Materiality Discussion Group

Meeting #6 - Reading List

2006-04-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

Readings for our final meeting (April 21), on colonialism/culture contact:

Comaroff, John L. and Jean Comaroff (2001). On Personhood: an Anthropological Perspective from Africa. Social Identities 7(2): 2001. (Downloadable. Historical anthropology on personhood in colonial contexts, I think this goes well with the Gosden.)

Dietler, Michael (2005). The Archaeology of Colonization and the Colonization of Archaeology: Theoretical Challenges from an Ancient Mediterranean Colonial Encounter. In The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters: Comparative Perspectives (G.J. Stein, ed.), pp. 33-68. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.

Eaton, Natasha (2003). Excess in the City? The Consumption of Imported Prints in Colonial Calcutta, c. 1780-1795. Journal of Material Culture 8(1): 45-74. (OPTIONAL!! Downloadable. Considerable po-mo wankering, but it does discuss some of the themes we talked about earlier – could be interesting.)

Gosden, Chris (2005). Archaeology and Colonialism: Cultural Contact from 5000 BC to the Present. Cambridge University Press, Cambrige. Chapter 3 (“A model of colonialism”) and Chapter 7 (“Power”).

Harrison, Rodney (2003). ‘The Magical Virtue of These Sharp Things’: Colonialism, Mimesis and Knapped Glass Artefacts in Australia. Journal of Material Culture 8(3): 311-336. (Downloadable)

- OR –

Harrison, Rodney (2006). An Artefact of Colonial Desire? Kimberley Points and the Technologies of Enchantment. Current Anthropology 47(1): 63-88. (Downloadable)

Stahl, Ann B. (2002). Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric Approaches. American Anthropologist 104(3): 827-845. (Downloadable)

Van Dommelen, Peter. (2006). Colonial Matters: Material Culture and Postcolonial Theory in Colonial Situations. In Handbook of Material Culture (C. Tilley et al., ed.), pp. 104-124. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks.

Meeting #5 - Reading List

2006-03-23T09:23:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting will be on Friday, April 7 at 2 in the ARF atrium. Copies of those readings that are not downloadable are in John's ARF mailbox.

Memory and Identity

Memory: focus on (*).

*Connerton, Paul (1989). How Societies Remember. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: Chapter 3, “Bodily practices,” pp. 72-104.

Forty, Adrian (1999). Introduction. In (A. Forty and S. Küchler, eds.) The Art of Forgetting, pp. 1-18. Berg, Oxford.

Harrison, Simon (2004). Forgetful and memorious landscapes. Social Anthropology 12(2): 135-151. (Downloadable; this is a really interesting study, relevant to archaeologists on the landscape front.)

*Jones, Andrew (2003). Technologies of remembrance: memory, materiality and identity in Early Bronze Age Scotland. In (H. Williams, ed.) Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies, pp. 65-88. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York. (One of the most obvious archaeological routes to memory, the other generally employed context is in commemorative monuments.)

*Joyce, Rosemary A. (2003). Concrete Memories: Fragments of the Past in the Classic Maya Present (500-1000 AD). In (R.M. Van Dyke and S.E. Alcock, eds.) Archaeologies of Memory, pp.104-125. Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA. (This is a treatment of memory that draws out the more fluid, tactical, everyday engagement of materials.)

*Lucas, Gavin (1997). Forgetting the past. Anthropology Today 13(1): 8-14. (Downloadable. I love this one, it’s why every archaeologist ought to be concerned with the topic.)

Nora, Pierre (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire. Representations 26 (Spring): 7-24. (Downloadable. An important figure in memory studies, though a few degrees separate from our material focus.)

Olick, Jeffrey K. and Joyce Robbins (1998). Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices. Annual Review of Sociology 24: 105-140. (Downloadable. An overview piece, much like a field statement but has a decent bibliography for source-mining.)

Rowlands, Michael (1993). The role of memory in the transmission of culture. World Archaeology 25(2): 141-151. (Downloadable. A classic implementation of Connerton’s inscribed/ incorporated practices.)

Van Dyke, Ruth M. and Susan E. Alcock (2003). Archaeologies of Memory: An Introduction. In (R.M. Van Dyke and S.E. Alcock, eds.) Archaeologies of Memory, pp.1-13. Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA. (This is a decent intro to the volume and some of the issues, useful if you have not already had a look at the book.)

Identity: I’ve put less in here, not because there isn’t good material to look at but because I’m coming to kind of different way of thinking about it… and we will probably focus more on the memory stuff, since there seems to be more interest in it. I’ll add more as I compile the list, but these are thought-provoking bits for our purposes.

*Brück, Joanna (2004). Material metaphors: the relational construction of identity in Early Bronze Age burials in Ireland and Britain. Journal of Social Archaeology 4(3): 307-333. (Downloadable)

*Lele, Veerendra P. (2006). Material habits, identity, semeiotic. Journal of Social Archaeology 6(1): 48-70. (Downloadable. More employment of Peircean semiotic.)

Meskell, Lynn and Robert W. Preucel (2004). Identities. In (L. Meskell and R.W. Preucel eds.) A Companion to Social Archaeology, pp. 121-141. Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA. (A broad overview piece – but attuned to some of the problematic areas.)

Voss, Barbara L. (2005). Sexual Subjects: Identity and Taxonomy in Archaeological Research. In (E.C. Casella and C. Fowler) The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities: Beyond Identification, pp. 55-77. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York. (This is a nice example of linking a complex theoretical literature to the extant archaeological consideration of sex/gender.)

"The Things They Carry"

2006-03-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

A short article and photo essay on the tokens (religious, familial, and "lucky") taken into battle by U.S. soldiers:

http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs2962

References a book about the Vietnam-war era-- "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Has anyone read it? And if so, worthwhile, or not?

Meeting #3 - Notes and Discussion

2006-03-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

This meeting’s readings, which focused on the agency of objects and aesthetics, brought forth a number of important ontological and epistemological issues that need to be considered in understanding the study of materiality. Based on this meeting’s readings, it is apparent that while archaeologists are beginning to write more on the agency of objects, many take for granted the reasons for pursuing this particular line of inquiry. This brings about the need to explicitly address the following questions:

1) What is the goal of studying the agency of objects?
2) Why should we study materiality?

The goal of studying materiality and the agency of objects (which is a core concept in the study of materiality) is to come to some sort of understanding of the social lives of human beings. This perspective begins with the assumption that sociality arises out of the mutually constitutive entanglements between humans and the material world (materiality). The processes of materiality are the foundation for the social lives of human beings, and therefore their study is essential if we desire any sort of understanding of human sociality.

Within the study of materiality, there are a number of ontological and epistemological considerations that need to be taken into account.

Ontological Considerations

What seems to be often at issue in the study of materiality is the ontological status and relationship between people and the material world. Should we be thinking about people and things as separate entities or as hybrids/socio-technical assemblages which cannot be separated? In addition, the specific nature of the relationship between people and things is in question and is often a major point of disagreement. (NOTE: it should be pointed out that the ontological status of people and things and the nature of the relationship between the two can be approached both emically and/or etically)

One perspective on the relationship between people and things, emphasizes the dialectical nature of this relationship (see e.g. Gell 1992; 1998). People and things are mutually constitutive, as people act on things and things act back to affect people. People are given priority in this relationship (which is an asymmetrical relationship, as seen in Gell’s primary and secondary agents) and are thus thought to be ontologically separate from things. This is a cognitivist perspective that separates mind from matter, where actions are conceived of first in the mind and then carried out in the world.

An alternative perspective proposes that the relationship between people and things can be understood as socio-technical assemblages, networks of people and things that are inextricably connected. Within these networks, people and things come together in mutually transformative/constitutive relationships, changing the nature of both people and things through the formation of hybrids (e.g. Latour’s example of a person with a gun). In this way, things and people cannot be considered to be ontologically distinct entities, as the very nature of their being is dependent on their mutual connection. From this perspective people and things are given equal weight in the constitution of social life (i.e. the relationship is symmetrical). These assemblages/networks arise out of the engagement of people and things within the course of skilled practice and lived experience (see Ingold 2000).

Another metaphor for this relationship that we discussed was that of the weaving together of threads to form a piece of clothing. The threads come together to create something different and as a whole the threads take on new meaning as part of the piece of clothing. They are inextricably linked to other threads and to remove any of the threads involves changing the nature of the individual thread that is removed and the piece of clothing as a whole. People and the material world can also be conceived of as being weaved together through skilled practice and lived experience to create social life/society. To pull them apart is to pull apart the very fabric of human sociality.

Archaeologists have the difficult task in most circumstances of having to reconstruct the whole of social life with only half of the remaining strands (the things we recover). The archaeological record therefore forces upon us an analytical separation between people and things that we may or may not accept as representative of their status or relationship in the lived contexts of the past or present.

A related additional ontological consideration concerns the nature of agency. More precisely, where is it that agency resides? Is it possessed by people? By objects? Both? Or neither?

The dialectical perspective on the relationship between people and things often emphasizes the agency of both people and things (even if the agency that both possess are seen to vary been people and things-again, Gell’s distinction between primary and secondary agency). Within a network perspective, agency in not possessed by either people or things, but rather can be thought to arise out of and is distributed across networks of people and things. It emerges out of the engagement between people and things in the course of skilled practice and lived experience within in a particular environmental and temporal setting (the environmental and temporal setting enables and constrains the flow of action, but does not determine it) (another way of thinking about this is in terms of the creation of “fields of action”, see Robb 2004).

Epistemological Considerations

Following from the ontological considerations, there are a number of epistemological considerations that should be taken into account in the study of materiality. How do we study materiality? How can we get at the nature of the relationship between people and things? Instead of offering detailed answers to these difficult questions, I only offer some things to consider as an entry point into the study of materiality.

To begin with, materiality must be understood to be historically contingent. While I would argue that the processes of materiality in the most general sense (i.e. that people and the material world affect, and mutually constitute each other and that this relationship is the foundation of human sociality) is a universal aspect of human existence, the precise nature of the relationship between people and the material world will play out differently in different socio-historical contexts. Furthermore, those aspects of the material world which are significant for understanding the processes of materiality will differ with context as people do not engage with all aspects of the material world, and the material world affects people differentially.

Recognizing the historically contingent nature of materiality brings about the necessity of identifying those aspects of the material world with which people engaged, and the potential effects that people and the material world had on each other.

Identifying the aspects of the material world with which people engaged obviously includes recognizing all forms of material culture and modified landscapes. While in most cases this is simple enough, it is important to take into consideration those aspects of the material world that may have been significant but where there is little evidence (or where the evidence is not obvious to us for whatever the reason) for their engagement with people.

Identifying and understanding the effects that people have had on the material world has been widely discussed within archaeology. This has involved the study of the technology, production, and consumption of material objects as well as the modification of landscapes. There has been less study of the effects that the material world has had on people (at least from a non-functionalist/adaptationalist perspective), although archaeologists have been increasingly interested in addressing this issue in recent years. This has come in the form of the study of the social aspects of technology, the biography of objects (both of which we will discuss later this week), the impact of the build environment and landscapes, and aesthetics (which we discussed in the last meeting).

The study of aesthetics provides a useful entry point for trying to understand the potential effects that the material world had on people. It is through the senses that people engage the material world, so to come to some sort of understanding of how and in what ways particular aspects of the material world impacted people’s sensory experience is important for addressing their effects.

However, to try to study the effects that the material world had on people is not enough, and both the study of the senses and these effects requires a consideration of knowledge, belief, and meaning (this is in contrast to the perspective proposed by Gell). The senses are mediated through cultural understanding, belief, and knowledge, and the ways in which people act towards/act with and react to the material world can be thought to be culturally specific skills that are developed through embodied social practice and experience. We learn how to live and act within the material world. We are born into and socialized within pre-existing worlds of knowledge, understanding, and tradition which shape our engagement with the material world. This is why the specific processes of materiality are historically contingent (for more on this perspective see Robb 2004).

Meeting #2 - Notes and Discussion

2006-03-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some very rough notes from our discussion which focused on characterizing the works of Gell, Ingold, and Latour. Please add to these, as they are from notes that I quickly put together (and are thus not very detailed).

Gell

•Focuses on understanding the role objects play in mediating social relationships

•He is primarily interested in understanding social relationships

•Is concerned with the effects of objects, i.e. on how objects work rather than their meaning or symbolism

•For Gell, the relationship between people and things is asymmetrical. This can be seen in his distinction between primary (humans) and secondary (non-human) agents. Objects facilitate the relationship between primary agents and patients.

•Cognitive approach: Gell makes a distinction between mind and matter, and humans and nonhumans. Intentional actions are conceptualized first in the mind and then carried out in the world through the manipulation of objects.

Ingold

•Focuses on challenging human/non-human, mind/matter dichotomies (symmetrical)

•Emphasis on skill and embodied practice and experience

•The forms that objects take do not begin with a preconceived image of the finished product in the mind, but rather arises out the engagement between people and the material world through skilled practice.

•Objects are not surfaces over which a layer of cultural meaning is placed. The meaning of objects arises only through their involvement in social practices. As their social contexts change, the meanings of objects can change.

Latour

•Attempts to breakdown dichotomy between society (humans) and technology (non-humans)

•Gives equal weight to humans and non-humans in the constitution of social life (symmetrical)

•Focuses on heterogeneous networks of people and things. Social relations and agency arise out of these network relations (human and non-human interactions)

•Inductive and primarily descriptive approach

Meeting #4 - Reading list

2006-03-07T16:05:00.000-08:00

The Biography/Life History of Objects & Technology

Our next meeting will be on Friday, March 17 at 2 in the ARF atrium. We will focus on the biography of objects and technology. We can also discuss Tim Ingold's paper if there is a desire to do so. I will have copies of those articles that are not downloadable in my ARF box by Wednesday.

The Biography/Life History of Objects

*Gosden, C. and Y. Marshall
1999 The Cultural Biography of Objects. World Archaeology 31(2):169-178. (Download from Library)

Hoskins, J.
2006 Agency, Biography and Objects. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuchler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer, pp. 74-84. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks.

*Jones, A.
2002 Archaeological Theory and Scientific Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Ch 5 “Material Culture and Material Science: a Biography of Things.

Try to read at least one of the following examples:
Historic Example

Peers, L.
1999 'Many Tender Ties': The Shifting Contexts and Meanings of the S Black Bag. World Archaeology 31(2):288-302. (Download from Library)

Prehistoric Example

Skeates, R.
1995 Animate Objects: a Biography of Prehistoric 'Axe-Amulets' in the Central Mediterranean Region. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 61:279-301.

Technology

*Childs, S. T.
1999 "After All, a Hoe Bought a Wife": The Social Dimensions of Ironworking among the Toro of East Africa. In The Social Dynamics of Technology: Practice, Politics and World Views, edited by M. A. Dobres and C. Hoffman, pp. 23-45. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.

Dobres, M. A. and C. Hoffman
1994 Social Agency and the Dynamics of Prehistoric Technology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 1(3):211-258. (Download from Library)

*Killick, D.
2004 Social Constructionist Approaches to the Study of Technology. World Archaeology 36(4):571-578. (Download from Library)

Lemmonier, P.
1993 Introduction. In Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Culture Since the Neolithic, edited by P. Lemmonier, pp. 1-35. Routledge, London.

Additional Paper

This paper is an unpublished critique of the study of materiality. We won't focus on it, but we can discuss it if people are interested in doing so.

Ingold, T.
2006 Materials Against Materiality. Unpublished Manuscript.

* Focus on these readings

Meeting #3 - Reading List

2006-02-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

Agency of Objects - Part II/Aesthetics

Our next meeting will be on Friday, March 3 at 2 in the ARF atrium. Below is the updated reading list for Meeting #3. For this meeting we will focus on archaeological examples dealing with the agency of objects. We will also spend some time discussing the related topic of aesthetics. You can download most of these readings from the library. I will have copies of those articles that are not downloadable in my ARF box by Tuesday.

Agency of Objects

*Gosden, C.
2005 What Do Objects Want? Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12(3):193-211.

*Knappett, C.
2002 Photographs, Skeuomorphs and Marionettes: Some Thoughts on Mind, Agency and Object. Journal of Material Culture 7(1):97-117.

*Martin, A.
2005 Agents in Inter-Action: Bruno Latour and Agency. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12(4):283-311.

*Normark, J.
2004 Sakbihs and Polyagency: The Architectural Causes of Human Activities in the Cochuah Region, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Current Swedish Archaeology 12:141-168. Download from: http://arkserv.arch.gu.se/mikroarkeologi/Normark.pdf

Robb, J.
2004 The Extended Artefact and the Monumental Economy: a Methodology for Material Agency. In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, edited by E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden and C. Renfrew, pp. 131-139. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.

Aesthetics

*Gosden, C.
2001 Making Sense: Archaeology and Aesthetics. World Archaeology 33(2):163-167.

Howes, D.
2006 Scent, Sound and Synaesthesia: Intersensoriality and Material Culture Theory. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuchler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer, pp. 161-172. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks.

Jones, A.
2002 A Biography of Colour: Colour, Material Histories and Personhood in the Early Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland. In Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological Research, edited by A. Jones and G. MacGregor, pp. 159-174. Berg, Oxford.

Pollard, J.
2001 The Aesthetics of Depositional Practice. World Archaeology 33(2):315-333. (Download from Library)

Saunders, N.
2001 A Dark Light: Reflections on Obsidian in Mesoamerica. World Archaeology 33(2):220-236. (Download from Library)

*Saunders, N.
2003 “Catching the Light”: Technologies of Power and Enchantment in Pre-
Columbian Goldworking. In Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, edited by J. Quilter and J. Hoopes, pp. 15-47. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. (Download from http://www.doaks.org/QUGO.html)

Young, D.
2006 The Colours of Things. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuchler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer, pp. 173-185. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks.

*Focus on these readings

Meeting Schedule for the Semester

2006-02-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

Here is a tentative meeting schedule for the rest of the semester. This is not written in stone and changes can be made as needed. I dropped "place and landscape" from the list since it seemed to me to be the least relevant for our purposes. If most of you would prefer to bring back that topic and drop one of the other ones, we can definitely do that. I also thought that we should have our last meeting sooner rather than later as I know that all of you will have other things that you will have to finish up around the end of the semester.

February 17-Agency of Objects I
March 3-Agency of Objects II/Aesthetics
March 17-Technology/Biography of Objects
April 7-Identity/Memory
April 21-Colonialism/Culture Contact/Globalization

If you have any suggested readings for any of these topics please send them to me and I will add them to the lists.

Meeting #1-Notes and Discussion

2006-02-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

Here are some notes on our discussion and some random thoughts that I had on the readings…

Definitions of Material Culture and Materiality

In our meeting we discussed the importance of defining key concepts and terms. Our definitions stem from our theoretical perspectives, and they frame the way we think about and analyze phenomena in the world. For us to be critical of our assumptions, perspectives and ideas, we need to be explicit about the meanings of the terms and concepts that we use. With this in mind, I offer some (rough/in progress) definitions of materiality and material culture (these are in no way meant to be universal definitions).

Material Culture: those non-human entities (actors?) that are (or have been) involved in the processes of materiality.

Materiality: 1) the relationship between people and the material world (general definition); 2) the mutually constitutive relationship between people and the material world (specific definition).

These definitions are based on a particular vision of materiality that attempts to breakdown subject/object dichotomies and recognizes the entangled nature of the relationship between people and the material world. In doing so, this way of thinking about materiality emphasizes the active role of material culture in the constitution of social relations, practices, and human experience. Materials become cultural through their engagement with people (i.e. the processes of materiality). Both people and the material world are transformed through this mutual engagement (the transformation of the material world need not be thought of just in terms of its physical transformation-e.g. I would include here aspects of the landscape that are deemed meaningful through interacting with humans, but which have not been physically modified in any way). The processes of materiality are not universal, rather their specific nature varies according to social and historical context. Likewise, what constitutes material culture will vary, since the non-human entities involved in the processes of materiality will vary.

Dimensionality of Material Culture

We also discussed the notion of the multi-dimensional nature of material culture that was brought up in the essays by Buchli (2004) and Tilley (2001). Multi-dimensionality refers to the sensuous (or more precisely multi-sensorial) and polysemous qualities of material culture. I find this way of thinking about material culture useful, not only because I think that it accurately characterizes the various ways in which material culture can be experienced and understood, but also because it allows archaeologists to develop new ways of conceptualizing and analyzing material culture.

Buchli (2004: 179) points out that our own appropriation of material culture from the past is destructive and wasteful (in ways other than the usual understanding of excavation as a form of destruction). We emphasize certain ways of experiencing objects and ignore other potentialities (e.g. as in museums). In this process, we lose an understanding of the engagement between people and the material world in the past and think about objects from the perspective of present day material relationships (this is an example of our own materiality coming into conflict with past materialities). Archaeology’s emphasis on empirical observation (due, in part, to its desire to be scientific), has led to a focus on the visual aspects of material culture to the exclusion of other possibilities. But there is no reason to assume that the visual qualities of material objects were given priority over other aspects (i.e. dimensions) of these objects in the past. Their texture, smell, or the sounds that they make may also have been significant aspects of how they were experienced in the past (i.e. of past materialities).

One of our goals as archaeologists should be to (re)construct these past materialities through the analysis of material culture (see Meskell 2004 who makes this same argument). The problem then becomes how we do this, for which there is no simple answer (I hope we will spend some time throughout the semester addressing this issue). While we may not be able to understand all of the various ways in which objects in the past would have been experienced (a point that Kat made) (and they may have been experienced quite differently by people within the same historical/social/cultural context), by recognizing that there are numerous ways in which objects from the past could have been experienced (and by considering what some of these may have been), we reduce the effects of imposing our present day understandings of materiality onto the past (which results in ignoring significant aspects of past materialities and experiences of material culture).

Immateriality

One final area that I would like to comment on is the notion of ‘immateriality’ that both Buchli (2004) and Miller (2005) brought up in their essays. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this or how to understand it (especially since I really didn’t like Buchli’s example), but after some contemplation, I see how it might be useful. This notion of immateriality relates to situations where it makes sense or where it could be helpful to discuss why certain material relations or forms of material culture are not present (or disappear). For example, anthropomorphic figurines (which are the topic of my dissertation) are found throughout southeastern Europe during the Neolithic and the Copper Age. But they are very rarely found (if at all) in central or northern Europe during this time period. Why? Why were they so important in the Balkans, and yet never a significant aspect of the societies in central and northern Europe? In addition, anthropomorphic figurines disappear, for the most part, after the Copper Age in southeastern Europe. Why? And, in what other ways did these societies change at this time (that is, what are some of the potential effects of the disappearance of anthropomorphic figurines?)? While answers to these questions have not been forthcoming, answering these questions can play an important role in understanding the significance of Neolithic figurines and the potential effects these figurines would have had on the lives of people within these societies.

New Books on Materiality/Material Culture

2006-02-11T12:04:00.001-08:00

Just wanted to let you know about 4 books on material culture/materiality that have been recently released.

Handbook of Material Culture. Christopher Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Kuechler-Fogden, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, editors. 2006. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks. 576 pages. $125.00 (cloth)

This was just released here in the US last week and looks like it will become the standard text for material culture studies. It includes many articles written by archaeologists and anthropologists. The table of contents can be found at:

http://www.sagepub.com/booktoc.aspx?pid=11820&sc=1

Here is the publisher’s description:

The study of material culture is concerned with the relationship between persons and things in the past and in the present, in urban and industrialized and in small-scale societies across the globe. The Handbook of Material Culture provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things. It is cutting-edge: rather than simply reviewing the field as it currently exists. It also attempts to chart the future: the manner in which material culture studies may be extended and developed.

The Handbook of Material Culture is divided into five sections.
- Section I maps material culture studies as a theoretical and conceptual field.
- Section II examines the relationship between material forms, the human body and the senses.
- Section III focuses on subject-object relations.
- Section IV considers things in terms of processes and transformations in terms of production, exchange and consumption, performance and the significance of things over the long-term.
- Section V considers the contemporary politics and poetics of displaying, representing and conserving material and the manner in which this impacts on notions of heritage, tradition and identity.

The Handbook charts an interdisciplinary field of studies that makes an unique and fundamental contribution to an understanding of what it means to be human. It will be of interest to all who work in the social and historical sciences, from anthropologists and archaeologists to human geographers to scholars working in heritage, design and cultural studies.

Archaeologies of Materiality. Lynn Meskell, editor. 2005. Routledge, London. 229 pages. $34.95 (paperback)

This edited volume stems from a SAR short seminar held in 2004. All the papers (with the exception of the introduction by Meskell and the afterword by Daniel Miller) were written by graduate students from Columbia University. The table of contents can be found here:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=1405136162&site=1

Here is the publisher’s description:

Archaeologies of Materiality explores the philosophies that underpin materiality for specific cultural moments across time and space. Drawing on social theory, this volume provides a range of object orientations and is one of the first books to showcase substantive archaeological case studies devoted to the exploration of materiality. From prehistoric to contemporary contexts, this collection explores the idea of a material universe that is socially conceived and constructed, but that also shapes human experience in daily practice. Each case study demonstrates the saliency of materiality by linking it to concepts of landscape, technology, embodiment, ritual, and heritage. Archaeologies of Materiality will be of interest to students and scholars studying archaeology, anthropology, museum studies, and material culture studies.

Materiality. Daniel Miller, editor. 2005. Duke University Press, Durham. 294 pages. $22.95 (paperback)

I copied the introduction to this edited volume as part of the reading for our first meeting. There are some very interesting essays in here.

Here is the table of contents:

1) Materiality: An Introduction / Daniel Miller
2) Objects in the Mirror Appear Closer Than They Are / Lynn Meskell
3) A Materialist Approach to Materiality / Michael Rowlands
4) Some Properties of Art and Culture: Ontologies of the Image and Economies of Exchange / Fred Myers
5) Sticky Subjects and Sticky Objects: The Substance of African Christian Healing / Matthew Engelke
6)Does Money Matter? Abstraction and Substitution in Alternative Financial Forms / Bill Maurer
7) The Materiality of Finance Theory / Hirokazu Miyazaki
8) Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things / Webb Keane 182
9) Materiality and Cognition: The Changing Face of Things / Susanne Kuchler
10) Beyond Meditation: Three New Material Registers and Their Consequences / Nigel Thrift
11) Things Happen: Or, From Which Moment Does That Object Come? / Christopher Pinney

Here is the publisher’s description:

Throughout history and across social and cultural contexts, most systems of belief—whether religious or secular—have ascribed wisdom to those who see reality as that which transcends the merely material. Yet, as the studies collected here show, the immaterial is not easily separated from the material. Humans are defined, to an extraordinary degree, by their expressions of immaterial ideals through material forms. The essays in Materiality explore varied manifestations of materiality from ancient times to the present. In assessing the fundamental role of materiality in shaping humanity, they signal the need to de-center the social within social anthropology in order to make room for the material.

Considering topics as seemingly diverse as theology, technology, finance, and art, the contributors—most of whom are anthropologists—examine the many different ways in which materiality has been understood and the consequences of these differences. Their case-studies show that the latest forms of financial trading instruments can be compared with the oldest ideals of ancient Egypt, that the promise of software can be compared with an age-old desire for an unmediated relationship to divinity. Whether focusing on the theology of Islamic banking; Australian Aboriginal art; derivatives trading in Japan; or textiles which respond directly to their environment, each essay adds depth and nuance to the project that Materiality advances: a profound acknowledgment and rethinking of one of the most basic properties of being human.

Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture. Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden and Ruth Phillips, editors. 2006. Berg Publishers, Oxford. 288 pages. $30.95 (paperback)

I haven’t seen this one yet, nor can I find the table of contents. Below is the publisher’s description of the book.

Anthropologists of the senses have long argued that cultures differ in their sensory registers. This groundbreaking volume applies this idea to material culture and the social practices that endow objects with meanings in both colonial and postcolonial relationships. It challenges the privileged position of the sense of vision in the analysis of material culture. Contributors argue that vision can only be understood in relation to the other senses. In this they present another challenge to the assumed western five-sense model, and show how our understanding of material culture in both historical and contemporary contexts might be reconfigured if we consider the role of smell, taste, feel and sound, as well as sight, in making meanings about objects.

Meeting with Tim Ingold

2006-02-09T10:50:00.000-08:00

I have made arrangements for our group to meet with Tim Ingold on Wednesday, Feb 22 at 11-12. We will most likely meet in the atrium. For those of you who cannot attend, I will post notes from the meeting on the blog. While we will focus on Ingold's work on technology, skill, and materiality, he has written on numerous topics. If you want to get a better sense of the breadth of his work, I recommend looking at his most recent book, "The Perception of the Environment" (full reference below). Most of this book contains previously published essays, with some new ones included.

Below is a list of some additional references for those of you that are interested. I will make copies available of those writings listed below that are not downloadable from the library.

Ingold, T.
1993 The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology 25(2):152-174.(Available for download from the library)

1995 Building, Dwelling, Living: How Animals and People Make Themselves
at Home in the World. In Shifting Contexts: Transformations in Anthropological Knowledge, edited by M. Strathern, pp. 57-80. Routledge, London.

2000 The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, London. Ch 14 "Stop, Look and Listen! Vision, Hearing and
Human Movement"

2001 From Complementarity to Obviation: On Dissolving the Boundaries
Between Social and Biological Anthropology, Archaeology and Psychology. In
Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, edited by S. Oyama, P. E. Griffiths and R. D. Gray, pp. 255-279. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

2004a Beyond Biology and Culture: the Meaning of Evolution in a Relational
World. Social Anthropology 12(2):209-221. (Available for download from the library)

2004b Culture on the Ground: The World Perceived Through the Feet. Journal of Material Culture 9(3):315-340. (Available for download from the library)

Meeting #2 - Reading List

2006-02-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

Agency of Objects/Actor Network Theory - Part I - Gell, Ingold, and Latour

Our next meeting will be on Friday, February 17 at 2 in the ARF atrium. A little change in plans for our next meeting. Since Tim Ingold will be visiting soon, I thought that we should read some of his work that relates to our concerns with the agency of objects. Given this, I suggest that we focus on the writings of Gell, Latour, and Ingold for our next meeting and hold off on reading the archaeological literature related to this topic until the meeting after (meeting #3). Below is the updated reading list for our next meeting. Copies of all of these readings will be placed in my ARF mailbox by Wednesday afternoon.

Alfred Gell

Gell, A.
1998 Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Ch 2 and 3

*Gell, A.
1999 The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams. Athlone Press, London.
Ch 5 "The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology"

Layton, R.
2003 Art and Agency: A Reassessment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9:447-464. (Download from library)

Thomas, N.
2001 Introduction. In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment, edited by C. Pinney and N. Thomas, pp. 1-12. Berg, Oxford.

Tim Ingold

*Ingold, T.
2000 The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, London. Ch 18 "On weaving a basket," Ch 19 "Of string bags and bird's nests: skill and the construction of artefacts"

Ingold, T.
2002 From the Perception of Archaeology to the Anthropology of Perception:
An Interview with Tim Ingold. Journal of Social Archaeology 3(1):5-22.(Download from library)

Latour, Posthumanism, and Actor Network Theory

*Jensen, C. B.
2003 Latour and Pickering: Post-human Perspectives on Science, Becoming and Normativity. In Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality, edited by D. Ihde and E. Selinger, pp. 225-240. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Latour, B.
1992 Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts. In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by W. Bijker and J. Law, pp. 225-258. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

*Latour, B.
1999 Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Ch 6 "A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans: Following Daedalus's Labyrinth"

Law, J.
1992 Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity. Systems Practice 5(4):379-393. (Download from library)

Pickering, J.
1997 Agents and Artefacts. Social Analysis 41(4):46-63.

*Focus on these readings

Some I mentioned

2006-02-05T16:05:00.000-08:00

I brought up some references the other day -- these are all those I could think of that have to do with learning -- perhaps appropriate for later on.

Crown, P. (1999). Socialization in American Southwest Pottery Decoration. Pottery and People: A Dynamic Interaction. J. M. S. a. G. M. Feinman. Salt Lake City, The University of Utah Press: 25-43.

Friedrich, M. H. (1970). "Design Structure and Social Interaction: Archaeological Implications of an Ethnographic Analysis." American Anitquity 35(3): 332-343.

Herbich, I. (1987). "Learning Patterns, Potter Interaction and Ceramic Style Among the Luo of Kenya." The African Archaeological Review 5: 193-204.

Lave, J. and E. Wenger (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Marchand, T., International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments., et al. (2000). "Traditional" knowledge : learning from experience. Berkeley, CA, Center for Environmental Design Research University of California at Berkeley.

Marchand, T. H. J. (2001). Minaret building and apprenticeship in Yemen. Richmond, Curzon.

Minar, J. C. (2001). "Motor Skills and the Learning Process: The Conservation of Cordage Final Twist Direction in Communities of Practice." Journal of Anthropological Research 57(4): 381-405.

Minar, J. C. a. P. L. C. (2001). "Learning and Craft Production: An Introduction." Journal of Anthropological Research 57(4): 369-380.

Sassaman, K. E. a. R., Wictoria (2001). "Communities of practice in the early pottery traditions of the American Southeast." Journal of Anthropological Research 57(4): 407-426.

Sillar, B. (2000). Shaping Culture: Making Pots and Constructing Households: An Archaeolgical Study of Pottery Production, Trade and Use in the Andes. Oxford, J. and E. Hedges.

Stanislawski, M. B. a. B. B. S. (1978). Hopi and Hopi-Tewa Ceramic Tradition Networks. The Spatial Organization of Culture. I. Hodder. Pittsburgh: 61-76.

Wallaert-Pêtre, H. (2001). "Learning how to make the right pots: apprenticeship strategies and material culture, a case study in handmade pottery from Cameroon." Journal of Anthropological Research 57(4): 471.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Meeting #1 - Reading List

2006-01-25T08:45:00.000-08:00

Meeting #1 - Overview and Background (Copies of these readings are in the folder in my ARF mailbox)

*Buchli, V.
2004 Material Culture: Current Problems. In A Companion to Social Archaeology, edited by L. Meskell and R. Preucel, pp. 179-194. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.

Meskell, L.
2004 Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present. Berg, Oxford. (Chapter 1)

Miller, D.
1994 Artefacts and the Meaning of Things. In Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by T. Ingold, pp. 396-419. Routledge, London.

2005 Materiality: An Introduction. In Materiality, edited by D. Miller, pp. 1-50. Duke University Press, Durham.

Miller, D. and C. Tilley
1996 Editorial. Journal of Material Culture 1(1):5-14.

*Olsen, B.
2003 Material Culture after Text: Re-Membering Things. Norwegian Archaeological Review 36(2):87-104.

*Pels, D., K. Hetherington and F. Vandenberghe
2002 The Status of the Object: Performances, Mediations, and Techniques. Theory, Culture & Society 19(5/6):1-21. (Available for download from the library)

*Preucel, R. and L. Meskell
2005 Knowledges. In A Companion to Social Archaeology, edited by L. Meskell and R. Preucel, pp. 3-22. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.

*Tilley, C.
2001 Ethnography and Material Culture. In Handbook of Ethnography, edited by P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland and L. Lofland, pp. 258-271. SAGE Publications, London.

*Focus on these readings

For those of you who are interested in delving deeper into the literature on reification and fetishism (as discussed in Pels et al. 2002) see:
(Copies were not made of these readings)

Ellen, R.
1988 Fetishism. Man 23(2):213-235. (Available for download from the library)

Lukacs, G.
1971 History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. The MIT Press, Cambridge. ("Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat")

Marx, K.
1976 Capital Volume I. Penguin Books, New York. ("Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret")

Pietz, W.
1985 The Problem of the Fetish I. Res 9:5-17.

1987 The Problem of the Fetish II. Res 13:23-45.

1988 The Problem of the Fetish III. Res 16:105-123.

Pitkin, H.
1987 Rethinking Reification. Theory and Society 16(2):263-293. (Available for download from the library)

Vandenberghe, F.
2001 Reification: History of the Concept. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences:12993-12996. (Available for download from the library)

Welcome to the Materiality Discussion Group Blog

2006-01-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

This blog will serve as a discussion board and a repository for ideas and resources for the materiality discussion group. Based on the group's interests, future meetings will address (if time permits) the following topics:

Identity
Memory
Place and Landscape
Agency of Objects/Actor Network Theory
Technology/Biography of Objects/Production
Culture Contact/Colonialism/Globalization

Please check back here often for information regarding our meetings, discussions, and readings.

Meeting #1-Overview and Review

2006-01-25T08:26:00.000-08:00

Our first meeting will be in the ARF next Friday, February 3 at 2PM. I will talk to Sherry today and see if Rm 101 is available. If not, I will reserve the atrium. For next week, I thought it might be useful to start with a general overview/review of material culture studies and materiality. The focus will be on defining materiality and discussing some of the ways that it has been approached within archaeology/anthropology and beyond.