Amulets and the material culture of healing (360G-Wellcome-208450_Z_17_Z)

The goal of this project is to investigate how amulets represent varying forms of value and power across differing chronologies. The Science Museum's collection will allow me to comprehensively examine a diverse range of objects, and research different forms of medical, magical and scientific worth and potency unavailable by studying textual sources alone. This project will ask three questions: How do objects with both similar and antithetical social values–from the rare to the quotidian, the expensive to the ubiquitous–represent differing forms of remedial power? In which different ways do these amulets represent the patients' experience of illness and healing and how can we as historians and museum curators afford these objects ‘voices’ without being anachronistic and jeopardising their original power? Finally, what material features have led to certain objects being considered as curative, prophylactic or apotropaic, and to what extent do function and potency depend on manmade and natural materials? This project will use these amulets to help answer important questions about European healing practices from medieval period to present day. A direct, material analysis of the objects and collections will elucidate the historical importance of these objects, and what they can contribute to our knowledge of health and healing.