What would an artefact-based anthropology look like if it were not about material culture? And could such a project aspire, not to create a new sub-genre within the discipline, but to reconfigure anthropologys analytic methodologies more generally? Thinking Through Things is an ambitious foray by a group of young anthropologists who share common concerns about the place of objects and materiality in their interpretive struggles. More than simply a critique of existing anthropological reasoning, the volume puts forward a positive programme for the re-fashioning of anthropological endeavours. Testing the limit of the persistent analytical assumption that meanings are fundamentally distinct from their material manifestations, Thinking Through Things attempts to explore the consequences of an apparently counter-intuitive analytic possibility: that artifacts might be treated as sui generis meanings.

Drawing upon the work of some of the most influential theorists in the field, Thinking Through Things demonstrates the quiet revolution growing in anthropology and its related disciplines, shifting its philosophical foundations. The first text to offer a direct and provocative challenge to disciplinary fragmentation - arguing for the futility of segregating the study of artefacts and society - this collection expands on the concerns about the place of objects and materiality in analytical strategies, and the obligation of ethnographers to question their assumptions and approaches.

The team of leading contributors put forward a positive programme for future research in this highly original and invaluable guide to recent developments in mainstream anthropological theory.

Amiria Henare explores the role of material cultural research in anthropology and related disciplines from the late eighteenth century to the present. Grounded in a historical ethnography of museums in New Zealand and Scotland, the work traces the movement of artefacts now held in contemporary collections through space and time, demonstrating how and why things were bought, exchanged and stolen and carried across oceans to arrive in present-day museums. The collecting of artefacts and their study both in museums and the the field are emphasised as key strategies in the development of anthropological thought, While much late twentieth-century writing in anthropology has employed analytic models and methodologies derived from the study of language, this work belongs to a growing body of research drawing on the epistemological potency of artefacts, the distinctive insights afforded by engagement with material things.

Amiria Henare explores the role of material cultural research in anthropology and related disciplines from the late eighteenth century to the present. Grounded in a historical ethnography of museums in New Zealand and Scotland, the work traces the movement of artefacts now held in contemporary collections through space and time, demonstrating how and why things were bought, exchanged and stolen and carried across oceans to arrive in present-day museums. The collecting of artefacts and their study both in museums and the the field are emphasised as key strategies in the development of anthropological thought, While much late twentieth-century writing in anthropology has employed analytic models and methodologies derived from the study of language, this work belongs to a growing body of research drawing on the epistemological potency of artefacts, the distinctive insights afforded by engagement with material things.