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[geoffsebesta]

One of my favorite historical trivium that I’ve learned lately: one thing museums can’t show us. Because museums are collections of stuff. But it turns out that, until the Industrial Revolution, people didn’t have any stuff. They didn’t have furniture. They didn’t have beds. They didn’t have tables. They sat on the floor or they sat on boxes. They ate with their bowl in one hand and a fork in the other.

That’s why sometimes you see old books that describe the poor of the past as “squatters and leaners.” Because you can’t sit unless you can afford a chair.

Now, how is a museum going to show you that? What kind of museum doesn’t have anything in it? Apparently an accurate one.

Radio Free North Hollywood.

Comments

[whatistigerbalm]

Where were these people who didn't have furniture prior to the 1800s?

[geoffsebesta]

According to The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790, by Rhys Isaac, everywhere! Nobody had anything before the Industrial Revolution, apparently.

But specifically and definitely old Virginia.

[whatistigerbalm]

That will come as a surprise to all the applied and folk art museums worldwide!

[geoffsebesta]

Well, that's sort of the point! This is something that museums really can't show, because museums are collections of stuff. It's a built-in blind spot.

However, if you read any period literature, any time they go into a poor person's hovel, they always mention four bare walls and some rags on the floor. I think that's a lot closer to what the past was like than these well-organized collections.

We measure the past by what persists -- that's why we think Babylonians invented astrology -- but the sad fact is that the vast majority of the past did not persist.

This is a major problem in American Indian archaeology, because European dominance of the continent came at about the same time as the Industrial Revolution. So any post-industrial museum is going to have acres more stuff to show than any pre-industrial museum, so there just aren't many Native American museums. The ones that are tend to be much more filled with dioramas and "how they lived" displays than the usual collections of jewelry and tools that we associate with European museums.