Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method Jules David Prown Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 17, No. 1. (Spring, 1982), pp. 1-19. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0084-0416%28198221%2917%3A1%3C1%3AMIMAIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 Winterthur Portfolio is currently published by The University of Chicago Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ucpress.html. 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For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Thu Feb 28 23:53:14 2008 Mind in Matter An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method Jules David Prown LTHOUGH ART MUSEUMS, historical What is Material Culture? societies, museums of history and tech- nology, historic houses, open-air mu- Material culture is the study through artifacts of seums, and museums of ethnography, science, and the beliefs-values, ideas, attitudes, and assump- even natural history, have long collected, studied, tions--of a particular community or society at a and exhibited the material of what has come to be given time. The term material culture is also fre- called material culture, no comprehensive academic quently used to refer to artifacts themselves, to the philosophy or discipline for the investigation of body of material available for such study. I shall material culture has as yet been developed. Re- restrict the term to mean the study and refer to the cently, however, there has been increased scholarly evidence simply as material or artifacts. interest in the subject, as witnessed by the estab- Material culture is singular as a mode of cultural lishment of this periodical, Winterthur Portfolio, de- investigation in its use of objects as primary data, voted specifically to material culture; graduate pro- but in its scholarly purposes it can be considered grams in material culture at University of Delaware, a branch of cultural history or cultural anthropol- University of Notre Dame, and Boston University; ogy. It is a means rather than an end, a discipline an experimental Center for American Art and rather than a field. In this, material culture differs Material Culture at Yale University; and a substan- from art history, for example, which is both a dis- tial amount of innovative scholarship, especially in cipline (a mode of investigation) in its study of his- such emerging academic areas as folk life and cul- tory through art and a field (a subject of investi- tural geography (a selective material culture bibli- gation) in its study of the history of art itself. ography is appended below). These developments Material culture is comparable to art history as a and activities have been spontaneous and largely discipline in its study of culture through artifacts. uncoordinated responses to a perceived scholarly As such, it provides a scholarly approach to artifacts need and opportunity. This essay attempts to de- that can be utilized by investigators in a variety of fine material culture and considers the nature of fields. But the material of material culture is too the discipline. It makes no claim to be either the diverse to constitute a single field. In practice it first or the last word on material culture, but it does consists of subfields investigated by specialists-cul- seek to illuminate the subject and to provide a basis tural geographers or historians of art, architecture, for further discussion. It also proposes a particular decorative arts, science, and technology. methodology based on the proposition that arti- Material culture as a study is based upon the facts are primary data for the study of material obvious fact that the existence of a man-made ob- culture, and, therefore, they can be used actively ject is concrete evidence of the presence of a human as evidence rather than passively as illustrations.' intelligence operating at the time of fabrication. Jules David Prown is professor, Department of the History The underlying premise is that objects made or of Art, Yale University. modified by man reflect, consciously or uncon- ' There are material culture studies that do not require ob- ject analysis, in part because they address questions posed by the very existence of artifacts that lead directly to the consid- eration of external evidence. This is particularly true of socio- economic studies that deal with artifacts abstractly, often statis- tically, to address issues of class, patronage, patterns of usage, O 1982 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. levels of technology, availability of materials, means of distri- All rights reserved, oo8~-o~~618~1~~oi-ooo~$o~.oo. bution, and so on. Winterthur Portfolio sciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of indi- scious ordering makes us uncomfortable with the viduals who made, commissioned, purchased, or terminological coupling of base material and lofty used them, and by extension the beliefs of the culture. Nevertheless, the term material culture, if not larger society to which they belonged. The term ideal, has the advantage of being concise, accurate, material culture thus refers quite directly and effi- and in general use. ciently, if not elegantly, both to the subject matter of the study, materzal, and to its purpose, the un- Material derstanding of culture. The word material in material culture refers to a Despite its concision and aptness, the term ma- broad, but not unrestricted, range of objects. It terial culture seems unsatisfactory, indeed, self-con- embraces the class of objects known as artifacts- tradictory. Material is a word we associate with base objects made by man or modified by man. It ex- and pragmatic things; culture is a word we associate cludes natural objects. Thus, the study of material with lofty, intellectual, abstract things. Our unease culture might include a hammer, a plow, a micro- with this apparent disjunction is not superficial; it scope, a house, a painting, a city. It would exclude derives from a fundamental human perception of trees, rocks, fossils, skeletons. Two general obser- the universe as divided between earth and sky. That vations should be made here. First, natural objects empirically observed opposition of lower and higher are occasionally encountered in a pattern that in- provides a powerful and pervasive metaphor for dicates human activity-a stone wall or a row of the distinctions we make between such elemental trees in an otherwise random forest, a concentra- polarities as material and spiritual, concrete and tion of chicken bones in a pit or a pile of oyster abstract, finite and infinite, real and ideal. In its shells, topiary or a clipped poodle, a tattooed body theological formulation this metaphor invariably or a prepared meal. In the broadest sense these locates heaven upward, above the earth, accessible natural materials are artifacts-objects modified by not to the body but only to the mind or spirit (with man-and are of cultural interest. Second, works mortification of the flesh [material] one way to of art constitute a large and special category within achieve spiritual ends), and places hell in the bowels artifacts because their inevitable aesthetic and oc- of the earth, down deep in the midst of matter. casional ethical or spiritual (iconic) dimensions Material things are heir to all sorts of ills-they make them direct and often overt or intentional break, get dirty, smell, wear out; abstract ideas re- expressions of cultural belief. The self-consciously main pristine, free from such wordly debilities. expressive character of this material, however, The Western conception of history is that it has raises problems as well as opportunities; in some been characterized by man's increasing under- ways artifacts that express culture unconsciously standing and mastery of the physical environment, are more useful as objective cultural indexes.' For by the progressive triumph of mind over matter. the moment, however, let it simply be borne in The evidence of human history seems to confirm mind that all tangible works of art are part of ma- our sense that abstract, intellectual, spiritual ele- terial culture, but not all the material of material ments are superior to material and physical things. culture is art. This has led inevitably to a hierarchical ordering The range of objects that fall within the com- that informs our apprehension and judgment of pass of material culture is so broad as to make some human activities and experiences.' This uncon- system of classification desirable. Sorting by phys- ical materials does not work because of the multi- For example, poetry, because more abstract, is considered plicity of substances used, even at times in a single loftier than prose, chess than wrestling, or the practice of law artifact. The same is true of methods of fabrication. than collecting garbage. In the world of scholarship the more abstract subjectsmathematics, philosophy, literature-are more The most promising mode of classification is by highly regarded than concrete and practical subjects such as function.