7 - Material Culture

Summary

It’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.

Thomas (1979) 30

Alexander the Great’s favorite sculptor, Lysippos, was a versatile craftsman: He created both the bronze portraits that Alexander so favored and a new form of ceramic vessel (either a drinking cup or a transport amphora) for King Kassandros (Athenaios 11.784c). Both of these seemingly disparate items fall within the catch-all category of material culture, succinctly defined by one authority as “that sector of our physical environment that we modify through culturally determined behavior.” This definition embraces both art and artifacts, but also much more: domestic breeds of plants and animals, the flattened skull that results from the use of the cradle board, even, Deetz has argued, the spoken word (the arrangement of air molecules by the oral cavity to produce culturally determined sounds). The role material culture played in the past and its consequence for present-day knowledge of the ancient world cannot be overestimated, even in the realm of the most intellectual of that world’s achievements. The stylus Aristotle used to write the Metaphysics, the papyrus or writing tablet on which he wrote, the chair or stool he sat on, and the table at which he sat were all pieces of material culture; and without yet more material culture - manuscripts copied and recopied through the ages - we would know nothing about it.