A guide to sources for the history of material culture in Ireland, 1500–2000

Toby Barnard

In recent years, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists and specialists in design, architecture and art have developed techniques that are now being exploited by historians. Dr Barnard provides a guide to some of the theories and their implications. The materials available to the historian include surviving buildings, artefacts and human interventions in the landscape itself; others, no longer visible, can be reconstructed from apparently unpromising documents like bills, advertisements, tax records and account books.