The Meanings of Things

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

I. Hodder

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