also of further interest as a self-testimony.

“Respect the Stick!”

Rainbow Gatherings are one of the earliest forerunners of transformative events, with a history spanning five decades. These noncommercial, cocreated, and inclusive meetings have a global spread, offering radical alternatives to social organization and political processes. This essay examines the alternative political model of Rainbow Gatherings through the lens of material culture studies. The analysis follows an object biography of the ritual artifact known as the Talking Stick, central to Rainbow’s political practices, and explores the meaning of the object in material, symbolic, and instrumental senses. Drawing on ethnographic field work at fourteen Rainbow Gatherings across Europe, the essay concludes that organizational models contribute to the transformational potential of events.

The dating of the Toruń portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus determined by dendrochronological, art historical and technological studies

Revealing more detail on the biography of art objects, such as their attribution, dating or the artist's methods and techniques, requires a multidisciplinary approach that includes dendrochronology as a means of providing the chronological order. The 550th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) offered an opportunity to conduct an in-depth study of the Toruń portrait of the Great Astronomer, also from a technological and art-historical point of view, and to compare the present findings with the results of the first attempt at dendrochronological dating made in 1987.The analysis of the painting from 2023 showed the following results of dendrochronological dating with the following end dates and time spans of tree ring series: board no. 2 - end date AD 1558, time span AD 1287–1558; and board no. 3 - end date AD 1500, time span AD 1439–1500 and unambiguously demonstrated that this most widely known image of Copernicus was created after his death.While the author of the painting is unknown, the stylistic features may suggest influences of Netherlandish or Flemish painters. The painting panel was made from Baltic oak of Lithuanian or Belarusian origin, and the well-corresponding tree-ring series of numerous Flemish paintings suggest Flanders as the origin of the Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus. A comparison of the results of the two dendrochronological studies – conducted in 1987 and 2023 using vastly different technological capabilities – provides clear evidence that the tree-ring series developed by the pioneers of art-historical dendrochronology, together with their vast databases, can be used with great confidence.

Revealing observatory networks through object stories: Object itineraries

In this paper, each contribution uses an object biography – or object itinerary – methodology, tracking their chosen objects from conception and purchase, across time and space, to today. The function of each object could change significantly over time, and these stories serve to remind us of the range of projects and activities that observatories might support or host, including overseas astronomical expeditions, a local time service, mathematical calculations, measurement of photographic plates, magnetic, meteorological and seismological observation, the hosting and dining of visitors, and the display and promotion of the observatory’s status. In each case, the object’s movements and location within particular spaces point the reader to consider a wide range of people, whether located within the observatory, beyond its walls, or within international scientific networks. The objects considered here are a London-made marine chronometer purchased by the Palermo Observatory, which was not used for navigation but was nevertheless well travelled; a large wooden table placed in the Octagon Room of the Royal Observatory Greenwich; and a British seismograph set up in at the Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory of the University of Coimbra. These itineraries also show how the value attached to objects changes over time: they shift from functional tools to obsolescence, then regain significance as their histories have been recovered and re-examined. This paper forms part of the collection ‘Revealing observatory networks through object stories’ where object stories are presented in three themed papers (with further papers being ‘Instrumental networks’ and ‘Observatory audiences’). The genesis of the collection is described in the ‘Introduction’.

Book review: Tim Edensor, Landscape, Materiality and Heritage: An Object Biography

Book review: Tim Edensor, <i>Landscape, Materiality and Heritage: An Object Biography</i>