Journal ArticleDOI
What Do Objects Want
TLDR
In this paper, an argument for the agency of objects, looking at the effects objects have on people, is presented, where the form of an object lays down certain rules of use which influence the sensory and emotional impacts of the object.Abstract:
This paper develops an argument for the agency of objects, looking at the effects objects have on people. Groups of related objects, such as pots or metal ornaments, create stylistic universes which affect producers and users of new objects, bound by the canons of style. For an object to be socially powerful in a recognized manner, the form of the object lays down certain rules of use which influence the sensory and emotional impacts of the object. Formal properties of artifacts are influenced by the genealogy of the object class, including historical continuities and changes, and also its perceived source. The forms of objects, the historical trajectories of the class of objects and their perceived sources combine to have social effects on people, shaping people as socially effective entities. Britain’s incorporation into the Roman Empire between 150 BC and AD 200 provides an excellent case study through which to look at the changing corpora of objects, which had continuities and changes in form, a set of subtle attributions of sources and a complex range of social effects.read more
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Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things
TL;DR: In this article, Hodder used the quote from Gibson that an affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer, and showed how the maintenance of walls in the Yorkshire Dales depended on expert ideas about organic foods and recent collective nostalgia for a rural way of life.
Journal ArticleDOI
Toward an Ecology of Materials
TL;DR: A review of recent trends in the study of material culture finds the reasons for this in a conception of the material world and the nonhuman that leaves no space for living organisms, an emphasis on materiality that prioritizes finished artifacts over the properties of materials, and a conflation of things with objects that stops up the flows of energy and circulations of materials on which life depends as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
The textility of making
TL;DR: The Textility of Making as mentioned in this paper is presented by Tim Ingold, Anthropologist, Chair and Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, who discusses the importance of making.
Journal ArticleDOI
Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. By G. Woolf. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge1998/2000. Pp. xv + 296, figs 20. Price: £40.00 (bound); £15.95 (paper). ISBN 0 521 414456 (bound); 0 521 789826 (paper).
TL;DR: The culture of the countryside 7. Consuming Rome 8. Keeping faith? 9. Roman power and the Gauls 10. Being Roman in Gaul 11. Mapping cultural change as discussed by the authors.
Bringing Things Back to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose an ontology that assigns primacy to processes of formation as against their final products, and to the flows and transmutations of materials as against states of matter.
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Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the notion of gift exchange and identity in the contemporary Pacific: transformations of Fijian ceremonies, the disclosure of reciprocity discoveries, and the European appropriation of indigenous things: curiosity - colonialism in its infancy converted artifacts - the material culture of Christian missions murder stories - settlers' curios ethnology and the vision of the state artifacts as tokens of industry.
Journal ArticleDOI
Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. By G. Woolf. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge1998/2000. Pp. xv + 296, figs 20. Price: £40.00 (bound); £15.95 (paper). ISBN 0 521 414456 (bound); 0 521 789826 (paper).
TL;DR: The culture of the countryside 7. Consuming Rome 8. Keeping faith? 9. Roman power and the Gauls 10. Being Roman in Gaul 11. Mapping cultural change as discussed by the authors.