Peter N. Miller is Dean and Professor at Bard Graduate Center. He is the author most recently of Peiresc's Mediterranean World, editor of Cultural Histories of the Material World, and coeditor of Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800.

• Introduction: Why Historiography Matters1. History and Things in the Twentieth Century2. Karl Lamprecht and the "Material Turn" c. 18853. Things as Historical Evidence in the Late Renaissance and Early Enlightenment4. Material Evidence in the History Curriculum in Eighteenth-Century Göttingen5. Archaeology as a Way of Talking about Things, 1750–18506. Material Culture in the Amateur Historical Associations of Early Nineteenth-Century Germany7. Gustav Klemm, Cultural History, and Kulturwissenschaft8. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum: Antiquitates and Cultural History in the MuseumConclusion: Toward a Future Theory of the Historical Document

The history of the study of things is an enormous subject, but there is no one better suited to tackle it than Peter N. Miller. Author of two extraordinary books and numerous essays on early modern antiquarianism, Miller is ideally positioned to write what he modestly describes as "an outline history of how people have thought about studying objects as evidence."(Journal of Modern History) The book's unconventional structure beautifully highlights Miller's nuanced way of accounting for connections and disconnections in the story he is telling. It is an inspiring model of longue durée history that subtly negotiates between continuity and rupture.... A great achievement that will be of interest to scholars of interdisciplinary material culture studies, art history and archaeology, historiography, intellectual history, and eighteenth—and nineteenth-century Germany, as well as to artists and museum practitioners.(European History Quarterly)