This theme covers materials that can be used to build narratives of the past. This does not only include paper documents, but also other forms of cultural materials such as sculpture, stone inscriptions, sound recordings, images (photographs, film), paintings, decorative and archaeological objects, buildings and ruins.

Cultural materials are individual, composite or constructed into ensembles.

The material of cultural heritage can be:

• Natural or synthetic
• Hand-made or manufactured
• Durable or fugitive
• Unique or plentiful
• Well recorded or poorly understood
• Well made or hastily or crudely assembled.

It can have lasted a thousand years and will last another thousand or it can have been made yesterday and will not last beyond tomorrow, ie ephemeral.  Materials of cultural heritage are no different to any other materials except for the values that we attribute to them that raise them beyond the ordinary in our eyes, deserving of protection, understanding and interpretation like no other.