Material Culture Studies of the Public Realm
Rochelle Scholz
Arch 751
An interesting discussion of the influences past cultures on the current environment was led by Peter Wells, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, when he recently spoke at UWM as a guest lecturer through the Anthropology and Art History departments. Entitled “Ancient Monuments in Modern Landscapes,” the talk revolved around several European megaliths. Presented as products of ancient cultures efforts, the large stones can be understood to make several statements about the cultures of their designers.
It is very likely that the existence of such megaliths signify political organization and hierarchical social structures in the communities that oversaw their implementation. The reasoning behind this stance notes that the erection of massive stones circa 200ad unquestionably required great effort and coordination. Another manner of confidence considering the monuments pertains to their intentional implementation. Due to the massive size of individual stones and the scale of some arrangements’ extents, there are without doubt specific objectives for the initial placement of these monuments. Of course, the true purposes and original meanings that are nowadays imposed upon the monuments can only be speculative.
The result of an attempt to adopt the monument as an acceptable symbol within their landscape by a later culture, Wells referenced several images of modifications of megaliths, much like the one pictured below. In one image a church was built adjacent to a megalith. In another, a crucifix was simply set atop the erect stone. These efforts to incorporate ancient objects are perhaps of the less offensive variety. Having survived relatively undisturbed for centuries, archaeological remnants have been destroyed, sometimes disassembled, and, on occasional, relocated and reassembled to make way for modern development. Fortunately, preservation is gaining ground for the success stories of monuments that can keep their footing in the landscape, as in London’s Roman wall, where a plaque serves to familiarize an onlooker with the landmark. A key to successfully managing the inherited responsibility to protect such impressive constructions has been education. By creating a platform through which a monument can be understood, modern society can create relationships with the objects scattered about the landscape by foreign cultures.
One method of developing such an understanding is through the field of material culture studies, where the employment of objects as a tool for study is central to practice. A single object speaks as to how something was; a broader context is gained when one object is set next to another, similar in purpose or worth, employing comparison. The transformations of artifacts over time illustrate shifts, disclose histories, describe cultures, and reveal value. Objects worthy of study needn’t necessarily be intentionally designed. Describing the importance of singular objects, Dell Upton, an academic theorist of anthropology and architecture and one of several notable leaders in material culture studies, references James Deetz, the father of the field. In such, he calls for the inclusion of flakes, or accidentals - leftovers from what design sought to secure - as they are influential in how people “cope with the physical world, facilitate social intercourse, and benefit [the] state of mind (52).”
Extrapolating from an analysis underlies this theorist’s need to speak broadly about a society. Focusing upon the urban landscape, Upton asserts “to see the city as artifact, or to apply material culture methods to the city, would be to raise different opinions about the original makers (51).” It is “by probing the experience of the urban landscape [that] the landscape articulates the individual and the social …the self in its surroundings (52).” When an individual, like a monument of Peter Well’s focus, lies within a foreign landscape, an intriguing opportunity that appeals to a material analysis arises.
Addressing the complexity of portraying such identities, Arijit Sen, Assistant Professor of Architecture at UWM and an intellectual of the interwoven landscape of buildings and cultures, refers to creative dissonance. The term describes how a population creates meaningful representations of their culture, world making which involves the use of a transparent and cross-cultural symbology. While intentionally developed first-hand, inaccuracies do exist through translation and the separation of individuals from their initial cultural place. The difficulty of creating a composition of one’s own identity abroad opens a gap through which additional questions arise.
Delving into the works of folklorist Henry Glassie it becomes conceivable to find fault in material culture analysis. As “history begins in the will of the historian, …[it] ignores most people and events while selecting a tiny number of facts and arranging them artfully and truthfully in order to speak usefully about the human condition, [which] means that writing history is speaking myth (6).” The historian’s noble motivation is to develop a sound understanding of the past, which is essential to embracing difference. However, in the future, might our landscapes be detached from societal shifts rendering material culture studies irrelevant?
While Henry Glassie’s examination of architecture is less than a decade old, the stories of people, their places in the world, and the times in which they lived reveal seemingly antiquated societies (1999). In the American urban landscape, the degree to which modern cultures differ from such an existence as the histories he discusses is great. Certainly, rural landscapes and foreign districts, where neighbors look out for and take care of one another, like Ballymenone, a community he studies to great length, are plentiful. However, within the current urban backdrop a dominant force in the success of globalization differs greatly from such close-knit quarters. Hence, it is curious to question to the ability of material culture studies to remain a pertinent method of study well into the future. Might material culture studies be able to analyze with similar success drastically different spaces?
Glassie’s examination of vernacular architecture establishes that its root technologies are about proximity and connections throughout a society’s structure. “Access to materials and direct connections among suppliers, producers, and consumers who spontaneously shape landscape, social orders, and economic arrangements (239).” Doubtlessly, many small towns grew in such a manner while local and regional distinctions encouraged such an existence. However, the rise of industry and its widespread influence does not characteristically bypass localities. Instead, as Glassie describes, “industrial production employs imported materials and complex machinery. It depends on expansive political powers that maintain the costly infrastructure of transportation and communication.” The establishment of this new framework involved numerous new opportunities that granted one’s efforts to make a sufficient living an easier means. The small but strong configurations of the vernacular landscape met competition with the introduction of industry. Whereas in the former structure “wealth circulates in the vicinity,” the latter incorporates multiple economies over a broader landscape, “supporting through law the right of a small minority to amass great reserves of capital (239).” The global economy of the present is a growing force and smaller entities are finding competition difficult.
In contrast to the craftwork of the builders of Ballymenone in Glassie’s description of vernacular architecture, prefabrication in the building industry exemplifies the mass production that typifies today’s larger economies. Additionally, less local services are prevalent and chains develop a typology used to maintain a consistent image from place to place, refusing to feel foreign throughout the nation. In such, it is curious how the methodologies of material culture studies would address the construction and form of the American suburban landscape whereas an interstate drive leaves one city looking much like any other, locales having lost their distinct flavor. The pattern these buildings lay out certainly is representative of a society-wide shift, yet the alteration suggests an abyss between landscape and culture.
In direct contrast, urban immigrants have quite the opposite effect upon their surroundings. At one point in his interesting and broad study on the behavior of people, Edward Hall declares that enclaves have a duty as ethnic groups of American cities separate themselves from one another (174). Organizing in a dense fashion, immigrants develop a presentation of identity in a new place with existing spaces. The buildings they occupy see their facades altered and interiors shifted. New life revives what another culture has discarded. As history is “picked at, scraped down, patched up, and encrusted with new ornament (Glassie, 7),” so are these surrounding landscapes. The frugal efforts of newcomers aim to adapt to their surroundings occur while as individuals maintaining their cultural influences.
There is great significance in their frontage, the streetscape and public sphere. Ray Oldenburg names this essential space the “third place.” Founded to encourage community interaction, it was attended by choice, filling its occupied form through charm and character (24). It is a place of quality where one enjoyed the diverse company of a larger community. While Edward Hall declares that the experience of place makes people (181). Ultimately, to live in a tolerant world, affording significant and sensual experiences, strange things and discovery, design should be directed to embrace the public realm and the cacophonic, mysterious miscellany within. Observing the surroundings, listening to its people, participating in the activity can offer insight with which architects and planners can approach the challenge of global design wisely.
References:
Deetz, James. 1996. In Small Things forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. New
York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing.
Glassie, Henry. 1999. Material Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hall, Edward T. 1982. The Hidden Dimension. New York: Doubleday.
Oldenburg, Ray. 1989. The Great Good Place. New York: Paragon House.
Sen, Arijit. 2008. Creative Dissonance: The Politics of World Making. Unpublished
manuscript
Wells, Peter. March 1, 2009. Ancient Monuments in the Modern Landscape.
Archeological Institute of America-Milwaukee Society & UWM Departments of
Anthropology & Art History. Milwaukee.
Upton, Dell. “The City as Material Culture” in The Art & Mystery of Historical Archaeology:
Essays in honor of James Deetz. Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary C Beaudry (Editors), Boca Raton, Florida, 1992.
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