- Introduction
Material culture refers to the technology and material artifacts of a human group. Those related to subsistence activities are of obvious importance--material culture has also been important in studying ritual, art, music, dance and symbolism. Historically, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ethnographers in both North America and Europe routinely included descriptions of material culture as part of their work on pre-industrialized societies. Increasingly, between the 1920s and 1970s, material culture became the domain of the archaeologist and museum curator.
Certain areas of anthropology, however, had continued to use items characterized as material culture in analysis. This was particularly true in symbolic anthropology. Nancy Munn, in a 1962 article, Walbiri graphic designs... an analysis (American Anthropologist 68: 972-984.) Dr. Munn analysed visual material among the Walbiri Native Australian group and suggested that the material was decorated with meaningful items, which she referred to as visual categories. She said that these categories were represented by either a single irreducible visual schema or by a unitary combination of more than one such schema. She argued that these categories formed Walbiri totemic designs, consisting of a combination of these elements, can function to classify totemic species, by dissecting and reassembling them in a manner similar to that described by Lé vi-Strauss for other cultural systems. (Munn: 1962:936.) Victor Turner, in The Forest of Symbols (1967) analysed the physical characteristics of items used as symbols in his analysis of ritual. Donald Crowe and Dorothy Washburn (1987) look at the patterned design on artifacts and argue that we can trace these both spatially and temporally to identify links between different cultural groups. This particular technique has a long history in archaeology, but it is also a technique that can be useful in anthropology, working with current materials.
One of the important concerns in any methods course is establishing units of study. It has been proposed that material culture be restricted to tangible phenomena of a human society that are the products of ideas and behaviour that are learned, not instinctive. As such, it is includes portable objects, fixed structures and landscape features but deliberately excludes ideas and behaviour and the technological processes of manufacture and usage. In contrast to material culture, it has been proposed that we consider the material system, the whole network of interaction that surrounds a material item, including such things as ideas and behaviours associated with that item. A material systems approach is concerned with the total contextualization of an item.
Of we look at the basic procedures in using material culture in anthropology, we look at the following:
Considerations of each of these will lead to quite different kinds of information. Dont ignore visual information. Simply look at, and respond, to the object. Among other things, this well help develop your visual acuity, and make you more aware of similarities and dis-similarities in comparing items. Items which may appear to be functionally the same may show interesting differences in examining them or visually. A rough cotton sheet and a fine cotton sheet, for example, serve the same function: they go on a bed. When new, they look similar. But they feel very different. And you would expect to find them in different sorts of places. Folk songs are very good at using these kinds of clues - the fine lady leaves her goose feather bed to sleep with the raggle taggle gypsies o, and the goose feather bed demonstrates the wealth, the comfort, the cossetting that she has left for her own true love. Objects give us information, and we use it all the time as people negotiating our own ways through our own cultures. We can also use it professionally, to figure out things about negotiating other cultures.
When we look at context, we can consider the overall situation, the circumstances or events that surround the use of a particular item. Consider a mask: is it part of a religious ritual, the traditional hangmans mask, a carnival, a fancy ball, a childs costume at halloween? Do these have something in common? Does a mask signify something in general? It seems likely that it does--a denial of ones usual individual identity, perhaps. Peter Hall has used masks to good effect in some of his productions....masks in our culture--North American-European--has an interesting context of use. Are the masks used in Japanese theatre the same? What do masks in Bella Koola ceremonies signify? What messages are being conveyed?
We can look at context in another way - what precedes and follows an items use? The recent reactions to Tony Blairs shaking the hand of a Sein Fein representative is different than his shaking the hand of, say, President Clinton. He was not simply meeting a political opponent--all that has gone on in Northern Ireland, all that we hope or fear will go on in Northern Ireland, influenced reactions and interpretations of a fairly common and ordinary courtesy. And the point is that it was not a simple courtesy.
We can also trace out the impact of a particular item of material culture on a group. Lauriston Sharp, in a well-known article, Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians (Human Organization Vol. 11, No. 1, 1952) discusses the impact of the introduction of steel axes to the Yir Yoront group of Native Australians who live at the mouth of the Coleman River on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula. The majority of Yir lived in traditional self-sufficiency in the bush until 1941, when a Presbyterian mission was established. The mission distributed a great many western artifacts, including steel axes.
Traditionally, the Yir used stone axes. The axe could be produced by almost any adult male--it required a number of simple technological skills. A man had to know the location and properties of several natural resources found in his immediate environment: pliable wood for a handle, which could be doubled or bent over the axe head and bound tightly; bark, which could be rolled into cord for the binding; and gum, to fix the stone head in the haft. The materials had to be correctly gathered, stored, prepared, cut to size and applied or manipulated. They were in plentiful supply, and could be taken from anyones property without special permission. Postponing considerations of the stone head, the axe could be made by any normal man who had a simple knowledge of nature and of the technological skills involved, together with fire (for heating the gum) and a few simple cutting tools - - perhaps the sharp shells of plentiful bivalves. (Sharp)
Men, women and children all used the stone axes. Women probably used them most frequently, for cutting firewood. The axe was used for making other tools. The stone axe was used for constructing shelter in the wet months, and shelters for shade in the dry months. It was used in hunting, fishing, gathering vegetable food. The stone axe was restricted to male use in only two situations: gathering wild honey and making secret objects for ceremonies.
It was also important in interpersonal relations. The Yir ranged over a flat, alluvial terrain--and there were no stones available that were suitable for axe heads. The stones they used came from quarries 400 miles to the south, and reached the Yir through a long line of male trading partners. Some trading lines ended with Yir Yoront men--others extended far to the north using the Yir as links. Almost every older adult male had several trading partners. The Yir provided his trading partner with fighting spears tipped with the barbed spines of the sting ray, which snap into vicious fragments when they penetrate human flesh. So this is a trading circle, where stone axe heads are traded for fighting spears. The most important times of the year for trade were during the initiation rites or other totemic ceremonials, which attracted hundreds of people and were important activities which gave an opportunity for trade.
While women used stone axes, they did not own them. Adult men kept their axes in camp with other equipment, and a woman or child who wanted to use the axe was forced to borrow it. The borrowing was done in accordance with regular patterns of kinship behaviour--a married woman first borrowed the axe from her husband; if unmarried, or if her husband was absent, the woman would go first to her elder brother or father. Only in extraordinary circumstances would another male relative be approached. Every active relationship among the Yir was hierarchically organized--each involved a definite and accepted status as superordinate or subordinate.
Widespread conduct centring around the axes helped to generalize and standardize these sex, age and kinship roles.
Sharpe goes on to report what the effect of introducing steel axes on the Yir Yorant, and I suggest you read the article.
Much of the work on material culture has centred on exchange: consider the classics.
The Gift, the kula ring, the potlatch, exchange of women, bridewealth and dowry.
There are a huge range of articles and books in anthropology that centre on the context
of use of an object by focusing on the context of its exchange. Kopytoff, in the
article listed, looks at commoditization as a process. He begins with people:
there are times and places where people can be, and are, sold: we call
that slavery. Slavery has been defined as the treatment of persons as property, or
in other definitions, as objects. But, as Kopytoff points out in another article,
slavery is not an all or nothing proposition. He argues that to be a slave is a processual
perspective, in which marginality and ambiguity of status are at the core of the
slaves identity. (p.65) Initially, during and preceding the sale, the slave is a
commodity--a thing to be sold. But after the slave is acquired, he/she are re-inserted
into another group, and the slave becomes re-humanized, re-individualized. In the
article, Kopytoff talks about the uniqueness and the non-uniqueness of an object.
Things are singular or common--and it is common things that are commodities. Kopytoff
also talks about the way in which these two are translated, one from the other.