I have to confess my love for this introduction. Although I am not an anthropology scholar, I did find some sentences which spoke to anthropological studies. “The Caribbean Taino, the Australian Aboriginals, the African people of Benin and the Incas, all of whom appear in this book, can speak to us now of their achievements most powerfully through the objects they made: a history told through things gives them back a voice.” I found this quote to be extremely powerful and comforting because in a sense our work and history doesn’t die with us. We have all this material from early settlers and tribes so we can fully analyze their lives. We can turn away from the empirical analysis and realize that these were actual people who used these items for a purpose or treasured them.

I also liked how the author describes written history vs object history. I like that the author introduced the problem of no textual or written history from early ancestors. Some more of my insights include literate vs. illiterate history. We did have written works from the enlightenment, but groups of indigenous tribes didn’t write or they wrote in a different language. Through objects we can analyze that tool and use it to our advantage in finding the history of these individuals. I completely agree with the notion that we must view history through objects and not through written material, because objects give us a deeper history than what appears on a page. Although not mentioned in the text, textual form is one-sided, but an object can mean different things to a different person—just another thought.

Objects create a significance to the story their told. As I said in the previous paragraph, they create multiple meanings and histories for different people. Textual information is a little tough to analyze since it’s one-sided. Objects also go into deeper meaning. A diamond which was passed down by the royal family was probably found or created by slaves or servants. This creates more of an understanding of the time and I find that absolutely interesting, am I wrong?

I think we can use this knowledge to our advantage. When we encounter an object and analyze its surfaces, descriptions and history we can find out not only what they were used for, but also how they were created. Why use this item as opposed to another? Why create it this way? Was this object passed down? How was this item used and by whom? How can we fully grasp the use of this object? I think that when we do our own research we need to consider all aspects of an object and not just its use by one person. There’s a history behind the person or manufacturer who created the object. We must listen to their voices as well. Were they mistreated? Were they slaves? How did the object get to the person or place who has it now? It may seem like a lot of questions, but you’d have to act like a journalist when researching and finding out all details.

Essentially, go out there and question everything about the object. Ask yourself what do you want to know about the object.