Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity (Material Cultures)

How are we to "write" an active interpretative account of past material culture? "Material Culture and Text" tackles this most basic problem of historical and archaeological analysis - the relationship between text and artefact - in an analysis of prehistoric art, fusing theory and practice with interpretation to create a fresh framework for understanding the relationship between past and present. It incorporates major tenets from post-structuralist thought in an analysis of prehistory. The text sets to work on a collection of rock carvings from Northern Sweden and shows how alternative conceptualizations of the material from structuralist, hermeneutic and structural-Marxist frameworks substantially alter our understanding of their meaning and significance. It forms both an original enquiry and an exemplary practical introduction to the use of theoretical frameworks. Its most radical move is to engage the reader in an interpretative process. The reader is actively invited to be a creator of both the meaning of the text and the meaning of the past - a producer rather than a consumer.