Towards Modernist Collecting: Some European Practices of the Long Term

NORDISK MUSEOLOGI 1993•2, S. 87-98

TOWARDS MODERNIST COLLECTING: SOME EUROPEAN PRACTICES OF THE LONG TERM

Susan Pearce

The beginning ofmodernist collecting, and, ofthe particular kinds ofknowledge and experience which it embodies are usually considered to begin within the fifteenth cen tury, where interests concentrates on the accumulations ofthe Medici, and upon the cabinets ofcuriosities, which begin to appear, as the century draws to a close. Howeve1; this early modern collecting practice did not crystalize out ofnothing. The standard procedures ofhistorical investigation can suggest some obvious predecessors: the collec tions ofrelics and treasures acquired by the great medieval churches and princes; the collections of Greek art acquired by first century and later Romans; and the material held in Greek temples, described for us by Pausanius. But underlying all this collecting activity it is perhaps possible to discern some characteristics ofthe European tradition which inform collecting, and make it likely that modernist collecting, when it finally comes into being with the rest ofmodernist practice, will take the shape and signifi cance which it has done. 1

This paper2 endeavours to single out some very important themes, which will be dis of these fundamental European characte cussed at befitting length elsewhere. ristics, and to suggest why they are signifi Meanwhile, this discussion of some long cant. There are many related issues which term European practices, in Braudel's sen cannot be addressed here, and these inclu se of the term (see, for example, Bintliff de a definition of collecting, a view of 1991), and their relationship to collecting what constitutes 'Europe' and its 'tradi practice, is offered here as a contribution tion', and the significance which this may to the debate. have in a broader context. These are all SUSAN PEARCE

88 OATHS AND ORDEALS cal, and so on. But what probative test is there to demonstrate that boars are brave and diamonds are The work of a number of linguists, and ethical? This is metaphorical thinking and a 'sym particularly of Thomas Markey, has given bolic' logic of equal but opposite (e.g. left vs. right, us a significant insight into the nature of male vs. female) that classifies by sentiment rather European society which has a bearing on than function. (1985: 181). the matter in hand, and this revolves around its fundamental orientation as an Markey goes on to draw attention to the oath/ordeal organisation rather than as a fact that totem/taboo organisation, regarded by a broad anthropological consensus as two Systemically totemism is normally, perhaps even basic socio-cultural types which are found naturally, correlated with tabu. Tabu confers cor in complementary distribution and sel rective significance on totemism; it is the police for dom overlap. Totemism has been the sub ce of totemism and its boundary condition. The ject of such intense anthropological specu correlation of totemism with tabu, an undeniable lation that the history of it as an idea is empirical fact for the vast majority of totemizing more-or-less the history of anthropology cultures, gives rise to what we here term the as such, and Markey gives a helpful sum totem/tabu or tit- paradigm (1985: 181) mary of this history in his 1985 paper. He suggests Clearly, it is the mystical/numinous cha racter of totem and tabu which provides A simple yet suitably broad and generally accepta its psychic energy and defines the kind of ble, working definition of totemism might well world outlook which such a society is like assume the following form. Totemism is the realisa ly to have. Bertrand Russell has defined tion of a particular, but generally mystical (or mysticism as possessed of four hallmark otherwise numinous), relationship between the properties: members of a given social (typically kinship) unit and a natural object or group of objects (e.g. heav 1) it invokes intuition alone and rejects discursive enly body, a plant, animal, or mineral or even logic; 2) it is holistic rather than atomistic and iso meteorological phenomena) with which that unit is morphically correlates all differences as integrated usually characteristically associated and from which parts of a larger whole, of a cosmology, of a it derives its name. [---) Weltanschattttng entitled the Universe; 3) it denies But perhaps the most significant attribute of Time and claims to play itself our in an all-embra totemism is that it consists in a projection of men cing synchronic present with no meaningful past tal attitudes on natural objects. However, that very and little predictive future (other than the dire con projection, that very bridging, which asserts a con sequences of breaking a tabu, hence the poli tinuity between culture on the one hand and nature cing/ governing nature of ta bu as a correlative of on the other hand, is never subjected to experimen totemism); and 4) it views evil as mere (personified) tal validation, nor could it be, and even if it were appearance: there are only problems and no coun attempted it would defy such validation. A certain ter-examples in a world of mysticism devoid of fish is, for example, equated with or classified as principled, propositional or analytic and experi moral, boars with/as brave, diamonds with/as ethi- mental logic. The probative basis of totemism is TOWARD S MODERNI S T COLLECTIN G

necessarily experiential, not experimental, logic. There is abundant evidence for related 89 (Russell 1917: 1 - 31). ordeal practices in the European past, including medieval and later trials by fire Totem/tabu societies, therefore, will have or by water (in the 'floating' of witches), no interest in tests of validity, in the ratio the use of riddles as tests, and, of course, nal link between cause and effect or action trial by single combat. and consequence, or in the nature of his The oath/ordeal paradigm involves the torical sequence. They will see the world notion of individual rights and responsibi as an undivided unity in which each frac lities, since only a single person can per tion is part of the wholeness of things, form oaths and ordeals, and the corres perceiving no dualities, whether between ponding notion of the rest, who hear, see man and the natural world, between man and judge. It sets up a dichotomy between and matter, word and object, or right and word and object, between man and the wrong, other than as a matter of sacred material world which rejects the mystical transgression. unity of all things in favour of a sense of Markey, drawing on data embedded in separations which hinge on pairs like true: the Human Relations Area Files held at the false; supported by previous events : University of Michigan, suggests that the unsupported; proven by successful defen complementary paradigm to totem/tabu ce/ ordeal : unproven; genuine : deceitful; should be that of oath/ordeal, and that, as innocent : guilty, and so on. It carries the a matter of social and historical fact, it is seeds of a potential development of moral to this paradigm that European society, and social philosophy, logic and scientific past and present, seems to belong, some experiment, analytical history, and most cultural admixture not withstanding. Like significantly for our present purposes, a totem/tabu, oath/ordeal possesses its own particular relationship to the material kind of logic in the structure of oath, gua world, which is regarded as 'other' and ranteed by its own cosmological sanctions therefore as a fit arena for the exercise of embodied in ordeal. Here, oath is defined the analytic qualities just outlined. as 'a formal invocation to gods/men to witness the contested validity of acts or KINSHIP AND PROPERTY intentions'. Characteristically, oaths adopt a formula, which carries the legitimatizing In 1982 Leach wrote; 'When you read weight of precedent and is uttered in spe anything that any anthropologist has writ cial places and at special times, in relation ten on the topic of kinship be on your especially to the adjudication of guilt and guard. The argument may not mean what innocence. The total familiarity with you think; the author himself may not which we ourselves hear utterances like 'I have understood what he is saying' (1982: swear I am innocent', or 'I swear before 137 - 8). When this awful warning is lin almighty God that what I say shall be the ked with the difficulties of reconstructing truth, the whole truth and nothing but what kinship systems may have been like the truth' bear witness (sic.0 to the mind in the remote past and linking this with set of which these sayings are a part. more recent and contemporary situations, SUSAN PEARCE

90 and with the undoubted fact that non pean kinship in relation to immediate blood anthropologists usually find the whole relationships, the extended family and the subject arid and unhelpful, it will be seen relationships through marriage. that is a difficult subject with which to Friedrich suggests that across the grapple. However, in spite of all the European language family the words for thronging difficulties the fact remains that blood kin suggest a general and early how a society sees its pattern of marriage recognition of the relationship set out in and family relationships creates an essen fig 1. Similarly, the words for relations tial part of its social character, and there through marriage, that is affines or (as we are reasons for thinking that the broadly say) in-laws, suggest the broad existence of European system has, and for a long time eight special terms, of which five were has had, particular characteristics, especi normally used by a woman when speaking ally as these effect the property-owning of her husband's close blood relatives. and collecting classes, which have played a From this Friedrich infers that the terms significant role in defining long-term imply that on marriage the girl removed mentalites, particularly in relationship to from her own blood kin to the familial notions about the material world. group of her husband's father, and this fits The most comprehensive study of with other early textual evidence which European kinship is that produced by shows a great concentration of power in Friedrich (1966) who was able to draw on the father's hands, giving us an extended a long tradition of previous study (e.g. family of patriarchal type. Further eviden Crosland 1957; Thieme 1958) and criti ce allows the suggestion that quite often cism by social anthropologists like Goody the patriarchal family formed a physical (1959). Friedrich has brought together both household and associated field rights held a large body of European data drawn from by the father, where everybody lived textural and linguistic study and theories of (patri-local) and descent was reckoned in kinship semantics drawn from social the male line (patri-linear) (1966: 14 - anthropology, and used these to suggest 23). All this produces a system which is what can be determined about early Euro- deeply familiar to modern European men

grandtather = grandmother

father-in-law = mother-in-law father aunt uncle I I I brother-in wife = ego cousin cousin law I I son daughter

Fig. I . Chamcteristic European kin and affine relationships. Terms are in relation to ego. Ego's affines are in italics. TOWARDS MODERNIST COLLECTING

and women, especially if their apprecia ludicrously over-simplified, but in its gene 91 tion of it has been sharpened by a taste for ral shape serves to show how unfamiliar this nineteenth century novels. Each of us system is to the European mind, and how would be wholly unsurprised if, on dra different are some of its implications to tho wing up our own immediate family tree, it se to which Europeans are accustomed. looked very much like that shown in figu To speak like this about European kin re 1, and the same is broadly true of any ship is clearly to sketch a paradigm, rather modern European from Cork to Moscow. than to discuss actual historical societies, Europe is not the only society in the which present an extremely confused pic world organised in terms of this sort of ture across time and space. In particular, it structure, but it is probably fair to say that is necessary to draw out what the formal such structures are relatively unusual. To kinship structures cannot show, the fact quote Leach again that in western Europe in general, and perhaps in England in particular, the In a great many social systems the only fully legiti capacity of women to own goods and pro mate marriages are those in which the bride and perty in their own right, by inheritance or bridegroom are not only already kin but kin of a purchase, runs back a long way into early specific category such as, say, that which includes medieval society. Similarly, in these socie the relationship mother's brother's daughter\fat ties, in many situations a property-holder her' s sister's son. The rules are formally protected (of both land and goods) had no inevita by supposedly powerful religious taboos, breach of ble heir and could leave his property by which will result in supernatural punishment for all will as he wished, an approach which wea concerned. (Leach 1982: 144) kened the position of the eldest son and strengthened that of his junior siblings In these social systems, in other words, (Macfarland 1978). Nevertheless, the marriage between cousins of one kind or point here is not the many variations or another is regarded as desirable. This gives deviations which may be played on the us the sort of family tree set out in figure theme, but the theme itself: that, now and 2, which relates to no actual society and is in the past there is an approach to marria-

granaramer = granamorner

son son I I

=cousin cousin= cousin cousin= cousin cousin= cousin cousin= I I I

=cousin cousin= cousin cousin= cousin cousin=

Fig 2. Schematic plan ofone possible version ofcross-cousin marriage. SUSAN PEARCE

92 ge, inheritance and kinship which is iden ting sequences of younger sons who al tifiably European. This pattern has played though educated as gentlemen, have no an important part in social navigation and visible means of support and must make it is to this that we must now turn. their own way in the world. A system of cousin marriage, that is a The effects of this have probably been marrying-in endogenous system, tends to enormous. There is a very real sense in create a vertical or monolithic structure in which a substantial element in the later which the family resources are kept within (and perhaps some of the earlier) history the family, and can be shared out amongst of Europe is the history of portion-less all its members according to custom. By younger sons who have always had to contrast, an exogamous or marrying-out move on, open up new lands, look to system, like the European one, produces a acquire a well-dowered female, or take to relatively weak vertical structure and a commercial ventures. They have contribu relatively important horizontal one, in ted considerably to the restless, aggressive, which family relationships straggle away acquisitive character, which, for better or into an extended series of affines. This has worse, is typical of Europeans. Their exi two important consequences. The goods stence is part of the reason why European that have been associated with a marriage, trade, industry and colonisation developed whether as a dowry provided by the girl's as it did. Europeans are accustomed to the parents to go with her or bride-wealth idea that, because cousins are not booked provided by the man's family to go to her to each more-or-less in their cradles, the parents, will be lost to which ever family marriage market operates much like any is making the provision because the two other market. The potential choice of groups are not blood kin. This means that marriage partner is very free and so very goods can circulate in such a society in a competitive, and this has helped inspire much less regulated and more random both our notion of romantic love with all way than is often possible. Coupled with the specially-orientated forms of produc this has been a range of heirship strategies tion which this has entailed, and a steady which operated at various times and pla but ever-shifting pattern of the accumula ces, but one stands out as particularly sig tion and dispersal of material goods. In nificant especially for the propertied clas sum, one of the effects of the European ses in England and other parts of Western kinship pattern has been to create a socie Europe. In order to retain a solid core of ty in which, over a long period, material wealth within one family line it is necessa goods have been significant in a way ry to create some inalienable property which transcends their universal relation rights, of which the most obvious is the ship to human needs, to encourage the concentration of heirship in the eldest inventions of ways in which the range and son, a strategy which Roman society number of goods can be increased, and to embraced and bequeathed to later genera create habits of object accumulation; and tions, and which may have operated earli with all of this goes a mind-set materially er in some groups. This, however, has the attuned. result, another European classic, of crea- TOWARDS MODERNIST COLLECTING

HOARDING AND GIVING, heroic society 'but hardly anywhere in 93 HERE AND IN THE OTHER WORLD active use by the ninth century' (Markey 1990: 351). Markey suggests that *maipm The imagination of the early medieval 'unambiguously points to an underlying world, both Germanic and later Scandi pre-Primitive Germanic *moitm -', a usage navian or 'Viking', was dazzled by the which might take us back to at least the notion that heroic deeds are matched by later centuries BC. The word methom, splendid objects, that the 'imperishable especially in Beowulf is particularly associ fame' of the hero which shall be sung of ated with gemteric as the context for gift to the end of the world, in the phrase exchange (maene still carries the idea of which stands at the roots of recorded 'well-endowed' in its modern English des European consciousness, (Watkins 1982), cendant as, for example, in our phrase 'a shall be met with 'honourable gifts', a man of means'). In Beowulfgemaene means phrase which, as we shall see, may occupy something like 'dutifully', honourably, a similar crucial place in the imaginations given' and Markey suggests that this reflects of those who used it. Splendid gifts were a pre-Primitive Germanic *moitmos gho given from one man to another, some moinis, which we may render as 'honoura times from man to the gods, and some ble gift exchange'. Markey notes that this times from man to a dead hero: all of the corresponds approximately to a Common se forms stand within a long-continuing Italic *donom da-ldo, and suggests that here tradition which seems to run back into we have tracked down a formula of early European prehistory, and all require analy Northern European poetic diction which sis. We can come close to experiencing encapsulates a crucial social practice, like what the splendid objects were by consi that represented by the culturally akin dering the goods placed in the seventh 'imperishable fame'. The recorded practices century royal ship burial at Sutton Hoo, of migration age princes, therefore, throw England with its sword, shield and hel their light backwards into prehistory, as well met, dishes, ceremonial drinking horns as casting their shadow before. and gold, enamelled purse filled with gold What this light shows us becomes clea coins (on display in the British Museum). rer when we consider two other words In this tradition, together with kin, which also belong with notions of 're 'honourable gifts' constituted perhaps the ward', mizdo and faun. As Benveniste has most significant social bond. Markey has shown mizdo, while ultimately related to shown that the word for such gifts in maipm, meant 'worldly reward' while faun Beowulf (Old Saxon), methom, derives meant 'providential' or 'heavenly reward' from an inherited Germanic *maipm, and as such had a gathering tendency to which occurs in appropriate forms in be used in Christian contexts. Markey some (but not all) early Germanic langua (1990: 352) sets out the potential relati ges, and was 'the term par excellence of onship between the three words in an gift/ exchange' in the early medieval interesting paragraph which deserves quo Germanic world, part of the language of ting in full: epic and of the primitive economy of SUSAN PEARCE

94 'Now, if, as seems highly likely, !attn originally defi material, one which inherits most of what ned providential, divine reward\treasure in opposi had gone before, and fuses the strands tion to mizdo (and congeners) as the expression of together through the catalyst of Christian secular reward/treasure, payment gained by contest, practice. The idea that the burial places conquest, or work, then where does maipm fit into and the corporeal relics of Christian holy this continuum and what, if any was its relationship men and women carried significance for to faun on the one hand and or its formal sibling the living was well-established by around mizdo on the other hand? then too, in addition to AD 400, the end of Imperial Rome in the the exigencies of a conversion literature as outlined west, and the beginning of a Christendom above, why did maipm - vanish? Why, too on its whose theocratic power was exercised by a deathbed in that literature, was it so readily ambi church hierarchy descending from, and guous (both secular and divine) and unable to make modelled upon, the old imperial, bureau a transition to one pole (!attn) or the other (mizdo)? cracy. Historically, this practice arose from We suggest that, as the original expression for the persecutions which the early Church courtly gift/exchange within the commtmitas, suffered, and from the martyrs' relics maipm occupied a pivotal position midway betwe which resulted. But far more was involved enly totally {+secular/-divine} and totally {-secu than the simple act of remembrance and lar/+divine}, indeed just as the princeps as commu the moral encouragement which it provi nal leader (Goth piudans) and addressee of the ded. The holy graves where relics were maipm-ritua1 occupied the same position: buried or, eventually, enshrined, mediated faun maipm mizdo between God and men. They were the +divine + - divine - divine locus where Heaven and Earth touched, - secular + - secular - divine where this world and the other world met. - secular + - secular +secular Churches which possessed holy relics (Markey 1990 : 352) came to accumulate earthly treasures which matched those spiritual, and those We can conclude that maipm, honourable which did not took pains to acquire both: gifts and the weapons, helmets and orna heavenly treasure and the earthly riches ments of gold and jewels inseparable from which surrounded it seemed to have been the idea, stood at the critical threshold indissolubly mixed in the medieval mind. between two worlds, and that the act of The kinds of objects involved may be seen exchange between prince and follower by the Cross of Lothair, made in Cologne constituted a rite of passage which ac about 1000 in the possession of the cathe knowledged and confirmed mutual obli dral church of Aachen. It is a magnificent gations, a character which collected mate piece with goldsmiths' filigree work and rial was long to maintain. mounted precious stones and incorporated both the rock-crystal seal of Lothair II of HEAVENLY REWARDS Lotharingia (855-869) and, in its centre, a superb cameo of the Emperor Augustus Parallel with this heroic world, feeding (31 BC - AD 6) (Beckwith 1964: 140-142, upon it and ultimately superseding it, ran 259-60). A classical gem, an aquamarine another mode of accumulating collected intaglio showing the portrait of Julia, TOWARDS MODERNIST COLLECTING

daughter of the Emperor Titus (AD 79-81) affairs of this world, of knowing how some formed the top jewel of the elaborate jewel times the Divine could directly affect the led piece known as the Crista or Escrin de mundane. The importance of life lay not in 95 Charlemagne (although probably the gift of diurnal regularities but in anomalies, Charles the Bold) in the possession of the strange occurrences, interruptions and abbey of St Denis, where the relics of the miracles, and of these miracles the relics saint and his companions were held themselves were physical proof. This notion (Panofsky - Soergel 1979: 190). These two was to cast a long shadow before it, as we examples, chosen more-or-less at random shall see, but for the present, let us express from the great wealth of possible illustrati the essential nature of the relic in a simple ons, give an idea of the richness involved. semiotic form shown in figure 3. It is the As we have just said, relics were the pla relics' documentation of the miraculous ce where this world and the Otherworld which stimulated the great thesaural activity met, and this explains why they were able which they stimulated. to attract so much collected treasure to We can now see that the treasures of the themselves and their churches, but their great early medieval churches gather toget nature needs more explanation. Relics her most of the threads which have cha belong within that quite large class of racterised object accumulation in the pre objects which in life were part of a living ceding centuries, and weave them together human or animal, but which in death are in a form which will greatly influence the turned into things. Relics are objects shape of things to come. The treasures which are both persons and things, and belong to God and to the holy ones who their corporeal reality - frequently obvious dwell with him. Consequently, they to the eye as a limb or a skull - reinforces themselves are things set apart, both holy their double condition and ties them to and dangerous, ominous in their power. the experienced 'real' world of time and They are gifts to God and to the mighty space. As persons they are true saints dead whose graves and shrines occupy the living with God; as relics they are docu imaginative place which burial mounds ments for understanding the world. The like Sutton Hoo had held in the minds of way of understanding was through an those northern barbarians now gradually appreciation of God's intervention in the converting to Christianity. The giving of

Relic

Corporeal survival of holy body Document of God's miraculous intervention

Content Presence of saint in Heaven Possibility of miraculous intervention on behalf of worshipper, bringing him to Heaven

Fig 3. Semiotic analysis of'relic'. SUSAN PEARCE

96 gifts at the altar is still honourable and SOME CONCLUSIONS still a rite of passage in which the divine and the mundane are brought together This brief review of some important long and the status of the donor is changed, al term elements in European thought and though, as Markey has shown, the Church practice has important implications for found it necessary to make a clear distinc the ways in which collections have been tion between old Pagan and new Christian formed, and the rationale from which they practice in which the older vocabulary of spring and to which they contribute. The · meithom, came to mean 'earthly reward and suggestion that European culture belongs faun to mean 'heavenly/true reward'. Gifts within the oath/ ordeal social paradigm to the church, like pagan gifts to the dead focuses attention on the European tenden or to Otherworld powers, are valuables cy to regard time and space as properties withdrawn from circulation, frozen assets, capable of classification, and consequently to be seen primarily as creating a relation to be deeply interested in assessment, ship between man and god, from which measurement and the material evidence proper relationships between men will which can give these qualities observable depend. Oaths once sworn upon Thor's creativity. It is arguable that this paradigm rings will now be sworn upon the holy is one important source of the European bones in their reliquaries of gold and gem 'scientific' mentality, which then, of cour stones. se, had such an incalculatory impact upon From the old northern world the church the world as a whole. Seventeenth and treasures took notions of gift exchange, eighteenth century science, and to a cer the depositing of treasure with the dead tain extent, contemporary science also, and at sacred places, and the link between depends upon material evidence, just as royal hall and royal church, usually built the notion of 'evidence' underpins this very or relatively close together in the ear whole mentalite. The materiality of collec ly medieval world. They succeeded the ted specimens, and the ways in which the earlier temples, also, as repositories of se have come to be seen to be susceptible communiry memory, materially expressed. to classificatory principles and procedures, The link between the old imperial world is an inevitable part of this mental attitu and the new devotion was sometimes de, and the making of collections, therefo made explicit in the value accorded to re, is an integral element within it. ancient cameos and similar pieces. From The notion of spatial and chronological the world, also, come notions of the signi classification bears a distinct relationship ficance of the physical means of the holy to the practice of keeping relics, for here dead, notions, perhaps, with their roots in we have the notion of the 'real' presence ancient practice. The early medieval of the dead created by their remains which church treasures are, then, a meeting come to us from the past. It is an attitude point of significances. In appearance, they which, in the fullness of time, will create all were immensely impressive: treasure with the collections which have to do with drawn from the working world still works 'famous' people, and also alternatively, those upon through the vision of eye and mind. which are usually described in museums as TOWARD S MODERN IS T COLLECTING

social history, and have to do with the ordi and the Otherworld has the power to trans 97 nary people of the past. At the same time, form, to change identities and relationships. the 'anomaly', the 'miracle' aspect of relics, The possession of collections retains this linked with the notions of sequential classi power. Individuals are made different by fication which we have just discussed, pre virtue of the artistic or scientific collections pares the way for fruitful ideas of 'differen which they own and (presumably) adminis ce' and 'oddity', the strangeness which ter, and this is so well understood that it is a needs exploration. These ideas were power powerful motive behind the gathering of ful in the cabinets of the sixteenth and collected material. seventeenth century, and have made their Characteristic European practices of own contribution to contemporary science. kinship and inheritance inform all these Relics have another resonance. They, other social notions, however difficult the and the treasures which surrounded them, notion of 'characteristic' may be. They belonged in the churches, often the royal have helped to create a materially-based churches, of the medieval past, and there society in which the accumulation of is a clear historical chain which links these wealth by individuals is extremely impor palaces and chapels to the earliest muse tant, because this is the only chance man ums of the Renaissance, and so to the state people have to make a living. Kinship and and civic museums of the modern world. inheritance practices feed into notions of Such a chain can be traced clearly in the social fluidity and individual choice and royal and national collections of the effort, which have contributed towards Scandinavian world, and also in those of a the peculiarly European forms of long-dis number of the German rulers. In the con tance contact and exchange, commerce, temporary world museums possess the and, ultimately, the proliferation of manu same kinds of prestige and assert the same factured goods which we usually call the kinds of cultural power which once be industrial revolution, particularly as it was longed to prince and priest. experienced in Britain and other parts of One significant aspect of this cultural Western Europe. This, in its turn, has hel power is the notion that important collec ped to foster the western notion that 'you tions are inherently sacred. They are deta are what you own', an idea quite alien to ched from the mundane world and held in many of the world's communities. All the a sort of special suspension, above and se practices are likel to encoura _~e co e - beyond commodity or valuation in com tin as a rm of ob'ect investm d a modity terms. Sometimes these collections _an aspect of personal wealth and presti~. are held to possess aesthetic and craft So brief an analysis leaves much unsaid, excellence. Sometimes, particularly in sci and inevitably treats each aspect of social entific or historical collections, they possess practice here discussed as more monolithic the authority of knowledge, itself a product and less subtle than it probably ever was. of material classification. As we saw in our Nevertheless, we can see a tradition in the discussion of gift-giving, the transmission of long-term in which a number of elements treasure was a rite of passage; the sacred for interlock to give us the major modernist ce of the objects, poised between this World collections which we see around us, inside SUSAN PEARCE

98 and outside museums. Materiality is inhe Crossland, R.A., 1957, Inda-European Origins: the rent in the long-term mentalite of Euro linguistic evidence, Past and Present, 12: 16-46. pean society, because this depends upon Friedrich, P., 1966, 'Proto-Inda-European Kinships', the twin notions of personal effort and Ethnology, 5: 1-36. accumulation and the idea of evidence, Goody, J., 1959, 'Inda-European Society', Past and effort and accumulation and the idea of Present, 16: 88-92. evidence, arrived at by processes of discri Leach, E., 1982, Social Anthropology, London. mination in time, space and form. Levi, P. (ed.), 1971, Pausanias: Guide to Greece, Unsurprisingly, therefore, treasure hoar London. ded and dispersed to be hoarded again, Macfarlane, A., 1978, The Origins of English achieves a kind of divinity, which from at Individualism, Oxford. least the beginning of the European bron Markey, T., 1985, 'The Totemic Typology', Quaderni ze age is linked with the feeling that such di Semantica, 6, I: 175-94. pieces make appropriate gifts to the dead Markey, T., 1990, 'Gift, Payment and Reward Re-visi and to the gods. From such ancient ted', in Markey, T. and Greppin, J. (eds.), When thoughts, the churches, treasures and Worlds Collide: Inda-Europeans and Pre-lndo relics of the medieval world drew their Europeans, Ann Arbor: 345-362. strength, and in their turn passed their Panofsky E., 1979, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church power to modern collectors and museums. of St-Denis and its Art Treasures, Princeton. When we look at collections on display we Pearce, S.M., 1993, Museums, Objects and should see not only their local or immedi Collections, Leicester. ate significance in terms of history or qua Russell, B., 1917, Mysticism and Logic, New York. lity shallowly conceived; we, should see Strong, D.E., 1973, 'Roman Museums' in Strong (ed.) also how they are a realisation of deep Archaeological Theory and Practice : Essays rooted social practice. When we look at Presented to W. F. Grimes, London. 248 - 264. European collections, we are looking at Thieme, P., 1953, 'Die Heimat der Indogermanischen ·the European mind. Gemeinsprache'. Abhandlungen der Geistes - und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Akademie der NOTER Wissenschaften und der Literature, 535-610, Wiesbaden. I. In the introduction references are made to Pearce Watkins, C., 1982, 'Aspects oflndo-European Poetics' 1992: 14-35, Strong 1973 and Levi 1971. in Polome, E. (ed.), The Indo-Europeans in tl1e 2. The paper forms part of a larger project which inves Fourth and Third Millenennia, Ann Arbor: 104- tigates the European tradition of collecting practice, 120. the poetics of collecting, and the politics of collec ting, to be published by Routledge in 1995. Susan M Pearce iirprofessor och lederfor Department ofMuseum Studies, Leicester University, England. LIITERATUR Hon hnr redigerat och skrivit manga bocke1; senast 'Museums, Objects and Collections' (1992). Beckwith, J., 1964, Early Medieval Art, London. Adr: Department ofMuseum Studies, University of Bintliff, J. (ed.), 1991, The Annales School and Leicester, 105 Princess Road East, Leicester LEI 7LG, Archaeology, Leicester. England. FAX +44 533 523960.