Material Measures, Immaterial Means

The study of material culture has evolved alongside the discipline of anthropology, though the field has taken an interdisciplinary turn only in the last two decades or so. At a very fundamental level, material culture refers to the study of any and all objects, be it buildings, books or beads. Anthropological studies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century also collated specimens of material culture, which were displayed in museums across Europe and North America. However, implicit in these early days was the idea that the gaze moved from ‘simple’ objects of non-European societies to the ‘advanced’ objects of European society. Over the recent past, however, studies in material culture characteristically combine ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological debate.