ANT 5

M A T E R I A L I T Y : C O N S T R U C T I N G

S O C I A L R E L A T I O N S H I P S A N D

M E A N I N G S W I T H T H I N G S

C H A P T E R 9

MATERIAL CULTURE

What is the role of objects and material culture in

constructing social relationships and cultural meanings?

– Why is the ownership of artifacts from another culture a

contentious issue?

– How should we look at objects anthropologically?

– Why and how do the meanings of things change over

time?

– What role does material culture play in constructing the

meaning of a community’s past?

Of special interest to both cultural and archaeological anthropologies is the examination of material

culture: the objects made and used in any society; traditionally the term referred to technologically

simple objects made in preindustrial societies, but material culture may refer to all of the objects or

commodities of modern life as well.

WHY IS THE OWNERSHIP OF ARTIFACTS FROM OTHER CULTURES A CONTENTIOUS ISSUE?

• In the United States, Anthropology began in museums

amidst the scramble for collections of cultural,

archaeological, linguistic, and biological data.

• The Smithsonian Institution assembled impressive

anthropological exhibits.

• The 1893 World’s Fair organized anthropological

exhibits to present cultures and prehistory of the

New World. At the closing of the fair, a new museum

appeared: The Field Museum, which purchased the

artifacts and exhibits.

(Image: Photo by Diane Alexander White and

Linda Dorman, courtesy of The Field Museum,

GN85650c)

THE SCRAMBLE FOR ARTIFACTS

• An international scramble by museums for artifacts from societies around the world ensued

• The goal was to document lives, economic activities, and rituals of peoples around the globe

• Possession of more of these exotic objects would set one museum apart from others

• For a long time, nobody was concerned about who owned these objects

– In recent decades, questions of ownership and control over these objects have become a contentious issue

– Shouldn’t the people whose direct ancestors made or used these objects have some rights over these collections?

– Who has the right to sell them to museums?

– Who has the moral right to display and interpret them?

"This belongs to Iraq," reads the poster held

by Iraqi student Zeidoun Alkinani at the

Babylonian Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon

Museum of Berlin.

THE ABSENCE OF LEGAL PROTECTIONS

The U.S. had only a few basic laws to protect archaeological sites, mostly on government lands:

– The Antiquities Act of 1906: requiring permission for excavations on government lands

– The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 which requires government agencies to consider the

effects of development projects on historical or archaeological sites

The “Tragedy of Slack Farm” in Uniontown, Kentucky, led to changes:

• In the autumn of 1987 a group of ten pot hunters from surrounding states paid

the tenants of Slack Farm $10,000 for permission to loot the site while the

fields were lying fallow.

• At least 650 graves were opened by the looters over the course of two months,

some with the help of heavy machinery.

• The looters were arrested and charged by a Union County grand jury with a

crime applicable in the state of Kentucky at the time: that of ‘desecrating

venerated objects’.

• In 1987 ‘desecrating venerated objects’ was a misdemeanor in Kentucky and a

conviction under that charge would only have resulted in a small fine (Hicks

2001). Four of the ten men were residents of Illinois or Indiana and could not

be extradited for a misdemeanor. The misdemeanor charges were dismissed in

March of 1990 for lack of prosecution.

NAGPRA

• The Slack Farm episode led to a bill in the Kentucky

legislature making it a felony to disturb burial sites

• The incident was offensive to American Indian

groups, leading them to lobby the federal

government

• The following year (1990), the US government

passed the Native American Graves Protection and

Repatriation Act or NAGPRA

– This law established the ownership of human remains,

grave goods, and important cultural objects as

belonging to the Native Americans whose ancestors

once owned them

Reburial ceremony in 2014 for a young boy

who lived during the Clovis period some

13,000 years ago. His remains were first

discovered in 1968.

A WORLDWIDE PROBLEM

• Many countries have legislation and programs

• Most governments support UNESCO’s World

Heritage Site program

– Provides financial support to maintain sites of

importance to humanity

– Most of the 802 currently recognized cultural

sites have played a key role in human history

• UNESCO cannot force countries to protect

these sites, but it can formally delist a site if the

host countries fail to protect it from any

destruction

WHO OWNS THE OBJECT?

• Who had a moral right to examine, study, and possess artifacts and bones recovered

from archaeological sites?

– Many archaeologists felt they had the moral right to excavate, while pot hunters did not

because they were simply out to make money

• Laws governing excavations of human remains were highly discriminatory, treating

Native Americans differently than Euro-Americans

– Activists protested treatment of Indian remains, asserting that such treatment was part of a

larger pattern of disrespect for Indian cultures.

– Many were part of AIM, the American Indian Movement: the most prominent and one of the

earliest Native American activist groups, founded in 1968.

REPATRIATING ARTIFACTS

• Their efforts led to demands for repatriation: the return of human

remains or cultural artifacts to the communities of descendants of

the people to whom they originally belonged

– Became a material symbol of Indian identity itself

• Archaeologists have a range of views on the study of prehistoric

bones

– Studied scientifically, reburied after examination, reburied without

being studied, or never excavated at all.

• Some Indian groups took more radical positions

– Asserted the right to rebury all Indian bones found in any museum,

regardless of any connection to their own tribe.

DID NAGPRA WORK?

• Since NAGPA, repatriation has proceeded reasonably

well, helping clarify that American Indians own the

bones of their ancestors as well as any grave goods

found with those remains, but…

– Some museums have taken too long to comply

– Regulations weren’t always clear about which objects

are covered by NAGPRA and which groups can submit

repatriation requests

• Rights of indigenous peoples to their cultural

resources is an ongoing issue at the international level

as well

See “Anthropologist as Problem Solver: John Terrell, Repatriation, and

the Maori House at the Field Museum” on page 249 for another

example about how native communities and scholars can work

together to find solutions

CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CRM)

• Cultural Resource Management: research and planning aimed

at identifying, interpreting, and protecting sites and artifacts of

historic or prehistoric significance

• Many Indian groups criticize archaeologists as doing little to

help their communities and disturbing the bones of their

ancestors

– An increasing number of Indians with postgrad degrees use

CRM techniques in preservation

• Nearly all tribes that use CRM view heritage management

differently than most federal government agencies

– Non-Indian agencies nearly always see heritage resources as

tangible places and things, and scientific study as a way of finding

a middle ground between the heritage resource and some other

use.

– Tribes tend to prefer avoiding the disturbance of the heritage

resource altogether, including scientific investigation,

emphasizing their spiritual connections to the past

Members of federal- recognized Indian

tribes participated in the fieldwork on

Hiwassee Island. Left: Gano Perez of the Muscogee (Creek)

Nation and archaeologist Shawn Patch of New South Associates collect

magnetometer data. Below: the field crew

Credit : TVA

HOW SHOULD WE LOOK AT OBJECTS ANTHROPOLOGICALLY?

• Until the 1980s anthropologists looked at objects as evidence of cultural

distinctiveness

– Approached objects as expressions of a society’s environmental adaptation,

aesthetic sensibilities, or as markers of ethnic identity

– Arts and craftwares were considered an expression of a particular tradition,

time, or place, an expression of the individual creativity of the artist or

craftperson.

• In the mid-1980s anthropologists started to recognize that objects were

capable of conveying meaning in many different ways simultaneously

OBJECTS ARE MULTIDIMENSIONAL

To understand them, we must recognize and understand not just

their three basic physical dimensions—height, width, depth—but four

others as well, among them:

– Time - objects in museums came from somewhere and each had an

individual history.

– Power - relations of inequality are reflected in objects

– Wealth - people use objects to establish and demonstrate who has

wealth and social status.

– Aesthetics - each culture brings with it its own system or patterns of

recognizing what is pleasing or attractive, which configurations of

colors and textures are appealing, and which are not.

(Images: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,

University of Cambridge; David Rumsey Map

Collection via Wikipedia (public domain))

SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS OF MEANING

• Collections of objects in museums are a

historical archive in multiple dimensions

– They tell us a great deal about the cultures

that made and used these objects as well

as the relationships between the

collectors’ societies and the communities

who originally used them.

• Objects aid in understanding local

symbolic systems of meaning

AESTHETICS, SYMBOLISM & MEANING

• The art traditions and objects of non-Western peoples embody complex ideas and understandings about the supernatural beings who inhabit their cosmologies

• Relationship between aesthetics, symbolism, and the meaning of objects

• Powerful people use aesthetics to demonstrate and legitimate power

– Religious authorities use aesthetics to indicate that the holder of an item possesses divine and earthly power

– Power stems in part from the aesthetic style

– Aesthetic settings and ways in which such objects are used and displayed can also symbolically communicate the power of their owners

(Photo: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth

College; photography by Jeffrey Nintzel)

WHY AND HOW DO THE MEANINGS OF THINGS CHANGE OVER TIME?

• Anthropologists today reach very different

conclusions about the people who made and

used the objects in collections

• All objects change over time, if not in their

physical characteristics, then in the significance

we give to them

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THINGS

Inanimate things have social lives

– Based on the assumption that things have forms, uses,

and trajectories that are intertwined in complex ways

with people’s lives

– Objects undergo a progression from creation,

exchange, and uses to eventual discard

– Progression makes it possible to identify social

relationships and cultural ideologies that influence each

period

– Across cultures, these relationships and ideologies can

vary drastically

(Photo: Courtesy of Luis A. Vivanco)

OBJECTS CHANGE OVER TIME

• All objects change over time, but they can do so in different ways.

• Three major ways that objects change over time:

– The form, shape, color, material, and use may change

– Significance and meaning may change as its social and physical contexts change

– A single object changes significance and meaning as it changes hands

THE ROLE OF MATERIAL CULTURE IN CONSTRUCTING THE MEANING OF A COMMUNITY’S PAST

• Objects found in archaeological sites are not just

data for scientific analysis

• Nobody can own the past, but many will claim it

because it fits their ideas of what the past is

supposed to be like

– Example: the African Burial Ground

• Uncovering the past can challenge our

understandings of the world in unexpected ways

and provoke social controversy in which

different groups lay claim to the past.

(Photo: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS

• Archaeology plays a role in politics, and

politics plays a role in archaeology

– Example: Both American and Yucatec

scholars used Chichén Itzá to construct

various images of the ancient Maya

• All anthropologists are immersed in such

political and social realities.

(Photo: BornaMir/iStockphoto)

THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING

• Control of the meaning of objects is contentious. This dynamic has two dimensions:

– Who has access to the resources from which we can document and uncover the story of

how things came to be

– Interpretations of the past or present material world differ according to social interests

• The legal, moral, and political implications are constructed by many different people,

each with a different set of personal and social agendas

– We call this the cultural construction of meaning