Material Culture

1957 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 98-264
Author(s):  
Jesse D. Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Observational Data ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Living Culture ◽  
Material Things

Before outlining this section concerned with material culture I should perhaps try to be explicit about the philosophy which guides me in archeological matters. It is my conviction that archeological work does not transcend antiquarianism (a legitimate and justifiable occupation) unless the specimens and the observational data are regarded as reflecting some cultural situation. For me a continuing circular preoccupation with artifacts is sterile. The only excuse for excavation, it seems, is that ever-present hope that by means of archeological search we can catch a meaningful glimpse of, or a series of moments in, a once dynamic living culture. In this interest, of course, I am not alone.It seems to me we are interested in archeological specimens because we are in reality, and at some distance, and often obscurely, working with a way of life, for which the observed relationships and the artifacts are the meager documentation. One freely admits that the archeological record is very incomplete; it is, moreover, heavily weighted towards the material things.

Ethiopian Jewish Ascetic Religious Communities

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bar Kribus
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ascetic Communities ◽  
Ethiopian Jews

The Betä Isra'el (Ethiopian Jews) have a unique history and religious tradition, one of the most fascinating aspects of which are the mäloksocc, commonly referred to as monks in scholarly and popular literature. The mäloksocc served as the supreme religious leaders of the Betä Isra'el and were charged with educating and initiating Betä Isra'el priests. They lived in separate compounds and observed severe purity laws prohibiting physical contact with the laity. Thus, they are the only known example in medieval and modern Jewry of ascetic communities withdrawing from the secular world and devoting themselves fully to religious life. This book presents the results of the first comprehensive research ever conducted on the way of life and material culture of the ascetic religious communities of the Betä Isra'el. A major part of this research is an archaeological survey, during which these religious centres were located and documented in detail for the first time.

scholarly journals Houses for the Curious

Museum Worlds ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Ken Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
Material Things ◽  
Curiosity Cabinets ◽  
Attentive Behavior ◽  
Physical Spaces

This article considers a curiosity-driven approach to curating focused on material culture that visitors encounter in physical spaces. Drawing on research into historical curiosity cabinets, it explores how a contemporary notion of curiosity has been put into practice in the new breed of culturally enlightened museums exploring interdisciplinary approaches to medicine, health, life, and art. Based on an inaugural professorial address at Copenhagen University, it reflects on exhibition projects there and at the Wellcome Collection in London. Museums are institutional machines that generate social understanding from material things. Their physical spaces influence how we learn, think, and feel in public; their material collections feed our comprehension, imagination, and emotions; and induce attentive behavior in curators and visitors.

scholarly journals Cultural geography III: The concept of ‘culture’

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 608-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Living Culture ◽  
Forms Of Life

In my third report I argue that three versions of the concept of culture coexist in cultural geography in the wake of an interest in life and living: culture as assembled effect, culture as mediated experience, and culture as forms-of-life. All three break with one of the versions of culture in the ‘new’ cultural geography – culture as ‘signifying system’ – whilst retaining its focus on processes of mediation. By expanding what counts as ‘life’ and the forms relations take, each version reworks a second concept of culture present in the ‘new cultural geography’ – culture as ‘whole way of life’.

Central Saharan Rock Art

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Loïc Le Quellec
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Central Sahara

On the sunburnt rocks of the central Sahara, ancient peoples inscribed testimony of their material culture, mythology, and way of life. Jean-Loïc Le Quellec reviews the field of research into these marvelous carved and painted images. He discusses controversies in the study of ancient central Saharan rock art, and advances in understanding the succession of cultures that inhabited the region.

scholarly journals Knowledge about the gypsy/roma communities in Bulgaria, presented by visual anthropology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Евгения Иванова ◽  
◽  
Велчо Крыстев
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Global World

The Gypsy/Roma ethnic group has lived in the Balkans for centuries. Gypsies/ Roma turn out to be bearers of a traditional cultural heritage that has long been forgotten by those around them. In our presentation, we look at how authentic knowledge of the Gypsy/Roma community can be the subject of public presentation in museums through the techniques of visual anthropology. Our thesis is that for those studying the Gypsy/Roma ethnic group, which has no writing and written history, visual anthropology is of particular importance as a primary source of knowledge, as a testimony of time. The photos, images, video recording preserve, show and transmit the material culture, traditions and way of life of the different Gypsies/Roma groups, which, together with the common, have very specific group and regional differences. We also ask the question – the historical knowledge about the community created up to which historical moment is authentic, as the culture of the Gypsies/Roma is not static in time, but is influenced by modern forms, typical for today’s global world.

scholarly journals The Co- Relation between Teams Performance and Ethnic Diversity in a Business Organization

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 3759-3762
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Group Performance ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Business Organization ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Institutional Structures

Ethnicity is thought of proposing to a typical culture and way of life, especially as reflected in language, religion, and other institutional structures, material culture, for instance, attire and sustenance penchant and social things, for instance, music, composing, and craftsmanship. Associations are turning out to be increasingly differing and are increasingly more made out of workgroups. The focal point of this investigation is on ethnic diversity in groups. So as to furnish associations with helpful data about ethnic diversity and its outcomes, this investigation inspected the ethnic diversityemployee performance relationship by considering work esteem diversity as a middle person and by considering group residency as a mediator of the association between work esteem diversity and group performance.

scholarly journals Archaeological investigations of subsistence and household life of Ukrainian population of Luhansk region in XVII–XVIII centuries

2021 ◽  
pp. 142-158
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Naboka ◽  
◽  
Mariia Alekseeva ◽  
Denys Lebedev ◽  
Andrii Ovcharenko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Lower Boundary ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Metallurgical Furnaces ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Way

This article examines in a complex way the peculiarities of organization of everyday and household life of the Ukrainian population of the Luhansk region in the XVII–XVIII centuries. The basis for the study of those or other aspects of this topic were materials of archaeological expeditions that were carried out in Luhansk region in the second half of the twentieth – early twenty-first century. It is noted that this topic is poorly covered in the works of Ukrainian academics. Among the few studies in this area, the works of N. N. Kaplun, O. V. Stadnik and A. I. Stadnik were the most valuable for the research. Also in the preparation of the article the author relied on the expert estimates of scientific collaborators of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine S. A. Telizhenko, L. Chmiel, L. Mironenko. The aim of the article is to outline the way of life and economic life of the Ukrainian population during the active development of the Luhansk region – that is in the XVII–XVIII centuries. As a result of the conducted research, the authors reached the following conclusions. The presence of diverse archaeological artifacts: ceramic works, artisanal metallurgical furnaces, stone tombstones, the lower boundary of the dating of which falls on the XVII–XVIII centuries, In our view, indicates the existence of sufficiently developed material culture associated with the way of life and household utilities of Ukrainian settlers of the Cossack era in the Luhansk region. Today's assumption that the dynamic development of this region began only at the beginning of active development of the territory at the beginning of the XVIII century – the beginning of the XIX century. Russian Empire, it can be argued that even before its beginning, a significant part of the „Wild Field” did not yield in its development to other regions, both Ukraine and Russia, distant from the restless relations with the Nogai horde.

scholarly journals About some changes in the material culture of the modern urban population of Azerbaijan (based on materials from the city of Sumgayit)

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 105-113
Author(s):  
Sevda Amirshakhova
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Urban Housing ◽  
Ethnic Culture ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Interior Decoration ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Color Scheme ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the changes taking place in the field of ethnic culture in the cities of Azerbaijan on the example of the city of Sumgait. In cities, social and cultural processes are more intense than in villages. As a result of constant migration processes in cities, different cultures and ways of life come into interaction with each other, sometimes conflict, and in many cases assimilate. As a result of these processes, a specific lifestyle is formed that is characteristic of each city and is determined by the ethnic culture of its main population. The main objective of the study is to identify ethnocultural changes taking place in the lifestyle and material culture of the population of Sumgait, the second largest and industrial city of Azerbaijan. As the results of the survey of urban housing in Sumgayit show, despite the standardized appearance of modern city apartments, local ethnocultural features are preserved in the subject environment, structure and color scheme of the interiors. The study suggests that, despite the intense interaction between the various sociocultural groups that made up the population of Sumgayit, at present the city has not formed common stereotypes of urban culture and lifestyle typical for the whole city. In this regard, the interior decoration of residential buildings often does not correspond to the characteristics and traditional ideas of different population groups. It was found that the interior of the apartments as a whole and their specific ethnic characteristics often depend on the type of housing. The study suggests that the popular culture, which is rapidly spreading in Sumgait and in Azerbaijan as a whole, determines the spread of a globalized, mainly Western way of life and modern stereotypes of behavior.

Social being and cultural practices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Ray ◽  
Julian Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
North Park ◽  
Material Things ◽  
Current Practices

Human societies are held together by relationships, conventions, traditions, institutions, and tacit understandings. These things are intangible, and while humans themselves are reproduced as corporeal beings, their societies are sustained by practical activities that continually recreate knowledge, customs, and interpersonal bonds. Just as a language would ultimately disappear if it ceased to be used as a means of communication, so the rules and routines of social life are maintained only if they are practised. The corollary of this is that societies are not fixed and bounded entities as much as arrangements that are continually coming into existence, works (if you like) that are never completed. But material things are also in flux, constantly ripening, maturing, being made, being used consecutively in different ways through their ‘lifespans’, eroding and decaying: so that the social and substantial worlds are as one in being in an unending state of becoming. Nonetheless, objects often have the capacity to endure longer than habits, rules, or affiliations. They continue to exist independently of human beings and their actions. As a result, old artefacts and places occupied in the past can serve to give structure to current practices and transactions, providing cues and prompts, or reminding us of past events and appropriate modes of conduct. Hunter-gatherers have generally lived a way of life that involves making continual reference to natural features and landmarks. Certain distinctive cliffs, hills, islands, trees, and lakes have represented places to return to, or at which to arrange meetings or encounter game. As such they will have been places of periodic resort, and were incorporated into collective history and mythology. Meanwhile, other places acquired a meaning simply because specific people camped there, or met there, or died there. During the Mesolithic in Britain, some locations seem to have been persistently returned to over very long periods of time. One example is the site at North Park Farm, Bletchingley in Surrey, which appears to have been visited sporadically over hundreds of years, although the structural evidence for this at the site was sparse, being limited to a group of fireplaces.

Red and School: a Quantitative Approach

Africa ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-302
Author(s):  
A. A. Dubb
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Quantitative Approach ◽  
Way Of Life

IntroductionIn his recent study of urbanization among the Xhosa in East London, Mayer (1961) reveals a new dimension in the pagan/Christian opposition. The Xhosa-speaking tribes, Mayer points out, distinguish between what they call Red people (abantu ababomvu) and School people (abantu basesikolweni). The former are conservative traditionalists, adhering to Xhosa custom; the latter are already westernized to a degree and value many aspects of European material and non-material culture. But, Mayer emphasizes, Red Xhosa must not simply be regarded as a backward residue of unfortunates who have lacked the opportunity, one way or another, of becoming westernized. On the contrary: the Red Xhosa, no less than School Xhosa, have probably had more opportunity than any other population in Africa to experience and adopt western culture. The point is that Reds are not only conservatives, they are positive conservatives. They represent those Xhosa who have deliberately rejected white civilization and chosen instead to maintain their traditional way of life. And theirs is not an easy choice: it is a constant struggle against the forces of change.

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