This book presents ways to explore and teach history outside the traditional classroom experience--by the study of historic photographs, mail-order catalogs, cartography, historic house museums and villages, the 1876 Centennial, plants and natural material culture, and regional studies through what the author calls above-ground archaeology.

I: Graphics as artifacts -- Mirrors of the past: historical photography and American history -- Mail-order catalogs as resources in material culture studies -- Past cityscapes: uses of cartography in urban history -- II: Historic sites as artifacts -- Historic house museums: seven teaching strategies -- The historic museum village as a cross-disciplinary learning laboratory -- The 1876 centennial: a model for comparative American studies -- III: Landscapes as artifacts -- Vegetation as historical data: a historian's use of plants and natural material culture evidence -- Regional studies in America: the Chicago model -- Above-ground archaeology: discovering a community's history through local artifacts -- IV: Coda -- Collecting ideas and artifacts: common problems of history museums and history texts.