Material culture

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Pottery is an easily recognised form of material culture as it is commonly found as

archaeological artifacts, representing cultures of the past
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and
architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation,
and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects
create or take part in. Some scholars also include other intangible phenomena that
include sound, smell and events,[1] while some even consider language and media as
part of it.[2][3] The term is most commonly used in archaeological and
anthropological studies, to define material or artifacts as they are understood in
relation to specific cultural and historic contexts, communities, and belief
systems. Material culture can be described as any object that humans use to
survive, define social relationships, represent facets of identity, or benefit
peoples' state of mind, social, or economic standing.[4] Material culture is
contrasting to symbolic culture, which includes nonmaterial symbols, beliefs, and
social constructs.

The scholarly analysis of material culture, which can include both human made and
natural or altered objects, is called material culture studies.[5] It is an
interdisciplinary field and methodology that tells of the relationships between
people and their things: the making, history, preservation, and interpretation of
objects.[6] It draws on both theory and practice from the social sciences and
humanities such as art history, archaeology, anthropology, history, historic
preservation, folklore, archival science, literary criticism and museum studies,
among others.

Contents
1 Material value
2 History
3 Contributors
4 Archaeology
5 Anthropology
6 Sociology
7 Heritage industry
8 Current production
9 See also
10 References
Material value

Roman coin, the aureus

Research in several areas looks into the reasons for perceiving an object as having
meaning. Common reasons for valuing material lie in their monetary or sentimental
value.

A well-known related theory is Kahneman's endowment effect theory. According to

Kahneman, people infuse objects they own with a higher value than they do if they
do not own the object.[7] The endowment effect is found to occur as soon as an item
is acquired and the effect increases over time.[8]

Another way in which material can hold meaning and value is by carrying
communication between people, just like other communication forms such as speech,
touch and gesture. An object can mediate messages between time or space or both
between people who are not together. A work of art, for example, can transfer a
message from the creator to the viewer and share an image, a feeling, or an
experience.[9] Material can contain memories and mutual experiences across time and
influence thoughts and feelings. A study found that couples who have more items
that were jointly acquired and more favorite items among them had higher-quality
relationships.[10]

Researchers from the fields of sociology, psychology, and anthropology have also
been fascinated by gift-giving, a universal phenomenon that holds emotional meaning
using material culture. According to Schieffelin, "gift-giving is a vehicle of
social obligation and political maneuver."[11] Mauss defines the gift as creating a
special bond between the giver and the receiver.[12] According to Mauss, the giver
never really leaves the gift but becomes part of the receiver's future by inserting
the gift into their life. A gift leads at some point to another gift in response,
which creates a special reciprocal bond between people.[13]

History

Finding tools of the past is considered a way to discover the level of development
of a culture
Material culture studies as an academic field grew along the field of anthropology
and so began by studying non-Western material culture. All too often, it was a way
of putting material culture into categories in such a way that marginalized and
hierarchized the cultures from which they came.[14] During the "golden age" of
museum-going, material cultures were used to show the supposed evolution of society
from the simple objects of non-Westerners to the advanced objects of Europeans. It
was a way of showing that Europeans were at the end of the evolution of society,
with non-Westerners at the beginning. Eventually, scholars left the notion that
culture evolved though predictable cycles, and the study of material culture
changed to have a more objective view of non-Western material culture.

The field of material culture studies as its own distinct discipline dates to the
1990s. The Journal of Material Culture began publishing in 1996.[15] Collecting
habits date back hundreds of years.

Contributors
Leslie White was an American anthropologist, known for his advocacy of theories of
cultural evolution, sociocultural evolution, and especially neoevolutionism and for
his role in creating the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan
Ann Arbor. He was president of the American Anthropological Association (1964). He
wrote The Science of Culture in 1949 in which he outlined schema of the world as
divided into cultural, biological, and physical levels of phenomenon. White
believed that the development of culture rested primarily on technology and that
the history of human technology could be understood through the study of human-
produced materials.[16]

American anthropologist James Deetz, known for his work in the field of historical
archaeology, wrote the book "In Small Things Forgotten" in 1977 and published a
revised and expanded version in 1996. He pioneered there the ideas of using
neglected substances such as trash pits, potshards, and soil stains to reveal human
actions. By analyzing objects in association with their location, the history of
that location, the objects they were found with, and not singling out the most
valuable or rarest ones, archaeologists can create a more accurate picture of daily
life. Deetz looks at the long view of history and investigates the impact of
European culture on other cultures across the globe by an analysis of the spread of
everyday objects.

Ian M. G. Quimby's Material Culture and the Study of American Life, written in
1978, tried to bridge the gaps between the museum world and the university and
between curator and historian. Quimby posits that objects in museums are understood
through an intellectual framework that uses non-traditional sources. He also
describes the benefits of work on exhibit design as a vehicle for education.
Thomas Schlereth, Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Notre
Dame, wrote about philosophies and methods of teaching history outside the
traditional classroom. In his book Artifacts and the American Past, Schlereth
defines material culture study as an attempt to explain why things were made, why
they took the forms they did, and what social, functional, aesthetic, or symbolic
needs they serve. He advocates studying photographs, catalogues, maps and
landscapes. He suggests a variety of modes for interrogating artifacts.

Professor Kiki Smith of Smith College, asserts that “…clothes can reveal much about
lives from the past,” and that garments preserved in collections are akin to other
artifacts, including books, diaries, paintings and letters. She established the
Smith College Historic Clothing Collection with 3000 items for the college's
theater department.[17] This archive of women’s clothings and accessories, from all
social classes, is a resource for courses in costume design, history, material
culture, and literary history and curatorial practices.[18]

Gerd Koch, associated with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, is known for his
studies on the material culture of Tuvalu,[19] Kiribati[20] and the Santa Cruz
Islands.[21] During his early field work in 1951 to 1952, Koch developed techniques
in the recording of culture, including the use of tape recorders and
cinematographic cameras.[22][23]

Archaeology

An archaeologist searches for evidence of glass objects among ruins

Archaeology is the study of humanity through the inferential analysis of material
culture to ultimately gain an understanding of the daily lives of past cultures and
the overarching trend of human history.[24] An archaeological culture is a
recurring assemblage of the artifacts from a specific time and place, most often
that has no written record. These physical artifacts are then used to make
inferences about the ephemeral aspects of culture and history.[25][26] With more
recent societies, written histories, oral traditions, and direct observations may
also be available to supplement the study of material culture.

Beginning in the European Renaissance and the culture's fascination with classical
antiquities,[27] the study of artifacts from long-lost cultures has produced many
forms of archaeological theory, such as trans-cultural diffusion, processual
archaeology, and post-processual archaeology. Additionally, archaeological sub-
disciplines have emerged within the field, including prehistoric archaeology,
classical archaeology, historical archaeology, cognitive archaeology, and cultural
ecology. Recently, a scientific methodology and approach to the analysis of pre-
historic material culture has become prevalent with systematic excavation
techniques producing detailed and precise results.[28]

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humans both past and present

Anthropology is most simply defined as the study of humans across time and space.
[29] In studying a human culture, an anthropologist studies the material culture of
the people in question as well as the people themselves and their interactions with
others. To understand the culture in which an object is featured, an anthropologist
looks at the object itself, its context, and the way that it was manufactured and
used.

The first anthropologist interested in studying material culture was Lewis Henry
Morgan, in the mid-19th century. He is most known for his research on kinship and
social structures, but he also studied the effect of material culture, specifically
technology, on the evolution of a society.[30] Later in the 19th century, Franz
Boas brought the fields of anthropology and material culture studies closer
together. He believed that it was crucial for an anthropologist to analyze not only
the physical properties of material culture but also its meanings and uses in its
indigenous context to begin to understand a society.[31][32] At the same time in
France, Émile Durkheim wrote about the importance of material culture in
understanding a society. Durkheim saw material culture as one of the social facts
that functions as a coercive force to maintain solidarity in a society.[33]

Claude Lévi-Strauss, in the 20th century, included the study of material culture in
his work as an anthropologist because he believed that it could reveal a deeper
level of structure and meaning unattainable by typical fieldwork. According to
Lévi-Strauss, material culture can recall the mindset of a people, regardless of
intervening time or space.[34] Also in the 20th century, Mary Douglas thought that
anthropology was about studying the meaning of material culture to the people who
experience it.[35] Marvin Harris, a contemporary of Douglas, put forward the theory
of cultural materialism and said that all aspects of society have material causes.
[36]

Sociology

Any object created to suit humans can represent a form of material culture
In archaeology, the idea that social relations are embodied in material is well
known and established, with extensive research on exchange, gift giving and objects
as part of social ceremonies and events. However, in contradiction to archaeology,
where scientists build on material remains of previous cultures, sociology tends to
overlook the importance of material in understanding relationships and human social
behavior.[9]

The social aspects in material culture include the social behavior around it: the
way that the material is used, shared, talked about, or made.[9] An object cannot
hold meaning in and of itself and so when one focuses on the social aspects of
material culture, it is critical to keep in mind that interpretations of objects
and of interactions with them are the ones to evoke importance and meaning.[13]

Heritage industry
Museums and other material culture repositories, by their very nature, are often
active participants in the heritage industry. Defined as "the business of managing
places that are important to an area's history and encouraging people to visit
them," the heritage industry relies heavily on material culture and objects to
interpret cultural heritage. The industry is fueled by a cycle of people visiting
museums, historic sites, and collections to interact with ideas or physical objects
of the past. In turn, the institutions profit through monetary donations or
admission fees as well as the publicity that comes with word-of-mouth
communications.

That relationship is controversial, as many believe that the heritage industry

corrupts the meaning and importance of cultural objects. Often, scholars in the
humanities take a critical view of the heritage industry, particularly heritage
tourism, believing it to be a vulgar oversimplification and corruption of historic
fact and importance. Others believe that the relationship and the financial
stability it brings is often the element that allows curators, researchers, and
directors to conserve material culture's legacy.

Current production
Some observers advocate intentionally altering the material cultures created by
current civilizations. For example, waste reduction advocates within
environmentalism advocate teaching design approaches, such as cradle-to-cradle
design and appropriate technology. Anti-consumerism advocates encourage consuming
less (thus creating fewer artifacts), engaging in more do-it-yourself projects and
self-sufficiency (changing the quality of artifacts produced), and localism impacts
the geographic distribution and uniformity of artifacts.

See also
Anti-consumerism
Disposable
Museum anthropology
Museum folklore
Over-consumption
Planned obsolescence
Sustainable consumption
Non-material culture
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