CiNii 図書 - The meanings of things : material culture and symbolic expression

This unique and fascinating book concentrates on the varying roles and functions that material culture may play in almost all aspects of the social fabric of a given culture. The contributors, from Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea, India, South America, the USA, and both Eastern and Western Europe, provide a rich variety of views and experience in a worldwide perspective. Several of the authors focus on essential points of principle and methodology that must be carefully considered before any particular approach to material culture is adopted. One of the many fundamental questions posed in the book is whether or not all material culture is equivalent to documents which can be 'read' and interpreted by the outside observer. If it is, what is the nature of the 'messages' or meanings conveyed in this way? The book also questions the extent to which acceptance, and subsequent diffusion, of a religious belief or symbol may be qualified by the status of the individuals concerned in transmitting the innovation, as well as by the stratification of the society involved. Several authors deal with 'works of art' and the most effective means of reaching an understanding of their past significance. In some chapters semiotics is seen as the most appropriate technique to apply to the decoding of the assumed rules and grammars of material culture expression.

List of contributors
Foreword, P. Ucko
Preface, Ian Hodder. The political use of Australian Aboriginal body painting and its archaeological implications, Robert Layton
Terracotta worship in fringe Bengal, D.K. Bhattacharya
Iron and beads: Male and female symbols of creation. A study of ornament among Booran Oromo, Aneesa Kassam & Gemetchu Megersa
The messages of material behaviour: A preliminary discussion of non-verbal meaning
Roland Fletcher
Religious cults and ritual practice among the Mendi people of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, Theodore Mawe
Sites as texts: An exploration of Mousterian traces, Lucy Jayne Botscharow
Style and changing relations between the individual and society, Polly Wiessner
Post- modernism, post-structuralism and post-processual archaeology, Ian Hodder
'We, the post-megalithic people...', Felipe Criado
The diffusion of religious symbols within complex societies, L. Charles Hulin
Social evidence from the interpretation of Middle Minoan figurines, Angeliki Pilali-Papasteriou
The Priestess Figure of Malta, Christina Biaggi
Ethno-archaeological cognition and cognitive ethno-archaeology, Zbigniew Kobylinski
Heresy and its traces: The material results of culture, E. Melas
Bark capes, arrowheads and Concorde: On social representations of technology, Pierre Lemonnier
The artefact as abbreviated act: A social interpretation of material culture, Miles Richardson
The material symbols of the Winnebago sky and Earth moieties, Robert Hall
Interpreting material culture, Christopher Tilley
Divine kingdoms in northern Africa: Material manifestations of social institutions, Else Johansen Kleppe
Towards and archaeology of thought, Whitney Davis
Tusona ideographs - a lesson in interpretive objectivity, Gerhard Kubik
Organizational constraints on tattoo images: A sociological analysis of artistic style, Clinton Sanders
A semiotic approach in rock-art analysis, Ana Maria Llamarzares
Habitus and social space: Some suggestions about meaning in the Saami (Lapp) tent ca. 1700-1900, Timothy Yates
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The meanings of things : material culture and symbolic expression

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