Conditioning factors of material culture at the level of household objects in the rural parish Inmaculada Concepción de La Cañada, Province of Maracaibo, Venezuela (1804-1860)

Abstract

An approximation is made to the conditioning factors of material culture at the level of domestic objects in the rural parish Inmaculada Concepción de La Cañada, Province of Maracaibo (Venezuela), in the years 1804-1860. Specifically, we investigate the effect of alternate residence in an urban environment, the wealth of the families, and the professional milieu of the heads of the families on the quantity, the variety and the type of objects present in the households. Conceiving the domestic objects as entities that exercise material agency, we explore how the considered factors could have influenced the degree of material well-being of the families and the mutually constitutive relationships between the material culture and the identities and practices of the social agents. The primary sources used in the investigation were a set of post-mortem inventory files consulted in the Main Registry of the Zulia State (Maracaibo, Venezuela).