Studies of the material culture within households in Europe and North America are now very familiar. They are invariably based on inventories made as part of the purpose of probate and this contribution is a study of 188 probate inventories for the small town of Thame in Oxfordshire over the course of the seventeenth century.

Statistical information in the form of tables and graphs is included in the book, but the majority of the empirical data on which the study is based is reported as being online at the publisher's website. Unfortunately each attempt to access this was met with a response of ‘404 Page not found’. While the provision of additional material in this way can be extremely useful (provided it is accessible), information that should be in the book is (presumably) online. Thus some quite basic information about the sample of inventories, including for example, the frequency of their survival over time, is missing from the book.

Anthony Buxton has a professional background in the conservation and restoration of historic furniture. His descriptions of how objects were made and how they were used in the household are very thorough and carry an air of authority. In his transition to academe Buxton seems to have been influenced more by archaeology and anthropology than by history, and it is surprising and problematic that he did not receive better guidance on the historical side, not least from his editors at Boydell. The book includes quite extensive reviews of various aspects of social theory (Husserl and husbandman are interesting bedfellows in the index) but is weak on historical context. For example, the description of the economy of Thame (pp. 38–57) has a number of misunderstandings and relies too heavily on some inappropriate secondary sources. For harvest fluctuations Buxton would have been better served by Stratton's Agricultural records or The agrarian history of England and Wales than Hoskins's articles of 1964 and 1968. There have been plenty of texts on English agricultural history since Gray's book on English field systems, originally published in 1915.

The first 94 pages deal with these theoretical reflections and literature summaries, essentially scene-setting for what is to follow, although the tone is descriptive. Theories are not challenged and while some existing work on material culture is criticised, there is no attempt to formulate a specific set of questions or hypotheses to inform Buxton's analysis of the Thame inventories. Three chapters then describe objects concerned with cooking, with conviviality, and with rest and security, followed by a chapter on rooms within the household. In the penultimate chapter nine households are described in more detail using some additional source material. Again the tone in these chapters is descriptive and information from the inventories is supplemented by descriptions of the early modern household from contemporary texts, particularly Joseph Markham. There are also over 80 illustrations (including 14 from Randle Holme's Academy of armory) which add greatly to the attractiveness of the book but seem rather ornamental in that they are not subject to much comment or analysis.

The author considers his study to have ‘deliberately largely employed aggregated data of material culture (in order to establish household norms and trends)’ (p. 36). Unfortunately this is not really possible with 188 inventories spread over a century. Individual inventories can be fascinating and revealing in themselves, but norms and trends must rely on a reasonably sized sample in order to iron out the inevitable errors and omissions that any individual inventory is likely to possess. Thus very few trends are actually discussed and there are simply too few inventories to demonstrate changes in household material culture over time.

How then, does this study of material culture compare with others? The extensive use of theory, contemporary household descriptions and illustrations do suggest an attempt to understand domestic culture as opposed to just the material culture revealed by inventories. The inventories themselves make a relatively small contribution to this and add nothing original to our knowledge of early modern material culture. There is little attempt to relate the evidence from these inventories to the findings of other studies of the material culture of early modern English households. Despite the theoretical contribution the study remains essentially descriptive: as the author states (p. 243), ‘the data has been treated largely in a descriptive and statistical fashion’.