Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture ... - UBC Blogs

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Mind in Matterspective. By undertaking cultural interpretationthrough artifacts, we can engage the other culturein the first instance not with our minds, the seat ofour cultural biases, but with our senses. "This affectivemode of apprehension through the sensesthat allows us to put ourselves, figuratively speaking,inside the skins of invididuals who commissioned,made, used, or enjoyed these objects, to seewith their eyes and touch with their hands, to identifywith them empathetically, is clearly a differentway of engaging the past than abstractly throughthe written word. Instead of our minds makingintellectual contact with minds of the past, oursenses make affective contact with senses of thepast."8The methodology of material culture, with itsaffective approach that aspires to the objectivity ofscientific method, affords a procedure for overcomingthe distortions of our particular culturalstance, and, of almost equal importance, it makesvisible the otherwise invisible, unconscious biasesof our own cultural perspective. Awareness of whatone normally takes for granted occurs only in theforced confrontation with another norm. For example,we become particularly aware of gravity asgravity when it is not there, as in our observationof astronauts working in a spacecraft. When weidentify with another culture through the affective,sensory apprehension of its artifacts, we have anopportunity to accept the other culture as the normand become aware of the differentness, the specialqualities, of our own culture. The culture beingstudied provides a platform, a new cultural stance,for a perspective on our culture. This can be ofinterest for its own sake, but specifically and practicallyin terms of the study of material culture,increasing awareness of the biases of one's own culturalperspective helps achieve objectivity in subsequentinvestigations.The fact is that cultural perspective is only aproblem or liability to the extent that one is unawareor unable to adjust for it. Indeed, it is ourquarry, the cultural patterns of belief, of mind, thatwe seek.Final NoteA disclaimer should be entered regarding the completenessof what can be learned from material culture.In certain instances-prehistoric or preliteratesocieties, for example-artifacts constitute theonly surviving evidence, so there is little choice butto use them as best one can to determine cultural8Prown, "Style as Evidence," p. 208.values as well as historical facts. But it would be adelusion to assume we acquire complete access tothe belief systems of a culture through its materialsurvival. Cultural expression is not limited tothings. But the techniques of material cultureshould be part of the tool kit of the well-equippedcultural scholar. The obverse of this disclaimer isthe argument advanced here: although the studyof artifacts is only one route to the understandingof culture, it is a special, important, and qualitativelydifferent route. An investigation that ignoresmaterial culture will be impoverished.Theoretical BackgroundCulture and SocietyThe definition given at the beginning stated thatthe study of material culture can be considered amethodological branch of cultural history or culturalanthropology. Material culture is the objectbasedaspect of the study of culture. As with culturalhistory and cultural anthropology, the studyof material culture touches on the allied concernsof social history and social anthropology. A society,a group of interdependent persons forming a singlecommunity, has a culture, a set of beliefs. Socialhistory and social anthropology study the relationshipsbetween individuals or groups of individualsin a society, especially the patterns and details ofthe daily existence of large subgroups as definedby class, race, religion, place of residence, wealth,and so forth. Cultural history and cultural anthropologystudy the peculiar achievements, especiallyintellectual, that characterize a society, such as art,science, technology, religion. Obviously there aresignificant areas of overlap. Society and culture areinextricably intertwined, and their study cannotand should not be isolated except for analyticalpurposes.Cultural history and cultural anthropology,with their sister subjects of social history and socialanthropology, thus constitute a field-of-interestumbrella that arches over the study of material culture.9The theoretical underpinnings of the studywill be noted in the sections that follow but are notexplored extensively in view of their complexityand the introductory nature of this essay.9 The location of material culture within the broader confinesof cultural and social history and anthropology does not,however, preclude the utilization in the study of material cultureof investigative techniques normally associated with other fieldsand disciplines. These techniques will be discussed later.5
6Structuralism and SemioticsThe fundamental purpose of the study of materialculture is the quest for cultural belief systems, thepatterns of belief of a particular group of peoplein a certain time and place. The methodology is tosome extent structuralist in its premise that the configurationsor properties of an artifact correspondto patterns in the mind of the individual produceror producers and of the society of which he or theywere a part.Modern linguistic theory has made us aware ofthe significance of language as the manifestationof man's capacity, indeed compulsion, to imposestructure on the world and his experience of it.Man's structuring, apparent in language, is the onlyreality he knows. His reality is relative, endlesslychanging, true only for the moment; it is the empiricalshadow of a hypothetical underlying permanentuniverse, a world of ideas, a unified field.The reality man experiences is created by man, andlanguage, the naming of that reality, is a manifestationand measure of the current structure of realityin any given place and time. It is therefore significantcultural evidence as the reflection of man'smental structuring. But language is not solely human.Animals communicate by arrangements ofsounds and, in the case of dolphins, for example,may have languages. Perhaps more special to manthan language is the capacity to make implementsand, more special yet, objects for aesthetic gratification.There is a language of form as there is alanguage of words; a naming through making asthere is a naming through saying. That man expresseshis human need to structure his worldthrough forms as well as through language is abasic premise of the structuralist approach to materialculture.10The methodology of material culture is alsoconcerned with semiotics in its conviction that artifactstransmit signals which elucidate mental patternsor structures. Complementing the structuralistpremise and semiotic promise of theinterpretation of artifacts is the knowledge thatartifacts serve as cultural releasers. Perceivers inother societies who have a different mix of culturalvalues, some in concert and some at variance withthose of the producing society, respond positivelyto certain artifacts or aspects of artifacts while ne-10 A measure of the potency of the language of form is therole that matter-and man's experience of the physical worldplaysin language. This is obviously true with poetic imageryand metaphor, where concretions vivify abstractions, and in theimagery of vernacular expressions which articulate and exposefundamental human perceptions of the realities of existence.Winterthur Portfolioglecting others. This is why an object or an entirecategory of objects falls in and out of fashion. Theobject stays relatively the same, but people changeand cultural values change. From the time it is created,an artifact can arouse different patterns ofresponse according to the belief systems of the perceivers'cultural matrices. The sequence of synchronicpatterns that could be triggered by an artifactresembles the sequence of frames in a motionpicture; in theory, if we could retrieve all the patterns,we would have a film of history. In practice,only a few patterns are accessible, primarily thoseof the original fabricator and the modern perceiver.Artifacts, then, can yield evidence of thepatterns of mind of the society that fabricatedthem, of our society as we interpret our responses(and nonresponses), and of any other society interveningin time or removed in space for whichthere are recorded responses.DeterminismThe fundamental attitude underlying the study ofmaterial culture is, as with most contemporaryscholarship, a pervasive determinism. This statementmay seem to belabor the obvious, but a strict determinismnot only underlies the other theoreticalaspects of the study of material culture but alsodictates the methodological procedures outlinedbelow whereby, through a variety of techniques, anobject is unpacked. The basic premise is thatevery effect observable in or induced by the objecthas a cause. Therefore, the way to understand thecause (some aspect of culture) is the careful andimaginative study of the effect (the object). In theory,if we could perceive all of the effects we couldunderstand all of the causes; an entire culturaluniverse is in the object waiting to be discovered.The theoretical approach here is modified, however,by the conviction that in practice omniperceptionleading to omniscience is not a real possibility.External information-that is, evidence drawnfrom outside of the object, including informationregarding the maker's purpose or intent-plays anessential role in the process. Such an approach isinclusive, not exclusive.Although the fundamental concern of materialculture is with the artifact as the embodiment ofmental structures, or patterns of belief, it is also ofinterest that the fabrication of the object is a manifestationof behavior, of human act. As notedabove in the discussion of culture and society, beliefand behavior are inextricably intertwined. Thematerial culturalist is, therefore, necessarily inter-ested in the motive forces that condition behavior,
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