Handbook of Material Culture

Style, Design, and Function

Contributors: Christopher Tilley & Webb Keane & Susanne Kchler & Michael Rowlands
& Patricia Spyer
Print Pub. Date: 2006
Online Pub. Date: June 22, 2009
Print ISBN: 9781412900393
Online ISBN: 9781848607972
DOI: 10.4135/9781848607972
Print pages: 355-373
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination
of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 2 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
10.4135/9781848607972
[p. 355

]
Chapter 23: Style, Design, and Function
How can one address these three topics style, design and function in a single
chapter? Of course they are interrelated; perhaps one cannot really discuss one without
both of the others? How can there be style without a function? How can there be style
without design and design conventions? These three entangled concepts have been
core concepts, but with a variable history of use and centrality in our study of material
culture. They have been addressed in a multiplicity of ways, and have been both
responsive to and, less frequently, defining of many shifts in material culture theory and
interpretation over the past century or more. The primary players in the study and uses
of style and design have been art historians and, within anthropology, archaeologists.
Social and cultural anthropology has been less concerned with such concepts, if only
because their engagement with the material world of human life has been notably
erratic, coming to some fruition and promise primarily in the past few decades.
The main objective of this chapter is to provide historical perspectives on how
design and style have been used in the study of material culture, especially within an
anthropological and cultural framework. I will suggest that this history has been directly
influenced by shifting anthropological approaches to the study of both technology and
art. These trends have also directly impacted the place and understandings of the
function(s) of material culture. I will conclude with just a few of the social and cultural
insights that have been generated through the study of design and style, with particular
reference to recent studies of cloth.
Although there has been an impressive turn to the object world in the past two
decades, the social scientists who study material culture have primarily been
concerned with the relationships between people and things, more so than in the things
themselves. Thus, it is not surprising to see fewer studies of design and style than
might be expected with this new materiality. As the title of Sillitoe's (1988) article says
so succinctly, our concerns have shifted from [the] head-dress to head-messages,
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 3 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
and Ingold (2004) has expressed concern that we have often lost the material in
our studies of materiality. Additionally, recent studies have also been more focused
on how objects construct and express social identities without, however, simply
referring to these as the functions of the objects. This is primarily because the studies
have simultaneously been concerned with the social practices in which objects are
embedded, and, in a quite new direction, with the dynamics of recontextualization,
valuation and reinterpretation they (objects) undergo along their trajectories through
different cultural and historical contexts (Leite 2004). In a way, objects today are more
on the move and in circulation; they are not standing still long enough, perhaps,
for a more traditional (and often static?) stylistic analysis, functional interpretation
and/or capturing of principles of design. As Wobst says so succinctly in his important
reassessment of his own very influential work on style (Wobst 1977), style never quite
gets there, it never stays. It is always in contest, in motion, unresolved, discursive, in
process (Wobst 1999: 130).
While the trajectories of material culture and objects have been revealed and inferred
with new theoretical perspectives (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986; Thomas 1991;
Miller 1998; Spyer 1998; Phillips and Steiner 1999; [p. 356

] Myers 2001), there

has also been a theoretical trajectory of material culture studies themselves within
anthropology and related fields, including an important new kind of connection between
sociocultural anthropology/ethnography and archaeology (Brumfiel 2003). These
often mutual dialogues may perhaps best be seen in the approaches to the study of
technology (see Eglash in Chapter 21 or in Dobres and Hoffman 1999), and to the
study of art or image making. Intra- and interdisciplinary connections may also be
heightened by the current widespread recognition, and perhaps growing importance in
our globalized worlds, of the increased value and power of objects from the past or from
the other (e.g., Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Lowenthal 1985; Handler 1988; Price
1989), especially in the creation and support of national and other political identities
and negotiations. Although this chapter will dwell more on the anthropological trends,
concerns and accomplishments, it goes without saying that the re-engagement with
the object world has been strikingly but not surprisingly interdisciplinary; just note
the disciplines represented by the authors of articles in the Journal of Material Culture
(Leite 2004).
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 4 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
One reason to focus primarily on the anthropological approaches to material culture
and the object world is because anthropology has had an erratic history, an on-again/
off-again, often distancing relationship with things. This makes for a interesting inquiry
into why it was distanced and then re-engaged: what are the theoretical or disciplinary
influences or promoters of such re-engagement that might yield insights into the field of
material culture studies? There will also be a tendency toward the anthropological here
because anthropological inquiry distinctively balances (or tries to) two dimensions: on
the one hand, the local-level, small-scale studies using most often (in ethnography and
ethnoarchaeology) the participant observation method. On the other hand, anthropology
attempts a holism that prefers to not take separate slices of the cultural pie but to
understand the intersectionalities and situatedness of human life, behaviors and
meanings in an as-complete-as-possible social and cultural context (after Pfaffenberger
1988: 245), That is, the very multi-scalar nature of the anthropological enterprise allows
us to consider the material world and objects at multiple scales as well. And, as many
recent studies have shown, this is precisely one fascination and excitement of material
culture studies at the turn of the twenty first century.
Something of a Historical Overview
Of course, Franz Boas (1927, see also Jonaitis 1995) is usually the anthropological
baseline for the study of objects and primitive art, although contemporary material
culture studies today would go back to major theorists of culture (e.g., Marx, Veblen,
Simmel). Even though Boas's (1927) chapter 5 was on style, anthropologists usually
trace their roots in the study of style to Kroeber (e.g., 1919, 1957) and the art historical
roots to scholars such as Wlfflin (1932; see also Gombrich 1960; Saerlander 1983).
Lemonnier (1993b: 7) identified the 1930s as the period when there is a noticeable
decline in an interest in material culture; it was only in France, he points out, that an
institutionalized study of the anthropology of techniques took hold. Thus, the work
of Mauss (e.g., 1935) on techniques du corps as well as his more well known study
The Gift (1967/1925) may provide an important bridge between this time period and
what would become, by the 1980s, an increasingly robust field of technology studies
(e.g. Lemonnier 1986, 1993a; Pfaffenberger 1988, among many; see Eglash, Chapter
21 in this volume). Lemonnier notes (1986: 181 n. 3) that in one valiant attempt at
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 5 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
recuperating the anthropological study of material culture, Reynolds (1983) astutely
marvels justly at the immediate disinterest of ethnologists for the objects they confer on
museums as soon as they are deposited.
This is not to say, though, that within this so-called gap there was little being done; it's
just not of major focus in an anthropology of objects that is waiting backstage for certain
trends to pass on and for the curtain to be opened on to a more robust engagement
with the object world. First, archaeology does not really experience a gap, but this
is not surprising, given its dependence on material culture. However, despite the
momentum established with the rise of the so-called New (or processual) Archaeology
with its emphasis on understanding the nature and significance of variability in the
archaeological record (Binford 1962, 1965), and the studies that linked stylistic
attributes to social phenomena (e.g., Hill 1970, Longacre 1970 and chapters in Binford
and Binford 1968), the primary flurry of archaeological discussion and debate on style,
for example, came in the two decades between 1970 and 1990. In fact, if we look for
review or overview articles on the concepts, use, and study of style, for example, these
are primarily (only?) in archaeology (e.g., Plog 1983; Hegmon 1992; Conkey 1990;
Boast 1997; [p. 357

] Wobst 1999) and in art history (e.g. Schapiro 1953; Saerlander

1983; Davis 1990).
However, with some notable exceptions, archaeological studies of style, design,
function, material culture and technology can be said to share with other approaches
the general characteristic that they have tended to look primarily (and sometimes
only) at the effects of material culture systems (style, design, technology) on culture
or society or, more often, to look primarily for what/how/why humans communicate
with material culture and artifacts. That this has changed as a primary approach will
be considered below, and a notable early exception, at least in regard to technologies,
would be the pioneering work by Heather Lechtman (1977) that identifies and illustrates
the concept of technological style (see also Lechtman 1984; Dobres and Hoffman
1994; Stark 1999; Dobres 2000), that is, that the technologies, materials and making of
objects themselves have style.
In cultural anthropology, the development of structuralism (e.g., in Lvi-Strauss 1963)
brought forth a spate of material culture studies (e.g., Fernandez 1966; Munn 1966;
Faris 1972; Adams 1973), which linked objects and other dimensions of culture.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 6 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Semiotic approaches, broadly speaking, were also being developed (e.g., Forge 1966;
1970; Munn 1973) stressing how fundamental concepts could be visibly encoded
in artifacts, objects and art. In fact, there was a notably renewed interest in the
anthropology of art (e.g., edited volumes by Jopling 1971 and Otten 1971a). In each
of these volumes, for example, the editor has brought together articles primarily dating
to the 1950s and 1960s, suggesting that the so-called gap is one of quantity and
attention, not complete absence. Otten (1971b) suggests that the renewed engagement
with art was stimulated by the then current interests in the nature and evolution of
human communication and in the approach to culture as a human value system. A key
paper in 1969 that signaled an emergent engagement with an anthropologically more
productive approach to material culture would be that by Ucko on penis sheaths. His
concern was to unite the social and technological approaches to the study of material
culture such that a detailed examination of the material object would lead to information
about the non-material aspects of the producing culture (MacKenzie 1991: 23).
However, as will be discussed further below, the ways in which anthropologists now
view art and how to study it as a (problematic) category of the material world have
shifted since this 1970s reappearance on the anthropological stage (e.g., Sparshott
1997; Gell 1998; Townsend-Gault 1998; Graburn 2001). By the 1990s anthropological
studies of art (despite many differing definitions), nonetheless become more numerous
and informed by theoretical concerns such as gender and colonialism (Morphy 1991;
Thomas 1991) (Cannizzo 1996: 54). Of course, this is not the first appearance of a
theoretically informed approach, but the theoretical approaches now at hand are ones
that do more than look only at the effects of the objects and forms (whether they are
called art or not) on culture or society. This itself derives from a revival of interest
in material culture as exegesis and evidence (Cannizzo 1996: 54). With the wider
developments in the study of material culture, things and/or representations have
been shown to be crucial to the articulation of debates on gender, power relations,
colonialism, exchange, possession, consumption, tourism, perceptual knowledge, and
more (after Townsend-Gault 1998: 427).
Thus, while one would be hard-pressed to find, in the cultural anthropological
literature, many (or any?) overviews that summarize the state of approaches to and
understandings of the study of style and design, much less the relationships to function,
there is a burgeoning literature both on the anthropology of art and, even more so, on
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 7 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
the anthropology of material culture, which, perhaps like technology, has fortunately
become less likely to be taken as a given and lacking intrinsic value (as Pfaffenberger
suggests in 1988 for the anthropology of technology).
Above All, There is Style
Even a brief survey of the literature will confirm that the subject of style is the most
prominent of our three concepts to be treated on its own, with individual articles (e.g.,
Plog 1983; Hegmon 1992), especially in archaeology and art history, or as an important
subheading in a review article (e.g., in Silver 1979; Schneider 1987). Recall that
Kroeber considered Style to be important enough to warrant its own chapter in his
Anthropology Today volume (Schapiro 1953), even though the author is an art historian,
not an anthropologist. Although there are fine studies that focus on design (e.g., Schevill
1985; Washburn 1977), design and function are not likely to be individual headings
or topics to be covered in encyclopedias of anthropology or the social sciences. For
many, [p. 358

] style itself is methodologically taken as a set of design conventions

or formal attributes. There are no major volumes addressing the concept and theory
of design or function, but such do exist for style (e.g., Conkey and Hastorf 1990; Carr
and Nietzel 1995). Yet, most discussions of style almost inevitably engage with design
or aspects of it. So many studies of material culture are concerned with function(s),
even if the authors prefer a more complex understanding of the use(s), context(s)
and significance(s) of material objects or forms. Assessments of style are usually in
agreement that style is a central concept in any analyses of the material world; style is
involved in all archaeological analysis (Conkey and Hastorf 1990: 1).
Yet to take this foundational concept apart is a major historical and epistemological
endeavor. At one level, it is a self-evident concept (after Gadamer 1965: 466, cited
by Sauerlnder 1983: 253), but few seem to be able to agree on what it means. For
many studies up to the 1960s, style was taken as some sort of a key that made cultural
materials accessible to us, and in some sort of cultural ways. This was especially
the case in archaeological studies, as the understandings and delineations of style
were usually the foundation on which typologies and classifications were constructed.
And, until the 1960s, at least in Anglo-American archaeologies, classifications and
typologies, as well as their use in defining culture areas, were absolutely originary in
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 8 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
any understandings of culture and culture history. With interpretive goals more focused
on establishing chronologies and on tracing interactions, influences and pathways of
diffusion, style was a crucial component of any culture historian's repertoire.
This entire chapter could be taken up with the relatively recent history (post-1960s) of
the concepts and uses of style, especially as they have been the subject of definitional
debates and reworkings by archaeologists alone (e.g., Plog 1983; Hegmon 1992; Carr
and Nietzel 1995; Boast 1997; Conkey 1990; Wobst 1999). Perhaps this is because of
the archaeological dilemma or challenge in the study of the material world, given the
absence of informants and often, the absence of texts or other documents. Perhaps it is
because of greater dependence upon providing a plausible and compelling reading of
the material record. Or perhaps it is because archaeologists have long been concerned
with both epistemological and ontological premises and practices. It was not until the
1960s that archaeologists really began to push with style into an arena whereby
more social and cultural inferences were attempted and sought, using style and design.
The inferences of interest were now at a more refined scale than the general ebb and
flow of cultures. One might say that this was the time when style was seen as a key to
the social, and it was the social that was of particular interest.
These 1960s were the heady days of suggesting such things as how we could reveal
post-marital residence practices using distributional patterns of variation in ceramic
designs both within and between sites, assuming that mothers taught the designs to
their daughters. As is now well documented, many of these early ceramic sociology
projects (e.g., Deetz 1965; Hill 1970; Longacre 1970) had problematic assumptions
(e.g., Stanislawski 1969, 1973; Friedrich 1970). And, as Graves (1998) details so
well, there were numerous precursors in such design and stylistic analyses in the
US Southwest. Nonetheless, they set into motion core debates about what style
measures, what it reflects, or can be used for in archaeological interpretations, as well
as what the relationship between style and function was all about (e.g., Sackett 1982;
Dunnell 1978). Style, well into the 1980s, was often taken to be (in what we now see as
rather depersonalized and objectifying jargon) one aspect of coded information about
variability in the functioning of past cultural systems.
In his 1979 review of Ethnoart, Silver is one of the relatively rare cultural
anthropologists to address the topic of Style under its own heading (but see in Layton
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 9 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
1991: 15092, an entire chapter on Style in a text on the anthropology of art). Silver
noted the two problems of style for the social scientist, with its definition being one. But,
unlike for most archaeologists, the definition of style is not the problem he will address
explicitly. Rather, he prefers to wrestle with the problem of the relationship between art
styles and the civilizations that produce them (Silver 1979: 270). He recognizes style as
being operative at different levels, and refers the reader to Bascom's (1969) systematic
overview for types of style. Silver's own preference is to consider the general theoretical
approaches that would link style to its civilization: diffusion and evolution (e.g., Munro
1963); style, psyche and civilization (e.g., Bunzel 1927; Kroeber 1957); and the cross-
cultural approach (e.g., Fischer 1961; Barry 1957; Wolfe 1969). As is evidenced in other
cultural anthropological approaches to style (e.g., Schneider 1987), Silver comfortably
accepts and works with the intensive treatment of the concept of style put forth by art
historian [p. 359

] Schapiro (1953) in Kroeber's Anthropology Today. Layton's (1991:

150) introductory text also follows Schapiro. Other studies (e.g., Van Wyck 2003) never
define style or design but assume it.
In concluding his section on style, Silver anticipates what we see today were perhaps
the two major dimensions that characterize the concern with style in the 1970s and
1980s, no matter what the field or sub-field. First is the emergent recognition that,
while a style may be conveying considerable information about its producers and
their culture, there is not yet a firm differentiation between the audiences to whom
this information is being conveyed: to the other members of the cultural group under
consideration or to the anthropologists who are using the style to infer information
(see also the Sackett-Wiessner debate in Sackett 1985)? This query, as phrased
in the information theory jargon that Silver also anticipates, would be To whom is
the style signaling, and what is it signaling? (e.g., Sterner 1989). Thus, the second
dimension to the study of style at this time was the convergence of thinking about
style in anthropological contexts with the parallel developments in information theory
and linguistic metaphors for the interpretation of culture. In the 1970s and 1980s,
for example, it would have been hard to miss the idea that style in material culture
was transmitting information (for the classic expression of this, see Wobst 1977), an
approach that has not disappeared but only, perhaps, become more nuanced (e.g.,
Van Wyck 2003). Not surprisingly, more recent studies of material culture its styles,
designs and functions have challenged (or eschewed) the primacy of the linguistic
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 10 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
and language metaphors (e.g., artifact as text), and a somewhat bald communication
approach (e.g., McCracken 1988; Dietler and Herbich 1989; Conkey 1990: 1011;
MacKenzie 1991: 245; Gell 1998; Stahl 2002).
The Story of Style, Bringing along Design
and Function
It seems that there have been two recent trends in the study of style that followed
the foundational uses of style by culture historians. At first, there were those who
considered style explicitly and definitionally and who therefore set out specific concerns:
how to analyze style, where to locate style in specific objects or forms; what, in fact, is
stylistic variation (e.g., Plog 1983)? Are there different classifications or types of style
(e.g., Bascom 1969, Plog 1983)? Does style have any function or is style a primary way
to do certain cultural things, such as communicate, negotiate, or reinforce ethnicity or
identities? Can we use style to classify different so-called cultures and to chart them
through space and time?
The second trend has been either to not worry about any definitions of or specific
analytical methods for the study of style and just assume it, and go on to other
anthropological questions, or to reconceptualize style completely. Two innovative and
intriguing approaches here would be Wobst's (1999) notion of style as interventions,
or Wilk's (1995, 2004) concept of common difference. As well, some other theoretical
trends, such as the uses of practice theory, have implications for concepts, such as that
of traditions, which have long been rooted in concepts of style (e.g., Lightfoot 2001).
Let us first turn to one summary historical account, starting with the foundational culture
history approaches and then move to consider what's new?
As noted above, style became rooted in anthropological analyses with the culture
historical approaches of the 1930s to 1960s, approaches that have not really gone
away. To culture historians (e.g., Kreiger 1944) style was in the service of chronology
and the typologies that were developed to order the material world were explicitly time-
sensitive. For both art history and anthropology, stilus (style) and chronos (time)
would intersect (Sauerlnder 1983). Style was a self-evident concept upon which
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 11 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
historical understandings were based. Archaeologists, at least, still depend upon the
products of the culture-history approach and its concept and uses of style: the past,
and even other cultures ethnographically are often divided into spatial and temporal
units with labels and these, in turn, have allowed the construction of unquestioned
periodizations (e.g., the Mesolithic) that are based on and thus privilege certain tools,
technologies, styles of ceramics or of other materials.
The ethnographic study of things was somehow delegated or fell to the museological
world, which had similar concerns to diligently catalog material objects, with, perhaps,
an overemphasis on the form of the objects, with function or context infrequently of
consideration. With such approaches, there are elegant typologies and closely honed
studies of the formal relationships among the material objects themselves, but, in
general, the artefact becomes recontextualized as an object of scientific analysis
within a Western discourse, and its meaning is divorced from its origin as an [p. 360

] indigenous product (MacKenzie 1991: 23). Style has continued to be a specific

analytical tool but beyond just to locate social units and to chart them through time and
space or in order to organize objects in museums. Style was used to infer, measure or
inform on more specific social and cultural processes, such as social interaction (e.g.,
Friedrich 1970) and social exchange (see Plog 1978 for a review). In archaeology,
at least, the debates were more about what the given formal variation that is style
referred to or derived from.
There seem not to be many debates these days about how to measure style, where
to locate style, or the function(s) of style. On the one hand, some have suggested two
dismissive directions: Boast (1997) is ready to get rid of style; it is not a meaningful
analytical category in the hermeneutic account of social action that he outlines (Boast
1997: 189). Or, according to many (but not all) contributors to one edited volume
(Lorblanchet and Bahn 1993), we have moved into what they call the post-stylistic era,
at least in the study of rock art. This is attributed not so much to any new theoretical
frameworks, but to such things as more viable dating techniques, pigment studies,
and questions that go beyond establishing artistic chronologies based on mere stylistic
impressions (Lorblanchet 1990: 20). This is a reaction to the persistence of how stilus
and chronos have intersected; how chronologies have been all too unquestionably
based on assumed notions and identifications of style. Some studies explicitly refuse
to produce a chronological scheme based on changes in style, which had led previous
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 12 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
researchers away from careful study of the content of images or arts (e.g., Garlake
1995).
On the other hand, perhaps ironically, there is something of a return to some of the
more culture-historical understandings of style and variation in material culture, and a
less programmatic approach to the uses and concepts of style. First, the very general
idea of style as being a way of doing has reappeared (e.g., Wiessner 1990, but
contrast with Hodder 1990), if it ever really went away. This, however, is a notion that
is much more complex than a passive normativism that perhaps prevailed in traditional
culture-historical studies. Style is taken now as a way of doing but also as something
more than that; style is part of the means by which humans make sense of their world
and with which cultural meanings are always in production.
To a certain extent, these approaches, concerns, new labels and even dismissals
actually signal a continued engagement with style how could we ever not work with
aspects of variation in material culture that are produced in and constitutive of human
cultural and social life? These trends are a quiet way of rethinking style, and of framing
it within new theoretical approaches (e.g., practice theory, culture-as-production,
technological and operational choices, communities of practice), new methodological
possibilities (e.g., chronometric dating techniques), and richer and more nuanced
understandings of material culture, of humans as being simultaneously symbolists and
materialists, and of the social life of things (e.g., Appadurai 1986). But, once again,
there is no one comprehensive theory of style, nor a call for one; neither is there a
specific analytic tool kit that one can just pick up and apply to a set of things.
This is not, however, to abandon discussion and suggestions for how to use some
understandings about style in the study of material culture. Taking the extreme
approach of Boast (1997), for example, one could argue that he is not really dismissing
style completely, but, rather, critiquing that the past uses of the concept of style have
perpetuated the Cartesian boundaries between humans and objects, between the
active us from an inactive its (1997: 190; see also, he suggests, Latour 1992 and Akrich
1992). He is not alone in arguing for a different and more active or agential dimension
to objects, images and things (e.g., Gell 1998). He is also suggesting that a concept
of style is dependent upon a specific set of assumptions about how the social world
works with little conceptual use beyond a vernacular distinction between social forms
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 13 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
distinguished within a consumerist society (Boast 1997: 190, 191). Both concerns are
worth discussion; some of us can readily accept the first but perhaps not the second.
In any event, such ideas have found their way from Boast and from other authors into
contemporary debates and studies (e.g., for discussions and critique of Gell's agency
theory of art, see in Pinney and Thomas 2001 or Layton 2003).
So what's new? Here again, although the focus is on style, it is not really possible to
avoid inquiries into function and studies of design. First, there are several intriguing new
ways of conceptualizing style, and I mention only two here. In the long awaited update
from Wobst (1999) concerning his contemporary thoughts about style now that we are
some twenty-five years from his paradigm-setting paper of 1977, he embraces style
more ambitiously and enthusiastically: style is that aspect [p. 361

] of our material
world that talks and interferes in the social field (1999: 125); stylistic form on artifacts
interferes materially with humans (p. 120, emphasis his). Since his original view
stressed the communicative functions of style, style as messaging through especially
visible features, Wobst reports now on his mellowed functionalism (1999: 124). He
takes up Giddens's notion of enstructuration, which allows for contemporaneous
social actors to arrive at different optimal solutions (even in the same social context),
something that is very difficult to accommodate in many of the overly functionalist
paradigms (Wobst 1999: 125). He elaborates as to how even the most obvious
and apparent functional aspects of an object (such as the working edge of a tool)
are inseparably interwoven with social dynamics; after all, these functional features
themselves help constitute, constrain or alter the social field (1999: 126). Lastly,
his discussion on the deeply problematic implications of the effects of certain long-
standing methodological approaches to style, especially in archaeology, is particularly
provocative, although substantive consideration here is not possible. Wobst shows how
the predominant uses of style have promoted a focus on sameness (structuring data
into internally homogeneous types and the suppression of variance), and this has not
just reduced social variance in the human past, but serves certain social and political
agendas in the present (1999: 1279). After all, don't administrators of all sorts strive for
docile underlings who manifest similarities in template, action and symbols?
Another provocative approach is that by Rick Wilk (e.g., 1995, 2004) in which he seeks
to understand the processes whereby what is often called style comes into existence
and is worked out and appears to spread or, as we used to think, diffuse. Rather
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 14 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
than invoking style, Wilk coins the term of common difference, which is a code and
a set of practices that narrow difference into an agreed-upon system, whereby some
kinds of difference are cultivated and others are suppressed. An art style, especially a
widespread one (his 2004 example is the famous Olmec style in early Meso-America)
is really an arena within which differences can be expressed, yet many of these are
delimited, and a system of common difference is produced. And the really interesting
questions are the agential ones: who controls what the rules will be, and how are
these accepted and agreed to? His own ethnographic work (on beauty pageants in
Belize) suggests that there may be what appears as a resulting hegemony of form
but not necessarily of significances. What might appear as some sort of tradition or
even a cultural adoption may well be much more dynamic, and such a concept as
elucidated in the specifics (e.g. Wilk 2004) resonates with the rethinking of the very
concept of tradition (e.g., Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Pauketat 2001). Traditions,
styles and systems of common difference are being shown as diachronic phenomena,
as loci for political innovation and even resistance, as cultural productions through daily
practices (e.g., Brown 1998; Lightfoot 2001). As we recognize that globalization is just
a current variant of the long-standing circulation of objects within and through social
forms and social relations, we are increasingly drawn to more dynamic notions about
the mutability of things in recontextualization (Thomas 1989: 49).
Thus, things and styles are not the (essential) things they used to be. The pervasive
understandings of objects as being referable to some (usually single) essential
categories or phenomena has been quite successfully challenged, at least among
many scholars. It is difficult to sustain, for example, that all the Neolithic figurines of
females can be referred to some essentialized, transhistorical concept of fertility (e.g.,
Conkey and Tringham 1995; Goodison and Morris 1998), that Paleolithic cave art is all
referable to (hunting) magic, or that string bags (bilum) among the Telefol-speaking
people of the Mountain Ok (New Guinea) are merely women's (and therefore unvalued)
things (MacKenzie 1991). The long-standing tendency to view objects, through their
styles and forms, as absolutes of human experience has given way to the idea that
objects, forms, styles and functions are evolving, more mutable, and multivalent, without
essential properties. And while this has certainly made the interpretive task more
complicated and challenging, it nonetheless has simultaneously opened the door to new
and hopefully more enlightening perspectives. For example, rather than assuming that
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 15 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
many objects and forms cannot be explained because we cannot readily substantiate
empirically such things as symbol and meaning especially in archaeological contexts
it is now possible to use empirical work such as in technological processes (e.g.,
Lechtman 1984; Dietler and Herbich 1998; Stark 1999) or studies of pigments and
colors (e.g., Boser-Sarivaxvanis 1969) to reconceptualize objects, forms and images
as material practices and performances with linkages to social facts and cultural logics
(e.g., Ingold 1993, among many).
[p. 362

]
Recent Approaches to Technology and Art
that Have Influenced Understandings and
Uses of Style, Design and Function
As already suggested, trends in the study of our three characters style, design,
and function have been integrally enmeshed in, produced by and yet contributed to
shifts and concerns in the broader anthropological and cultural interests in the study of
technology, on the one hand (e.g., Lemonnier 1986, 1993a; Dobres and Hoffman 1999;
see Eglash, Chapter 21 in this volume) and art, on the other (e.g., Morphy 1994). In
some ways, the trends in the study of technology may have had more of an impact on
our three characters; perhaps this is due to the growth of social studies of science and
technology (e.g., Jasanoff et al. 1995). From Lechtman's (1977, 1984) important work
that argued for the place and power of technological practice and therefore of veritable
technological styles in the making and meanings of objects, to the engagement with
technology (sensu latu) as cultural productions, material culture has not been thought
of in quite the same way, and certainly no longer as just the forms or end products
of previously unspecified, often assumed or ignored practices and social relations of
production. For a concept of style in the manner of Schapiro (1953), with a focus on
forms, on form relationships, there was no immediate attention to an understanding of
the practices and social relations that brought such forms into existence. One illustrative
case study that might attest how far we have come in the integration of technologies,
productive practices and social contexts in the making of things and in the definition
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 16 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
of style would be the continuing work by Dietler and Herbich (e.g., 1989, 1998) on Luo
pottery making. Here, they remind us of not just the distinction between things and
techniques (cf. Mauss 1935), but of the two (often conflated) senses of style: style of
action and material style. From several decades of new approaches to understanding
technology (e.g., Lemonnier 1986, 1993a; Pfaffenberger 1988, 1992; Ingold 1993;
Dobres and Hoffman 1994; Dobres 1995, 2000), and from Bourdieu's (1977) concept
of habitus, Dietler and Herbich (1998) put together a compelling case study of a more
dynamic and deeply social understanding of what had previously often been a focus
on a static concept of style and a mechanistic set of assumptions about the uses of
style either to mark social boundaries or, on the part of the analyst, to infer them (see
also, e.g., Hegmon 1998, among others). In fact, to talk today about an understanding
of style cannot be separated from our understandings both of technology and of the
practices and production of social relations. And, as Dietler and Herbich discuss, these
approaches extend to the design conventions and decorations that so often stand for
style: An understanding of the social origins and significance of material culture will
not come from reading the decorations as text (see Lemonnier 1990). It requires a
dynamic, diachronic perspective founded upon an appreciation of the contexts of both
production and consumption (see Dietler and Herbich 1994) (Dietler and Herbich
1998: 244). Because of the intertwined reconsiderations of style and of technology,
neither will be understood in the same ways again.
Especially since the 1950s, anthropological approaches to art, especially in small-
scale societies, have focused on the mechanisms and nature of the messages
carried by art, drawing upon either psychological or linguistic (textual, semiotic,
communication) models, and following in the functionalist and structuralist modes of
anthropology (Graburn 2001: 765). Many of these were, of course, more synchronic,
ahistorical and normative, and the diachronic, temporal and historical potentials of
material culture were yet to be recognized, much less realized. With psychological
approaches, style might be conceptualized as aestheticized versions of social
fantasies (Graburn 2001: 765) that give security or pleasure, as in Fischer (1961), who
proposed that different (evolutionary) types of societies (egalitarian or hierarchical)
tended to produce designs that were material and visual correlates of their prevailing
social structure. However, it has been the linguistic approaches in art, as well as to
material culture more broadly, which have prevailed, including structuralist (inspired by
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 17 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Lvi-Strauss 1963: 24576); semiotic (e.g., Riggins 1994); and art-as-communication
(e.g. Forge 1970, Munn 1973 as early, if not somewhat precocious, examples).
Morphy (1994) identifies two primary influences that fostered the re-entry of art into the
anthropological mainstream. On the one hand, a more culturally oriented archaeology
was spawned, especially at Cambridge in the 1980s; many of today's most active
material culture researchers have had this kind of archaeological background. On the
other hand, but not, in fact, distinct from the so-called post-processual archaeologies,
was the expansion of an anthropology of meaning [p. 363

] and symbolism: content

was joined with form (Morphy 1994: 659).
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the turn to art and material culture has been the
conjuncture with what we might call colonial and postcolonial sensibilities, which have
promoted, first, the ah ha understandings that much of the material world observed by
anthropologists could not be considered in ahistorical, static or normative terms (e.g.,
Graburn 1999); the arts were already enmeshed in colonial projects and trajectories
when they were first encountered. (See especially Thomas 1991, who notes that his
own project on entangled objects was necessarily about recasting [these] issues
in historical terms and with respect to the cultural constitution of objects, 1991: xi.)
Beginning perhaps with the pioneering work of Graburn (1976) on ethnic and tourist
arts, one might say that the anthropology of material culture, and all that it entails,
including style, design and understandings of function, itself experienced a colonial
encounter: a more widespread recognition of the previously unconsidered contexts of
colonial domination. Not only has there been more attention to the historical depth and
sociocultural complexity of art production in colonial and postcolonial, often touristic,
contexts (e.g., Marcus and Myers 1995; Phillips and Steiner 1999), but fundamental
concepts such as the functions of objects, the maintenance of or changes in style,
and the cultural generation and deployment of designs, have had to be rethought.
Furthermore, any studies of style, function and design have benefited from these
deeper understandings of historically situated cultural practices, including observations
on the ways in which local styles, for example, are actively reworked for new markets,
global desires, and ever shifting political and cultural audiences and goals. Thus,
approaches such as Wobst's notions on style-as-interventions, or Wilk's interest in the
constructions of common difference, resonate with these new directions.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 18 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Certainly, Stahl's elegant (2002) critique of the prevailing (logocentric) linguistic and
meaning-based models for understanding material culture, and her emphases on
the practices of taste (after Bourdieu 1984), especially in understanding colonial
entanglements, attest that what initially may have stimulated renewed interest in the
anthropology of art and the object world namely, the engagement with meaning and
symbolism has now been challenged and soundly critiqued. From both archaeological
directions (e.g., Dietler and Herbich 1998) and those of a more historical anthropology
(e.g., Phillips and Steiner 1999; Stahl 2002) art, style, design and functions have been
reframed away from such a focus on finding the meaning(s). Even those still engaged
with a semiotic preference have advocated not the Sassurian semiological approaches,
but those of C.S. Peirce (e.g., Peirce 1955; Singer 1978; Parmentier 1997; Preucel and
Bauer 2001; Layton 2000, 2001: 329). What is heralded about such an approach is
the way in which it almost necessarily accounts for and directs inquiry into the multiple
meanings of a single artefact or sign (Preucel and Bauer 2001: 91). In an interpretive
world where inferring or understanding the possible functions and meanings of things
is now thoroughly more open-ended and multivalent, discussions are necessarily more
directed to the limits of interpretation (e.g., Eco 1990, 1992).
On Design
The debate and shifts in our understandings about style, the influences from technology
studies and the new approaches to the anthropology of art have all made their
mark on the study of design. The studies of designs and decorations on objects are
obviously integral to most ways in which style has been approached. There is often an
unconscious slippage from one to the other. Pye (1982) argues that anyone studying
material culture must understand the fundamentals of design; without design in
some form or another one cannot really make anything. This is to consider design
at the highest level; that is, how an object is conceived of and put together. In a
difficult and somewhat classic essay, Pye proposed six requirements for design. As
stated in the helpful editorial notes by Schlereth that precede Pye's essay, what Pye
wants to do is to distinguish design as philosophical concept from solely sociological
considerations. In particular, Pye challenges the presumedly uncomplicated and causal
relationship between design and function; design is not conditioned only by its function.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 19 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Furthermore, it's not clear there even is such a thing as the purely functional. How a
number of factors affect design are Pye's focus: use, ease, economy and appearance.
An early archaeological study of this type of design (McGuire and Schiffer 1983) wanted
to focus on design as a social process, while noting that the treatment of the design
process is usually subsumed by discussions of either style or function (1983: [p. 364

] 277303). McGuire and Schiffer are intentionally, as is Pye, considering design at a

higher level than those who study the designs incorporated into baskets, pots, masks
painted on to houses, and the like.
For these latter designs, there are classic studies of material objects of ethnography
and archaeology, such as Barrett's 1908 Ph.D. dissertation Pomo Indian
Basketry (republished 1996). Today this kind of work is hailed, including by
contemporary Pomo Indian basket makers, for its relative lack of theoretical overburden;
it is thoroughly a descriptive exposition on the designs of a certain set of Pomo baskets
(Smith-Ferri 1996: 20). To this day, there are comparably meticulous studies of design,
with lists of motifs, technologies and materials used, but most of them have a much
wider tale to tell, an account of how such designs and their making are embedded
in and constitutive of social relations (e.g., DeBoer's, e.g. 1990, excellent ethno-
archaeological work with Shipibo-Conibo designs; MacKenzie 1991 on string bags and
gender dynamics in central New Guinea; and Chiu 2003 on Lapita pottery designs and
house societies in Polynesia).
Among the more persistent approaches to design over the past several decades has
been the study of symmetry (Washburn 1977, 1983; Washburn and Crowe 1988, 2004),
which owes its heritage to structuralist approaches to material culture. Washburn began
trying to access underlying cultural concepts in archaeological contexts by developing
an analytical system based on universal principles of plane pattern symmetry (1977;
for another example, see Fritz 1978 or in Washburn 1983). This has continued in
collaboration with a mathematician as to how to undertake such analyses (Washburn
and Crowe 1988), leading to an edited volume with a wide variety of case studies
(Washburn and Crowe 2004). In his somewhat radical challenges to the anthropology
of art, the late Alfred Gell (e.g., 1998) accepts the idea of a universal aesthetic based
on patterned surfaces such as the symmetry analyses even if one of his primary
challenges is to aesthetics as the basis for a theory of art (contra Morphy 1994, Coote
1992, 1996, Price 1989; see Layton 2003). In fact, Gell can accept this because he
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 20 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
views relationships between the elements of decorative art [as] analogous to social
relationships constructed through exchange (Layton 2003: 450).
Although Gell is perhaps even more radical in his rejection of the view of art as a visual
code, as a matter of communication and meaning (after Thomas 1998: xi-xiii; see also
Layton 2003: 449), he does accept some studies of decorative art and design as being
of anthropological interest (e.g., Kaeppler 1978; Price and Price 1980; Hanson 1983).
Furthermore, decoration, to Gell, is often an essential aspect of what he terms the
technology of enchantment; it is the decorations on objects and their designs that can
weave a spell (see also Gell 1992; Layton 2003: 450)!
As already noted, one can properly credit the emergence of structuralism with a
powerful rejuvenating effect upon material culture studies, including such approaches
to design as symmetry analysis. In fact, linguistic approaches to design have been
paramount since the early 1960s, at least. Munn's classic (1973) work on the design
elements of Walpiri art suggests in this case that the designs are, in fact, parasitic on
the language for the telling of the sand drawing stories. Other early approaches to
design include Bloch's (1974) ideas that designs and their organizational principles
(such as repetition, symmetries, fixed sequences, delimited elements) may be some of
the formal mechanisms whereby cultural authorities may be empowered and might be
enabled to control ritual, rhetoric and the arts, and may enact power over those who are
enculturated to the patterns (after Graburn 2001). Another early and important use of
the linguistic models was the work of Friedrich (1970), who viewed design generation
and design sharing as part of interaction communities and how design makers (in this
case, ethnographically produced designs on ceramics) did or did not participate in
learning communities that themselves were specified sets of social relations. This kind
of work anticipates one of the current very useful approaches based on the concepts of
communities of practice (after Lave and Wenger 1991).
Yet such structuralist, linguistic, communication and correlative approaches have been
set to one side with the lure of context, the destabilization of the so-called concept
of culture (e.g., Fabian 1998: xii), and an engagement with history in a world of
transnationalisms and globalized commodities where material objects are not, and have
not been, just caught up in an ever shifting world but are actually creating, constituting,
materializing and mobilizing history, contacts and entanglements.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 21 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
One of the more interesting approaches to design in these contemporary circumstances
within which material culture studies are situated is that by Attfield (1999, 2000),
who comes to a material culture approach (as she calls it) from the perspective of
professional designer herself, an approach that for her avoids the duality between art
and design and makes central [p. 365

] such issues as materiality and experience

(Attfield 2000: xii). Attfield is particularly interested in the issues of identity and even
individuality within a cultural context, even if these are not the usual domains of concern
for the study of design. With an approach that is specifically focused on understanding
design as an aspect of the material world as a social place, where we have as much
to learn from rubbish and discarded things as from things of value, Attfield's book is
explicitly and celebratorily interdisciplinary, bridging the views from the history of design
and material culture studies. Her introduction provides a most useful understanding
of design history and, by the end of Chapter 3 design has come to life. By placing the
understanding of design in the contexts of time, space and the body, Attfield opens up
the study of design to dimensions not often considered over the years of anthropological
and archaeological studies of design.
On Function
Some of what there is to say about function is mentioned above, and yet this is a
grand topic in any aspect of the social sciences and in the study of the material world.
This is notably so due to the importance of functionalism as an approach for many
decades (e.g., Eisenstadt 1990). If one goes looking for function as a topic, there
are instead plenty of references to functionalism. On one hand, the study of art
and the material world was not very central to mainstream developments (such as
structural functionalism) in anthropological theory until the 1990s, and, on the other
hand, there's very little material culture in classic functionalist social anthropology (but
see, e.g., Firth 1936). As well, most anthropological definitions of art have to do with
the aesthetic, rather than sacred or functional qualities (Graburn 2001). Yet much work
was concerned with how art styles, designs and forms function, particularly how they
function to maintain the social (e.g., Sieber 1962; Biebuyck 1973).
In the debate over the function(s) of style, style came to take on communication as one
of its functions. And style became more substantive than just a residual dimension
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 22 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
of material culture that was left over once we had identified what was functional about
an object or class of objects (e.g., Wobst 1977; Sackett 1982, contra Dunnell 1978).
Although early attempts at using style in this way often produced quite functionalist
interpretations where style was assumed to be adaptive or functioned to maintain
cultural equilibrium, further analyses have suggested how, in some cases, a materialist
view on style in societies as a means for political manipulation, for example can be
put to work (e.g., Earle 1990). A great deal of ethnographic work with art took this turn
(see in Anderson 1989: 2952): art and objects as a means for social control, art and
objects as homeostasis, objects and the social order, objects as forms of legitimation,
objects as symbols of power.
Nonetheless, there persisted a view that the object/artifact is almost autonomous and
that stylistic analysis was primarily about the analysis of patterns of material culture,
patterns often floating free of anything other than a generalized notion of function. It
was a view like this that accentuated some of the gaps between archaeology (often with
its head in the stylistic sand) and sociocultural anthropology and ethnography (often
completely unaware of the material world).
MacKenzie, in her brilliant study of string bags and gender in New Guinea (1991), notes
that when anthropologists approached the study of artifacts from the perspective of
their social functions in exchange systems, they often focused not so much, if at all,
on the things that are exchanged, but on the social context of the transactions. Their
emphasis on function, context and relations was at the expense of any consideration of
the objects themselves (see, e.g., in Sieber 1962).
In contrast, archaeologists were perhaps over-dependent upon the objects and their
inferred functions in overly generalized cultural or processual terms (exchange,
interaction, political manipulation) at the expense of objects-in-social-action. Given a
predilection for categories and types, archaeologists have generated types of function.
For example, Binford (1962) suggested ideotechnic or sociotechnic objects and their
implied functions (in a systems view of culture). Schiffer (1992) is even more specific
with his categories of technofunction, sociofunction and ideofunction. For the more
philosophically inclined, Preston (2000) brings in the philosophical studies of function
in relation to how materiality matters, with particular reference to archaeology She
weds two different philosophical conceptions of function: Millikan's (1993) theory of
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 23 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
proper function and Cummins's (1975) conception of system function that are not rival
conceptions but instead complementary ones; both are required for an understanding
of function in material culture (Preston 2000: 46). Proper function, she reports, is
function as a [p. 366

] normative phenomenon as a matter of what artifacts are

supposed to do. Whereas system function is function as a matter of what artifacts in fact
do in the way of useful performance.
As recently as 1994, Morphy suggests that the most productive initial approach to
the explanation of form is through function (1994: 662), hoping to wed content with
form (p. 659). But two divergent approaches can perhaps best sum up attitudes today
towards function. On the one hand, there is the pervasive critique by Gell (1998), who
bases his attitudes towards function through the lens of his primary objection, that is,
to aesthetics as a foundation for a theory of art. Thus, because art is not always about
aesthetics, the function of art is not to express a culturally specific aesthetic system.
The anthropology of art and of objects should be interested, then, in how aesthetic
principles are mobilized in social action. In fact, Gell's theory, as one rooted in social
relationships and on the social (rather than on culture; Gell 1998: 7), provides an
important (albeit often conceptually challenging) new approach to the social that, as
Layton writes (2003: 448), differs from structural functionalism in important ways (see
also Thomas 1998).
On the other hand, the reframing of the social is also heralded in the view articulated
by MacKenzie (1991: 27): the value of an object and even its function(s) are not
inherent in the object but are multivalent and variously realized. It is objects
themselves that give value to social relations, yet the social values of objects are
culturally constructed. Function, then, like style and design, is integrally caught up in
expanded views on the ways that objects are linked to concepts of the world through
cultural praxis (Morphy 1994: 664), and not just through but as social action.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 24 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Something of a Summary: The Study of
Cloth
In this section, I want to point to two primary features of current studies of the style,
design and function of material culture: the centrality now of attending to issues
of choices, and the destabilization of the communication functions and language
metaphors. Embedded in the recent trajectory of material culture studies have been
new approaches to and debates about the anthropology of cloth, where both of these
features can be seen clearly. In the key volume that took up the social life of things,
edited by Appadurai (1986), three (of eight) chapters on specific materials focus on
cloth. The study, analysis and interpretation of cloth have been a bridge between
anthropology, art history and semioticians (Schevill 1992: 38), and the literature on cloth
is enormous and instructive (e.g., Cordwell and Schwarz 1979; Tedlock and Tedlock
1985; Schneider 1987; McCracken 1987, 1988: 62 f.f; Weiner and Schneider 1989;
Hendrickson 1993; Renne 1995; Eicher 2001). Additionally, the metaphors of textiles,
and especially of weaving, are common in the study of material culture (e.g., Jarman
1997; Ingold 2000).
This multitude of publications on cloth since the mid-1980s conveys the shifts in how
dimensions like style and design, even function, are conceptualized, especially as
more nuanced and complex phenomena. Style cannot be read in some of the more
essentialized ways. Rather than a focus on the identification or characterization of a
style, it is the dynamics of style or the mutability of style as embedded in contexts of
social life and social relations that has captured the attention of and been elaborated by
most cloth researchers. In what can be characterized as a key article, Schneider and
Weiner (1986) make the point that while cloth is an economic commodity, it is also
and often just as much a critical object in social exchange, an objectification of ritual
intent, and an instrument of political power (1986: 178). It is simultaneously a medium
for the study of style, technology, function and design! In a subsequent review article,
Schneider (1987) explicitly takes on what she calls the dynamic of style, drawing for
her baseline concept on that put forth by Schapiro (1953). Those concepts of style
as a homogeneous and uncontested expression of a discrete culture's world view, or
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 25 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
as propelled by its own logic, obscure the ways in which such materials as cloth are
relevant to the enactment of power through time. Schneider is particularly concerned
(1987: 4204) with the aesthetic options in cloth production; options that are tied in, to
be sure, with designs and technological style (loom types, fiber types, etc.). What are
the aesthetic choices that shape historical cloth styles?
This issue of options or choices is perhaps the key aspect in the contemporary
approaches to style, design, and function. Although long recognized as one way to think
about style (e.g., Sackett's isochrestism 1977, 1982), it is now the particular conjuncture
of, on the one hand, a concern with choices all along the trajectory of material culture
from materials, aesthetics, technologies, production and consumption with, on the
other hand, a concern for cultural [p. 367

] praxis, habitus and the dynamics of taste

that best characterizes current approaches to style, design and function. A starter
reading list here would include Schneider (1987), Lemonnier (1993b), Dietler and
Herbich (1989, 1998) and Stahl (2002), and the references therein.
The second feature of present approaches to our three characters of style, design
and function would be the critique and alternatives to the communication models
and the linguistic metaphors. The issue of using clothing as a metaphor for language
(or vice versa) has both its supporters and its critics, but all might agree by now that
a communication system cannot work without contextual knowledge. Schevill, for
example (1987, 1992), is motivated to rehabilitate the approach to cloth and clothing
as a communication system as an expressive system (1992: 9). But material culture
theorists, such as McCracken, would disagree (1987; see his chapter Clothing as
language in McCracken 1988), even if a rehabilitation of this concept is one of his
options. He argues that we need to jettison the metaphor (clothing as language, as
communication), which has been so over-used (and putatively without any depth
or critical assessment) that it is, to McCracken, a dead metaphor and a fixity of
conventional wisdom (1988: 62).
In the study of cloth and clothing, we can see how an approach to one kind of material
culture embodies many of the issues being discussed and debated in regard to other
kinds of material culture. The point that McCracken insists on is one reaction to a
somewhat simplistic view of X as communication, especially as understood through
its style and design. The McCracken view holds that it is precisely because material
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 26 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
culture, in its styles, designs and even functions, is more limited than language in
its expressive possibilities that it instead holds power; it is inconspicuous, has the
potential to convey in more subtle ways, and allows a certain ambiguity that can be
mobilized situationally and even more efficiently than language.
The domain of style, design and function is today more mutable, and ripe with more
choices for us to make in how we study and understand it. There is no single new
paradigm and, if anything, our understandings are necessarily more nuanced, complex
and situational. History has made a strong appearance, and our key concepts have
been complicated. Style can no longer be equated with decoration; choices in the
technologies of production must be attended to. Material culture does much more than
communicate, and the agency of both people and the objects that are used to intervene
into everyday practices, identities and social worlds is now in focus.
Margaret W. Conkey
References
Adams M.-J. #Structural aspects of a village Art# American Anthropologist vol. 75
(1973) pp. 26579 http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.1973.75.1.02a00160
Akrich, M. (1992) #The description of technical objects# , in W. Bijker, ed. and J.
Law, eds, Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change .
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. pp. 20524.
Anderson, R. (1979) Art in Primitive Societies . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Anderson, R. (1989) Art in Small-scale Societies . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Appadurai, A., ed. (1986) The Social Life of Things . Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Attfield J. #Beyond the pale: reviewing the relationship between material culture and
design history# Journal of Design History vol. 12 no. (4) (1999) pp. 37380 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1093/jdh/12.4.373
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 27 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Attfield, J. (2000) Wild Things: the Material Culture of Everyday Life . Oxford and New
York: Berg.
Barrett, S.A. (1908/1996) Pomo Indian Basketry . Berkeley, CA: Hearst Museum of
Anthropology.
Barry H. III #Relationships between child training and the pictorial arts# Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology vol. 54 (1957) pp. 803
Bascom, W. (1969) #Creativity and style in African art# , in D. Beibuyk (ed.), Tradition
and Creativity in Tribal Art . Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, pp. pp. 98
119.
Biebuyck, D. (1973) The Lega: Art, Initiation and Moral Philosophy . Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Binford L. #Archaeology as anthropology# American Antiquity vol. 28 no. (2) (1962) pp.
21725 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/278380
Binford L. #Archaeological systematics and the study of culture process# American
Antiquity vol. 31 (1965) pp. 20310 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2693985
Binford, S., ed. and Binford, L., eds (1968) New Perspectives in Archaeology . Chicago:
Aldine.
Bloch M. #Symbols, song, dance, and features of articulation: is religion an extreme
form of traditional authority?# European Journal of Sociology vol. 15 (1974) pp. 5598
Boas, F. (1927) Primitive Art . New York: Dover.
Boast R. #A small company of actors: a critique of style# Journal of Material Culture vol.
2 (1997) pp. 17398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/135918359700200202
Boser-Sarivax#vanis, R. (1969) Aper#us sur la teinture# l'indigo en Afrique occidentale .
Basel: Naturforschen- den Gesellschaft.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 28 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice . Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste .
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, S.C. (1998) Native Visions: Evolution in Northwest Coast Art from the
Eighteenth through to the Twentieth Century . Seattle, WA: University of Washington
Press.
Brumfiel E. #It's a material world: history, artifacts, and anthropology# Annual
Review of Anthropology vol. 32 (2003) pp. 20523 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/
annurev.anthro.32.061002.093335
Bunzel, R. (1927) The Pueblo Potter: a Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art .
New York: Columbia University Press.
Cannizzo, J. (1996) #Art# , in A. Barnard, ed. and J. Spencer (eds), Encyclopedia of
Social and Cultural Anthropology . London and New York: Routledge, p. pp. 54.
Carr, C., ed. and Nietzel, J.E. eds (1995) Style, Society, and Person . New York and
London: Plenum Press.
Chiu, S. (2003) #The Socio-economic Functions of Lapita Ceramic Production
and Exchange: a Case Study from Site WKO013A, Kone, New Caledonia# . Ph.D.
dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Berkeley, CA: University of California.
Conkey, M.W. (1990) #Experimenting with style in archaeology: some historical and
theoretical issues# , in M.W. Conkey, ed. and C.A. Hastorf (eds), The Uses of Style in
Archaeology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. pp. 517.
Conkey, M.W., ed. and Hastorf, C.A. eds (1990) The Uses of Style in Archaeology .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 29 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Conkey, M.W. Tringham, R.E. (1995) #Archaeology and the goddess: exploring the
contours of feminist archaeology# , in D. Stanton, ed. and A. Stewart (eds), Feminisms
in the Academy . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. pp. 199247.
Coote, J. (1992) #Marvels of everyday vision: the anthropology of aesthetics and the
cattle-keeping Nilotes# , in J. Coote, ed. and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art, and
Aesthetics . Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. pp. 24575.
Coote, J. (1996) #Aesthetics is a cross-cultural category: for the motion# , in T. Ingold
(ed.), Key Debates in Anthropology . London and New York: Routledge, pp. pp. 26675.
Cordwell, J., ed. and Schwarz, R.A., eds (1979) The Fabrics of Culture:
the Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment . The Hague: Mouton. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111631523
Cummins R. #Functional explanation# Journal of Philosophy vol. 72 (1975) pp. 74164
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2024640
Davis, W. (1990) #Style and history in Art History# , in M.W. Conkey, ed. and C.A.
Hastorf (eds), The Uses of Style in Archaeology . Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. pp. 1831.
DeBoer, W. (1990) #Interaction, imitation, and communication as expressed in style: the
Ucayali experience# , in M.W. Conkey, ed. and C.A. Hastorf (eds), The Uses of Style in
Archaeology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. pp. 82103.
Deetz, J. (1965) The Dynamics of Stylistic Change in Arikara Ceramics . Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press.
Dietler M. Herbich I. #Tich Matek: the technology of Luo pottery production and the
definition of ceramic style# World Archaeology vol. 21 (1989) pp. 14864 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1989.9980096
Dietler, M. Herbich, I. (1994) #Ceramics and ethnic identity: ethnoarchaeological
observations on the distribution of pottery styles and the relationship between the social
contexts of production and consumption# , in D. Binder, ed. and F. Audouze (eds),
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 30 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Terre cuite en soci#t# : la c#ramique, document technique, economique, culturel. XIVe
rencontre internationale d'arch#ologie et histoire d'Antibes . Juan-les-Pins: APDCA, pp.
pp. 45972.
Dietler, M. Herbich, I. (1998). #Habitus, techniques, style: an integrated approach to
the social understanding of material culture and boundaries# , in M. Stark (ed.), The
Archaeology of Social Boundaries . Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp.
pp. 23263.
Dobres M.-A. #Gender and prehistoric technology: on the social agency of
technical strategies# World Archaeology vol. 27 no. (1) (1995) pp. 2549 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1995.9980291
Dobres, M.-A. (2000) Technology and Social Agency . Oxford: Blackwell.
Dobres M.-A. Hoffman C. #Social agency and the dynamics of prehistoric technology
# Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory vol. 1 no. (3) (1994) pp. 21158 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02231876
Dobres, M.-A., ed. and Hoffman, C., eds (1999) The Social Dynamics of Technology:
Practice, Politics and World View . Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Dunnell R. #Style and function: a fundamental dichotomy# American Antiquity vol. 43
(1978) pp. 192202 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/279244
Earle, T. (1990) #Style and iconography as legitimation in complex chiefdoms# ,
in M.W. Conkey, ed. and C.A. Hastorf (eds), The Uses of Style in Archaeology .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. pp. 7381.
Eco, U. (1990) Limits of Interpretation . Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Eco, U. (1992) Interpretation and Overinterpretation . Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511627408
Eicher J. #The cultural significance of dress and textiles# Reviews in Anthropology vol.
30 no. (4) (2001) pp. 30924 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00988157.2001.9978289
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 31 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Eisenstadt S.N. #Functional analaysis in anthropology and sociology: an
interpretive essay# Annual Review of Anthropology vol. 19 (1990) pp. 24360 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.001331
Fabian, J. (1998) Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture .
Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
Faris, J.C. (1972) Nuba Personal Art . London: Duckworth.
Fernandez J.W. #Principles of opposition and vitality in Fang aesthetics# Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism vol. 25 no. (1) (1966) pp. 5364
Firth, R. (1936) We, the Tikopia: a Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia .
London: Allen 8 Unwin.
Fischer J. #Art styles as cultural cognitive maps# American Anthropologist vol. 63
(1961) pp. 7993 http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.1961.63.1.02a00050
Forge, A. (1966) #Art and environment in the Sepik# , Proceedings of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1965 . London: RAI, pp. pp. 23
31.
Forge, A. (1970) #Learning to see in New Guinea# , in P. Mayer (ed.), Socialization: the
Approach from Social Anthropology . London: Tavistock, pp. pp. 26991.
Friedrich M.H. #Design structure and social interaction: archaeological implications
of an ethnographic analysis# American Antiquity vol. 35 (1970) pp. 33243 http://
dx.doi.org/10.2307/278343
Fritz, J.M. (1978) #Paleopsychology today: ideational systems and human adaptation# ,
in C. Redman, ed. , M.J. Berman, ed. , E.V. Curtin, Jr., ed. W.T. Langhorne, ed. , N.M.
Versaggi, ed. and J.C. Wanser (eds), Social Archaeology . New York: Academic Press,
pp. pp. 3760.
Gadamer, H.-G, ed. (1965) Warheit #nd Methode. 2nd edn . T#bingen: Mohr.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 32 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Garlake, P. (1995) The Hunter's Vision: the Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe . Seattle, WA:
University of Washington Press and London: British Museum.
Gell, A. (1992) #The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology# ,
in J. Coote, ed. and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art, Aesthetics . Oxford: Clarendon
Press, pp. pp. 4067.
Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
George, K.M., ed. (1999) Objects on the Loose: Ethnographic Encounters with Unruly
Artefacts , a special issue of Ethnos, 64 (2).
Gombrich, E. (1960) Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial
Representation . New York: Pantheon Books.
Goodison, L., ed. and Morris, C. eds (1998) Ancient Goddesses: the Myths and the
Evidence . London: British Museum Press.
Graburn, N., ed. (1976) Ethnic and Tourist Arts . Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Graburn, N. (1999) #Epilogue: ethnic and tourist arts revisited# , in R.B. Phillips, ed. and
C.B. Steiner (eds), Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Post-colonial
Worlds . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. pp. 33553.
Graburn, N. (2001) #Art: anthropological aspects# , in N.J. Smelser, ed. and P.B. Baltes
(eds), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences II . Oxford:
Elsevier, pp. pp. 76468. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/00801-9
Graves M. #The history of method and theory in the study of prehistoric Puebloan
pottery style in the American southwest# Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
vol. 5 no. (4) (1998) pp. 30943 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02428420
Handler, R. (1988) Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec . Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 33 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Hanson, F.A. (1983) #When the map is the territory: art in Maori culture# , in D.K.
Washburn (ed.), Structure and Cognition in Art . Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. pp. 7489.
Hegmon M. #Archaeological research on style# Annual Review of Anthropology vol. 21
(1992) pp. 51736 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002505
Hegmon, M. (1998) #Technology style and social practices: archaeological approaches
# , in M. Stark (ed.), The Archaeology of Social Boundaries . Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. pp. 26479.
Hendrickson, C. (1993) Weaving Identities: Construction of Dress and Self in a Highland
Guatemala Town . Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Hill, J. (1970) Broken K Pueblo: Prehistoric Social Organization in the American
Southwest . Anthropological Papers 18. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Hobsbawm, E., ed. and Ranger, T., eds (1983) Inventing Tradition . Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hodder, I. (1990) #Style as historical quality# , in M.W. Conkey, ed. and C.A. Hastorf
(eds), The Uses of Style in Archaeology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.
pp. 4451.
Ingold, T. (1993) #The reindeerman's lasso# , in P. Lemonnier (ed.), Technological
Choices: Transformations in Material Culture since the Neolithic . London and New
York: Routledge, pp. pp. 10825.
Ingold, T. (2000) #Making culture and weaving the world# , in P.M. Graves-Brown (ed.),
Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture . London and New York: Routledge, pp. pp. 5
71.
Ingold, T. (2004) #Materials Against Materiality# . Paper presented at the Theoretical
Archaeology Group annual meetings, Glasgow, December.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 34 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Jarman, N. (1997) #Material of culture, fabric of identity# , in D. Miller (ed.), Material
Cultures: Why Some Things Matter . London: UCL Press, pp. pp. 12145.
Jasanoff, S., ed. , Markle, G.E., ed. , Petersen, J.C., ed. and Pinch, T., eds (1995)
Handbook of Science and Technology Studies . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. http://
dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412990127
Jonaitis, A. (1995) A Wealth of Thought: Franz Boas on Native American Art . Seattle,
WA: University of Washington Press.
Jopling, C., ed. (1971) Art and Aesthetics in Primitive Societies . New York: Dutton.
Kaeppler, A.L. (1978) Artificial Curiosities: Being an Exposition of Native Manufactures
collected on the Three Pacific Journeys of Captain James Cook at the Bernice Puahi
Bishop Museum . Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum Press.
Kopytoff, I. (1986) #The cultural biography of things: commodization as a process# , in
A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. pp. 6491.
Kreiger A. #The typological concept# American Antiquity vol. 9 (1944) pp. 27188 http://
dx.doi.org/10.2307/275785
Kroeber A. #On the principle of order in civilization as exemplified by changes of fashion
# American Anthropologist vol. 21 no. (3) (1919) pp. 23563 http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/
aa.1919.21.3.02a00010
Kroeber, A. (1957) Styles and Civilizations . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Latour, B. (1992) #Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane
artifacts# , in W.E. Bijker, ed. and J. Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society:
Studies in Sociotechnical Change . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. pp. 22558.
Lave, J. Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Limited Peripheral Participation .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 35 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Layton, R. (1991) The Anthropology of Art, 2nd edn . Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Layton R. #Intersubjectivity and understanding rock art# Australian Archaeologist vol.
51 (2000) pp. 4853
Layton R. ##Things that signify and things that work#: recent studies in material
culture# Reviews in Anthropology vol. 30 no. (4) (2001) pp. 32542 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1080/00988157.2001.9978290
Layton R. #Art and agency: a reassessment# Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute (n.s.) vol. 9 (2003) pp. 44764 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00158
Lechtman, H. (1977) #Style in technology: some early thoughts# , in H. Lechtman,
ed. and R. Merrill (eds), Material Culture: Styles, Organization, and Dynamics of
Technology . St Paul, MN: American Ethnological Society, pp. pp. 320.
Lechtman H. #Andean value systems and the development of prehistoric
metallurgy# Technology and Culture vol. 25 no. (1) (1984) pp. 136 http://
dx.doi.org/10.2307/3104667
Lechtman, H., ed. and Merrill, R., eds (1977) Material Culture: Styles, Organization, and
Dynamics of Technology . St Paul, MN: American Ethnological Society.
Leite, N. (2004) #Material Culture: Objects, Trajectories, Value: A Course Proposal# .
Berkeley, CA: Department of Anthropology, University of California.
Lemonnier P. #The study of material culture today: towards an anthropology of technical
systems# Journal of Anthropological Archaeology vol. 5 (1986) pp. 14786 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165%2886%2990012-7
Lemonnier P. #Topsy-turvy techniques: remarks on the social representation of
techniques# Archaeological Review from Cambridge vol. 9 no. (1) (1990) pp. 2737
Lemonnier, P., ed. (1993a) Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Cultures
since the Neolithic . London and New York: Routledge.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 36 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Lemonnier, P. (1993b) Introduction , in P. Lemonnier (ed.), Technological Choices:
Transformation in Material Cultures since the Neolithic . London and New York:
Routledge, pp. pp. 135.
L#vi-Strauss, C. (1963) Structural Anthropology . New York: Basic Books.
Lightfoot, K. (2001) #Traditions as cultural production: implications for contemporary
archaeological research# , in T. Pauketat (ed.), The Archaeology of Traditions: Agency
and History before and after Columbus . Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, pp.
pp. 23752.
Longacre, W. (1970) Archaeology as Anthropology: a Case Study . Tucson, AZ,
Anthropological Papers 17. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Lorblanchet M. #The archaeological significance of palaeolithic pigments in the quercy,
France# Rock Art Research vol. 7 no. (1) (1990) pp. 1920
Lorblanchet, M., ed. and Bahn, P., eds (1993) Rock Art Studies: the Post-stylistic Era,
or, Where do we go from Here? Oxbow Monograph 35. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Lowenthal, D. (1985) The Past is a Foreign Country . Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press.
MacKenzie, M. (1991) Androgynous Objects: String Bags and Gender in Central New
Guinea . Chur: Harwood Academic.
Marcus, G., ed. and Myers, F., eds (1995) The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and
Anthropology . Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
McCracken, G. (1987) #Clothing as language: an object lesson in the study of the
expressive properties of material culture# , in B. Reynolds, ed. and M.A. Stott (eds),
Material Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to Material Culture . Lanham, MD,
New York and London: University Press of America, pp. pp. 10328.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 37 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
McCracken, G. (1988) Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic
Character of Consumer Goods and Activities . Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
McGuire R. Schiffer M.B. #Theory of architectural design# Journal
of Anthropological Archaeology vol. 2 (1983) pp. 277303 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165%2883%2990002-8
Mauss M. #Les techniques du corps# Journal de Psychologie vol. 32 (1935) pp. 27193
Mauss, M. (1967/1925) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic
Societies . trans. Ian Cunnison, ed. . New York: Norton Press.
Miller, D., ed. (1998) Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter . Chicago: University
of Chicago Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203167014
Millikan, R.G. (1993) White Queen Psychology and other Essays for Alice . Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Morphy, H. (1991) Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge .
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morphy, H. (1994) #The anthropology of art# , in T. Ingold, (ed.), Companion
Encyclopedia of Anthropology . London and New York: Routledge, pp. pp. 64885.
Munn N. #Visual categories: an approach to the study of representational systems
# American Anthropologist vol. 68 (1966) pp. 93650 http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/
aa.1966.68.4.02a00050
Munn, N. (1973) Walbiri Iconography . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Munro, T. (1963) Evolution in the Arts . Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum.
Myers, F. (2001) The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture . Santa
Fe, NM: School of American Research.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 38 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Otten, C., ed. (1971a) Anthropology and Art: Readings in Cross-cultural Aesthetics .
American Museum Sourcebooks in Anthropology Q13 . Garden City, NY: Natural
History Press.
Otten, C. (1971b) #Introduction# , in C. Otten (ed.), Anthropology and Art: Readings in
Cross-cultural Aesthetics . Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, pp. pp. xi-xix.
Parmentier R.J. #The pragmatic semiotics of culture# Semiotica vol. 116 (1997) pp. 1
115
Pauketat, T., ed. (2001) The Archaeology of Traditions: Agency and History before and
after Columbus . Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Peirce, C.S. (1955) #Logic as semiotic: the theory of signs# , in J. Buchler (ed.), The
Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings . London: Kegan Paul, pp. pp. 89119.
Pfaffenberger B. #Fetishized objects and humanized nature: towards an anthropology of
technology# Man (n.s.) vol. 23 (1988) pp. 23652
Pfaffenberger B. #Social anthropology of technology# Annual Review of Anthropology
vol. 21 (1992) pp. 491516 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002423
Phillips, R.B., ed. and Steiner, C.B., eds (1999) Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity
in Colonial and Post-colonial Worlds . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Pinney, C., ed. and Thomas, N. eds (2001) Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the
Technologies of Enchantment . Oxford: Berg.
Plog, S. (1978) #Social interaction and stylistic similarity: a reanalysis# , in M.B.
Schiffer, (ed.), Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory I . New York: Academic
Press, pp. pp. 14382.
Plog S. #Analysis of style in artifacts# Annual Review of Anthropology vol. 12 (1983) pp.
12542 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.12.100183.001013
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 39 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Preston, B. (2000) #The functions of things: a philosophical perspective on material
culture# , in P.M. Graves-Brown (ed.), Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture . London
and New York: Routledge, pp. pp. 2249.
Preucel R. Bauer A. #Archaeological pragmatics# Norwegian Archaeological Review
vol. 34 no. (2) (2001) pp. 8596 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00293650127469
Price, S. (1989) Primitive Art in Civilized Places . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Price, S. Price, R. (1980) Afro-American Arts of the Surinam Rain Forest . Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Pye, D. (1982) #Six requirements for design# , in T. Schlereth, (ed.), Material Culture
Studies in America . Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History,
pp. pp. 15361.
Renne, E.P. (1995) Cloth that Does Not Die: the Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life .
Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Reynolds B. #The relevance of material culture to anthropology# Journal of the
Anthropological Society of Oxford vol. 14 no. (2) (1983) pp. 20917
Riggins, S.H., ed. (1994) The Socialness of Things: Essays in the Socio-semiotics of
Objects . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sackett J. #The meaning of style in archaeology: a general model# American Antiquity
vol. 42 no. (3) (1977) pp. 36980 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/279062
Sackett J. #Approaches to style in lithic archaeology# Journal
of Anthropological Archaeology vol. 1 (1982) pp. 59112 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165%2882%2990008-3
Sackett J. #Style and ethnicity in the Kahalari: a reply to Wiessner# American Antiquity
vol. 50 no. (1) (1985) pp. 1549 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/280642
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 40 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Sauerl#nder W., ed. #From stilus to style: reflection on the fate of a notion# Art History
vol. 6 no. (3) (1983) pp. 25370
Schapiro, M. (1953) #Style# , in A. Kroeber (ed.), Anthropology Today . Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, pp. pp. 287312.
Schevill, M.B. (1985) Evolution in Textile Design from the Highlands of Guatamala .
Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Schevill, M.B. (1987) Costume as Communication . Seattle, WA: University of
Washington Press.
Schevill, M.B. (1992) Maya Textiles of Guatamala . Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press.
Schiffer, M. (1992) Technological Perspectives on Behavioral Change . Tucson, AZ:
University of Arizona Press.
Schneider J. #The anthropology of cloth# Annual Review of Anthropology vol. 16 (1987)
pp. 40948 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.16.100187.002205
Schneider, J. Weiner, A. (1986) #Cloth and human experience# , Current
Anthropology , April, pp. pp. 17884. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/203416
Sieber R. #The arts and their changing social function# New York Academy of Sciences
vol. 96 no. (2) (1962) pp. 6538 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1962.tb50154.x
Sillitoe P. #From head-dress to head-messages# Man (n.s.) vol. 23 (1988) pp. 298318
Silver H. #Ethnoart# Annual Review of Anthropology vol. 8 (1979) pp. 267306 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.08.100179.001411
Singer, M. (1978). #For a semiotic anthropology# , in T.A. Sebeok (ed.), Sight, Sound,
and Sense . Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 41 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Smith-Ferri, S. (1996) #Introduction: the human faces of Pomo Indian basketry# , in S.
Barrett (ed.), Pomo Indian basketry . Berkeley, CA: Hearst Museum of Anthropology,
pp. pp. 166.
Sparshott F. #Art and anthropology# Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism vol. 55 no.
(3) (1997) pp. 23943
Spyer, P., ed. (1998) Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Places . New
York: Routledge.
Stahl A.B. #Colonial entanglements and the practices of taste: an alternative to
logocentric approaches# American Anthropologist vol. 104 no. (3) (2002) pp. 82745
http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.2002.104.3.827
Stanislawski M.B. #The ethno-archaeology of Hopi pottery making# Plateau vol. 42
(1969) pp. 2733
Stanislawski M.B. Review of William A. Longacre, Archaeology as Anthropology:
A Case Study American Antiquity vol. 38 (1973) pp. 11721 http://
dx.doi.org/10.2307/279320
Stark, M. (1999) #Social dimensions of technical choice in Kalinga ceramic tradition
# , in E. Chilton, (ed.), Material Meanings: Critical Approaches to the Interpretation of
Material Culture . Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, pp. pp. 2443.
Sterner J. #Who is signalling whom? Ceramic style, ethnicity and taphonomy among the
Sirak Bulahay# Antiquity vol. 63 (1989) pp. 4519
Tedlock B. Tedlock D. #Text and textile: language and technology in the art of the
Quiche Maya# Journal of Anthropological Research vol. 41 (1985) pp. 12147
Thomas, N. (1989) Out of Time: History and Evolution in Anthropological Discourse .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, N. (1991) Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in
the Pacific . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 42 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Thomas, N. (1998) Foreword , in A. Gell, ed. Art and Agency: An Anthropological
Approach . Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. pp. vii-xiii.
Townsend-Gault C. #At the margin or the centre? The anthropological
study of art# Reviews in Anthropology vol. 27 (1998) pp. 42539 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1080/00988157.1998.9978212
Ucko, P. (1969) #Penis sheaths: a comparative study# , Proceedings of the Royal
Anthropological Institute for 1968 . London: RAI, pp. pp. 2767.
Van-Wyk, G. (2003) #Illuminated signs: style and meaning in the beadwork of Xhosa-
and Zulu-speaking peoples# , african arts, autumn, pp. pp. 1233, pp. 934.
Washburn, D.K. (1977) A Symmetry Analysis of Upper Gila Area Ceramic Design .
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Washburn, D.K., ed. (1983) Structure and Cognition in Art . New Directions in
Archaeology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Washburn, D.K. Crowe, D.W. (1988) Symmetries of Culture . Seattle, WA: University of
Washington Press.
Washburn, D.K., ed. and Crowe, D.W. eds (2004) Symmetry Comes of Age: the Role of
Pattern in Culture . Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Weiner, A., ed. and Schneider, J. eds (1989) Cloth and Human Experience .
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Wiessner, P. (1990) #Is there Unity to Style?# in M.W. Conkey, ed. and C.A. Hastorf
(eds), The Uses of Style in Archaeology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.
pp. 10512.
Wilk, R. (1995) #Learning to be local in Belize: global systems of common difference
# , in D. Miller (ed.), Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the Local . London:
Routledge, pp. pp. 11033.
SAGE KNOWLEDGE - FACULTY
Copyright 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Page 43 of 43 Handbook of Material Culture: Style, Design, and
Function
SAGE knowledge
Wilk R. #Miss Universe, the Olmec and the valley of Oaxaca#
Journal of Social Archaeology vol. 4 no. (1) (2004) pp. 8198 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605304039851
Wobst, M. (1977) #Stylistic behavior and information exchange# , in C.E. Cleland (ed.),
Papers for the Director: Research Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin . Papers of the
Museum of Anthropology 61. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, pp. pp. 31742.
Wobst, H.M. (1999) #Style in archaeology or archaeologists in style# , in E. Chilton
(ed.), Material Meanings: Critical Approaches to the Interpretation of Material Culture .
Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, pp. pp. 11832.
Wolfe A. #Social structural basis of art# Current Anthropology vol. 10 (1969) pp. 344
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/201008
W#lfflin, H. (1932) Principles of Art History, 7th edn . London: Bell.
10.4135/9781848607972.n24