IN SUMMARY : material culture is the manifestation of culture through material production. its study is to investigate objects to understand culture. art as artifact; artifact as historical event (unlike ephemeral event, it survives); artifact as fiction. artifacts don't just happen, they are the results of causes (traditions, culture, and individual). artifacts reflect the mind; as a result, they are hard to read. form is the great summarizer because style most informative in revealing underlying beliefs (where expression is least sub-conscious especially in mundane objects). meanings can be spring loose when not considering artifacts solely as historical events materialized (this is ok as a process because history is small truths stitched together to make a large untruth). metaphors (signs) represent an incredible tool in analysis: the teapot as breast. there are both structural + textual metaphors.
persistent metaphors = morality + death, sexuality + gender roles, privacy (seeing + being seen) + communication, power or control + acceptance, fear + danger, giving + receiving.
persistent beliefs = static-dynamic, order-disorder, dcisreteness-continuity, process-spontaneity, sharp-soft, outer-inner, other world-this world
not all beliefs can be retrieved from objects. in doing material culture analysis, we have the challenge of not laying our own beliefs on the objects or the world from which they came. material culture allows us to overcome that very pre-disposition.
FOR DISCUSSION : prown has a number of juicy quotes that beg for discussion (or are likely to cause arguments) not the least of which is...."it is a sobering corrective to realize that in one sense history consistently uses small truths to build large untruths" (p. 15)....are there other morsels that beg for argument/discussion/probing?
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