The term ‘history’ is confusingly ambiguous, not least in being identified both as the study of the whole of the past and only that part of the past accessible through the written record. This has an effect on those historical disciplines such as architectural history in which the study of the material evidence is inseparable from that of the documents. The paper examines how the use of texts in the study of objects can both casually mislead and powerfully explain, and equally how analyses of objects can both obscure and illuminate the textual record. Examples discussed indicate the value of stylistic analysis in the study of areas as different as African sculpture and the effects of the Norman Conquest.