These articles provide a comprehensive review of the field of material culture, which studies the relationship between persons and things in the past and present in societies across the globe. The papers are organized into sections on theories and conceptions in the field; the relationship between material forms, the human body and the senses; subject-object relations; things made, exchanged and consumed; and the contemporary politics and poetics of displaying, representing and conserving material and the manner in which this impacts notions of heritage, tradition and identity. The contributors, who are experts in the field from the UK and US, also discuss possibilities for empirical research in the future. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)