Material entities have recently earned a more prominent place within the research on mission history. Material Religion scholars note that if religion is not embedded in its material contexts, researchers risk to propagate a Eurocentric intellectualization of religion. However, there is also a danger of essentialising the material as self-interpreting and transparent. The chapter introduces an approach based on insights from New Materialism that stresses the performativity and the process of materialization without losing sight of politics and power imbalances. Taking the example of findings in Ile-Ife from the late 19th century on, the chapter follows the chains of citations from the missionaries up until the mid-20th century Nigerian historical research. The chapter argues that these chains of citations sedimented both different positionalities and the concomitant diverging approaches to the material entities found in Ile-Ife.