Cooking Equipment, Social Aspects of

People have been fascinated by objects of the past for centuries. This pursuit of material culture has been concerned with objects, their technology form, properties, and usage. The recent linking of material culture and social history is a relatively new academic approach to history that has broadened vistas of American social history and has contributed to the useful integration of all social sciences. It is a vital part of the cyclical nature of historical change— that is, the ways in which culture determines its own material advances (demand) and the ways in which new materials redirect culture.