In the previous two chapters, we have reflected on participating in the daily lives of people and observing their actions (Chapter 3) and on interviewing them (Chapter 4). Often, these activities blend into one another naturally, or rather: naturalistically. Yet people do not only interact and speak, they also make things, or as they are sometimes called artefacts. Archaeology has of old focused on objects humans make, especially on tools. It used to be said that humans are unique because they are tool-making animals. We now know this is not true: chimpanzees use stems, twigs, branches, leaves, and rocks for various purposes (Goodall, 1971), and crows do similar things (Hunt, 1996). Still, humans seem indeed to be unique in the extent to which they make things and in the vital role those things play in their lives. Whereas chimpanzees and crows might survive if their capacity for tool making was somehow taken away from them, humans would be utterly helpless without the things they themselves produce, like clothes, axes, bows, and ploughs. They would soon die out. Another way of saying this is of course that humans are cultural animals. Culture is ‘what people learn from one another’ (Goudsblom, 1989: 110). A good deal of learning occurs by handing over and receiving ‘things’, often but not always including instructions as to their use.

In this chapter, we discuss a loose catalogue of things humans make and hand over to one another. We discuss them from the point of view of ‘telling about society’. What can we learn about the everyday life of people by looking at what they produce: documents, books, poems, paintings, photos, films, dances, buildings, and many things more? Our treatment is not exhaustive. Various other categories of things might be suggested; and also different ways of looking at them. The aim of this chapter is to sensitize you to the fruitfulness of studying human artefacts in general as important sources of information in naturalistic inquiry. We discuss texts first, then images, and then things in the sense of objects.