Cultural Histories of the Material World (CHMW) is an interdisciplinary book series featuring materially centered studies of culture, history, and the arts. Volumes in the series explore the various ways people have interpreted and shaped the material world from the perspectives of anthropology, archaeology, art and design history, conservation and materials science, history, museum studies, philosophy, and science and technology studies—fields that collectively inform the advanced degrees, exhibitions, and public programming at Bard Graduate Center. Material things reflect, constitute, and inspire human creativity; in circulation, they mediate complex encounters, exchanges, and entanglements. The global and transhistorical scope of this series reveals how attention to materiality and material evidence—from the microscopic to the monumental—can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of specific eras, environments, ways, and means within our shared human condition.