Material culture is an interdisciplinary field of study that explores the many roles of objects in human societies and cultures. Material culture scholars who are interested in the things we make, own, gift, circulate, collect, steal, lose, destroy, and discard, and such scholars generally agree on the following principles.

All Created Objects (i.e., objects constructed by individuals, groups, corporations, etc.)

• All objects have culturally- and historically-specific meanings;
• These meanings are based in the dialectic between the subject (the person or persons who engage with the object) and the object: we make objects and they (in a sense) make us; in other words, our relationships with objects are fashioned by affect and personal experience, as well as larger cultural, historical, and social forces; and
• All objects are texts: they can only be interpreted within what Clifford Geertz (via Max Weber) has called the “webs of significance” that constitute a culture (“Thick Description,” 5); and these “webs of significance” encompass a wide variety of cultural realities, ranging from attitudes towards creativity, property, ethical/moral values, and memory to assumptions about identity, gender, race, and sexuality.