MATERIALITY

Over the last two decades, some anthropologists and archaeologists have increasingly extended the concept of agency from people to material objects. This new perspective is called materiality. By this view, material culture is not a passive reflection of cultural practices, but rather a dynamic part of the construction of ideologies (Appadurai 1986; Boivin 2008; Gell 1998; Meskell 2005; Miller 2005; this theoretical tack is presaged by Schiffer 1976, 1995). For example, the creation of pottery is not strictly utilitarian, and the variation in the form of pottery among different groups is not only due to social tradition (Miller 1985, 1987). Rather, the decision to make pottery in specific ways is a part of the cultural process itself. Each time a person chooses to make a piece of material culture, she decides if she will follow traditional forms or make something wholly new. In this light, the decision by people to make something involves human agency, rather than simply the enactment of structural rules. Each time people choose to build or use something, they are forced to decide whether they will engage in dominant discourses or reject them. This dynamic perspective on material culture is commonly referred to as materiality. With the development of this perspective has come recognition that the creation of material culture is part of the dynamic creation of self and identity, if not culture itself.

Building on theories of materiality, DeMarrais, Castillo, and Earle (1996; DeMarrais 2004) propose that material culture can be investigated as the “materialization of ideology.” Here, ideology is understood in a Marxist sense—that ideology serves to promote relations of power between the elite and commoners. DeMarrais, Castillo, and Earle argue that the control of production and consumption of prestige goods can be understood as part of the production of authority. They suggest, for example, that in Bronze Age Europe, elite control over the production and possession of weapons materialized an ideology that supported a developing class of warrior chiefs. More recently, Johansen and Bauer (2011) have taken less of a top-down approach to the materiality of power, seeing power as derived from a more dialectical relationship between people and things.

In the last decade, materiality researchers have increasingly questioned whether a clear division exists between people and the objects people create or, as materiality researchers phrase it, between subjects and objects (Boivin 2008; Gell 1998; Latour 1993, 1999, 2005; Miller 2005). New theories of materiality note that many objects are anthropomorphized and take on attributes of people. Following Bourdieu (1977), materiality researchers argue that the material world shapes human behavior and the acquisition of cultural rules. The type of house in which a person is raised will condition the way that a person sees the world as an adult. In this sense, objects can be said to have agency. The question for materiality researchers is just how much agency to ascribe to objects. For Latour (1999, 2005), objects have agency equivalent to human agents in almost every way. Gell (1998), in contrast, sees objects as having agency only inasmuch as people ascribe or imbue objects with agency.

In an insightful evaluation of materiality studies, Boivin (2008) argued that even within materiality studies, the materiality of objects has often been downplayed.

[Studies of material culture] often continue to overlook the actual materiality of the material world. What we frequently find instead is a far from novel emphasis on ideas, on human thought, and on representation. What we often find is a model, either implicit or explicit, of material culture as a text or as a language, as something that represents something else, and that is there to be interpreted. Thus, despite frequent claims to the effect that such studies are breaking down inherited Western dichotomies between ideal and material, between subject and object, and between culture and nature, many of them in fact simply re-impose traditional dualistic frameworks. The physicality of the material world continues to be ignored, as does the way that engagement with that materiality is at the crux of the human enterprise.

Boivin argues that the solution to this problem is to “undertake an exploration of the ways in which culture, society, and mind, the things we think of as most abstract and transcendent in our lives, are in fact far more material, visceral, and sensual than most of our academic models acknowledge” (Boivin 2008:23). Like Latour, Boivin argues that scholars must thoroughly collapse the dichotomies between mind and matter, form and substance, eliminating the tendency to elevate the abstract and cultural over the concrete and material (Boivin 2008:23).

Though I agree wholeheartedly with Boivin’s claim that neither mind nor matter should be considered more fundamental or important, I question the value of collapsing the distinction between mind and matter, subjects and objects, or people and things. To say that mind and matter are different does not demand that one be elevated over the other. But collapsing the dichotomy limits the ability to recognize and interpret the relationships between ideas and things. Things are not ideas and ideas are not things, however hopelessly interrelated the two might be. From my view, Gell’s position is more useful. While some objects are clearly viewed as having agency by the people who create and use them, others are considered lifeless. In practice, the perception of an object can be manipulated by a skilled craftsperson. A bronze sculpture of a ballerina, for instance, may appear to a viewer to be light on her feet or moving. The bronze statue is, of course, heavy and motionless. To focus only on the perception of the object, or to collapse the distinction between the object and subject, would be to deny the medium of the statue, the skill of the artist who modeled the statue, and even the intent of artist in the first place. My complaint with this view is that it downplays or denies the materiality of material objects—like Peircean semiotics, it privileges the perception of an object over the material form of the object itself. Following Gell (1998:ch. 7), craftspeople imbue their agency into objects, creating a form of “secondary agency” derived from the craftspeople who initially created an object with purpose or intent. That is, people perceive the intent of the crafts-person as expressed in the form of an object, and ascribe that intent, that agency, to the object itself. This is not say that people will always perceive the specific intent of the craftsperson. Rather, the perception of an object is always an act of interpretation.

Like Gell, I hold that there is a real value in maintaining a duality between material objects and the perception of material objects, if only because the disjuncture between the two can be informative about people’s interaction with the material world (Fogelin 2012). Following the perspective of Peirce, the meaning of a semiotic object is not straightforwardly imbued in the material object itself. In semiotics, objects are abstract and of the mind. Semiotic objects are linked to material objects through an interpretant’s sensual perception of material objects. It is possible, then, to alter a material object in subtle ways to alter the perception of that material object, and ultimately the semiotic object in the mind of the interpretant. Similarly, changes in the understanding of semiotic objects can inform physical manipulations of material objects. This is the point of articulation between theories of materiality and semiotics. By examining the relationship between material objects and semiotic objects—between objects of the world and objects of the mind—archaeologists can explore the meaning of objects without abandoning human agency.

Semiotics and materiality/practice theory each have strengths and weaknesses. Practice theory is particularly good at explaining the motivations of agents (both human and non-human) in the past, and the impact of agents on structure. Semiotics, on the other hand, provides a framework for analyzing signs, and the relative impact of signs on the people who use and construct them. As stated by Marx ([1869] 1963:15), “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please, they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”

Practice theory explains how “[people] make their own history,” while semiotics explains the meaning and social impact of signs “given and transmitted from the past.” Semiotics identifies structure in the world of signs that people find themselves in. Practice theory and materiality provide mechanisms to explain the goals of people materializing signs. Semiotics explains the consequences of these actions on the people who inherit and interact with signs previously materialized. Taken together, semiotics, practice theory, and materiality explain the relationship between the material world and the world of signs better than any of these theories can alone. When combined with the older theories of religion, archaeologists can draw on the insights of numerous scholars of religion. While the resulting analyses will contain more contradictions and will lack the coherence of an investigation relying on only one theoretical approach, I argue that the interpretive messiness of a blended approach more accurately reflects the actual practice of religion. This blended approach, however, is not without difficulties—chief among them is coherence.