1/28 class summary

Patrick asked: where does material cultural sit in the history and iarc worlds?
A few responses:
- it provides an additional way of understanding history
- a valuable method of research for archaelogy
-it arose in the 1960s and came from history and literary studies because some scholars felt these disciplines over-privilege texts

There are three ways to use the study of material culture: 1. when written documents do not exist 2. in combination with written documents 3. to study the artifact alone

A little background on the authors/editors of today's readings:
Prown: art historian at Yale; "working in the margins" of art history
Haltman: Prown's student; Patrick's professor at Michigan State
Lubar: curator at Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History
Kingery: Professor of Anthroplogy and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Arizona

Haltman's Intro: discusses Prownian analysis on page 8 and provides a list of steps in the encountering and analyzing of an object; discusses the idea of polarities - Patrick asks: are you black and white or gray? and urges us to "live in the gray" and be loose for a while

Prown: objects can be seen as historical facts and artistic fictions, and combining the two provides for a richer reading of an object

Gordon: the theme that runs throughout the case studies: that looks simple is not always so; artifacts of technology provide a way of understanding that writing cannot when it comes to these artifacts

Rawson: an artifact's ancestry must be understood to understand its history

Maquet: sins of research: global apprehension and institutionism