Abstract

Edoardo Grendi was always interested in the field of material culture, which is a much wider one than it was twenty years ago. By now, the problematic of the field has come to be focused on the relationship between objects - whether archaeological or "artistic" - and cultural representations, the latter normally available through the analysis of written texts. Grendi was always very involved in the construction of a cultural history that was attentive to the materiality of things, and thus this field fits his own interests. The problems of how to construct a proper analysis of material culture are further focused on here through a discussion of the relationship between medieval history and archaeology.