Sorry for that last empty message. Iain raises good points here. I
like to think that material culture items do not "mean" the same from
one person to the next (to some degree) within a given time period or
social context, although there must be some shared, if ambiguous,
signification or there is no social meaning at all. I have my students
do projects that involve taking common classes of material culture,
such as clothing or body ornament, and interview users and observers
about their meanings. It's really instructive.!
 
Dan
 
 
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> Mail*Link(r) SMTP               Ethnicity-a reply
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> This has been a very interesting thread.
>
> One difficulty is that we are so familar with the material culture we excavate
> that it is difficult to remember that it may not have the meanings we assume
> it does. This is particularlly true for 19th and 20th century sites.
>
> As an antidote I suggest some living archaeology in our own context to look at
> the diversity of meanings ascribed to material culture.
>
> I have no really good ideas for a methdology to overcome this in the field
> however the use of the historical record as a way of building contexts (a form
> of Thick Description) seems to be one way to go.
>
> Rather than cite Binford and Bordes I think Henry Glassie's approach to
> material culture is worth revisiting. "Folk housing in Middle Virginia" is a
> very interesting book for both what it says about the houses and the
> analytical approach.
>
> A former out of touch bureaucrat
> University of Sydney
>