Objects preserve the history of the illiterate majority that texts leave out

MacGregor's foundational argument is that for most of human history, the overwhelming majority of people never wrote anything down, and even in literate societies, writing was typically the preserve of a narrow elite — scribes, officials, clergy, and the wealthy — meaning written historical records inherently skew toward the perspectives and concerns of the powerful and educated.

Physical objects, by contrast, were made and used by everyone: farmers, laborers, soldiers, and merchants left behind tools and everyday items even without written traces. This makes material culture a valuable source for reconstructing ordinary lives otherwise invisible to historians working from documents alone.

MacGregor treats this not as a minor methodological point but as a corrective to a systematic bias in how world history has traditionally been written and taught, arguing that any history built primarily from texts is quietly telling the story of the literate few rather than the many.

Takeaway: when a historical period feels dominated by elite voices in the written record, ask what surviving objects from ordinary life might tell a different, more representative story.