Material Culture

The ethnologist, in his studies of the culture of an alien people, finds the investigation of the material side of their life less diffi cult, and more reliable in its results, than is that of the social and religious aspects. There is less risk of error in describing a canoe or a method of making pottery, than in giving an account of a social or religious custom or belief. In the material object or the method the greater part of the truth is on the surface, and is easily grasped. The custom or belief may present features which are utterly foreign to the mode of thought of the investigator, and its real significance exists in the minds of men who may be incapable of explaining it clearly, or who may not desire to do so. Material culture is in fact a study of greater certainty because the evidences are stable and material, and can often be collected for detailed and leisured study. The fact that many artefacts are capable of preservation for hundreds or thousands of years adds to the scope of a study which thus ranges not only wide in space but deep in time.

Upon our accumulated knowledge of the material activities of peoples of all grades of culture a science of comparative tech nology has been built up which deals in detailed fashion with the technique of arts and crafts. Basket-work (see BASKET), pottery (q.v.), dwellings, weapons, weaving (q.v.) and other subjects are treated from this point of view elsewhere in this section, and only a few general considerations need be touched upon here.

Implements.

Even with some knowledge of natural ma terials, processes and forces, man can do little with his hands alone; but very much more can be achieved with the aid of a smooth pebble, a pointed stick and a sharp flint (see FLINTS). It was in the working of hard materials such as stone, wood and bone, that the hands had to admit their primary incapacity, though there were other things they could not do unaided. In some cases, however, an elaboration of tools and appliances can only increase speed and precision, though even a simple appliance like the primitive plough may produce results which are out of all pro portion to its own structural complexity. In the development of most arts and crafts there has necessarily been constant inter action between materials, methods and appliances, but there is no common formula to express the degree of interdependence. Seeds may be sown, and clay may be shaped with little or no assistance from artefacts, but for breaking and crushing hard materials, for cutting, piercing, abrading and similar operations, tools are essential. Simple devices involving the application of leverage, the elasticity of wood and especially rotary motion—as in the drill, the wheel and the rotary quern—pointed the way to the development of machinery as we know it; progress in this direction was, however, dependent not only upon increased knowl edge of natural forces and mechanical principles, but upon the production of iron in large quantities, and upon the evolution of methods of working and shaping the metal.

That there are conspicuous differences in the parts played by methods and appliances, respectively, in various arts and crafts, needs little demonstration, and in some cases there has been a great development in appliances without an equivalent improve ment in the products. Basket-work, which reaches its highest level amongst uncivilized peoples, requires the simplest of tools, or even none at all, and the forms and fabrics are such as to preclude the use of mechanisms or machines; development has resulted from change and improvement in technique, and not from the invention of artificial aids for the craftsman. Similarly, though not equally, pottery-making was for long an art in which the hand was the only important tool employed in shaping the clay, and the early potter's wheel did not bring about a funda mental change in this respect—discoveries of new kinds of clay, and of better methods of preparing them, and of firing the pots, have been the most important factors in the evolution of pottery. Appliances have, however, played a greater part in the advances that have been made, than in the case of basket-making. In plant cultivation, again, much could be done with the hoe, or even with the simple digging-stick, but the evolution of the plough and of other accessory appliances, was essential to the growth of agricul ture to its full usefulness. In modern spinning and weaving com plex machinery does rapidly and surely what for some thousands of years was done slowly but adequately—as it is still done in some parts of the world—by means of spindles and simple looms made of a few sticks and wooden slats.

Theories of Development.

Since evolution became a dorni nant motive in scientific studies, the descriptive and comparative methods of treatment have been extended for reconstructive pur poses. In anthropology this tendency has been encouraged by the stimulus afforded by the discoveries of the archaeologist, which give us clues not only as to the general course of evolution of material culture, and of individual appliances, but as to the relationships between ancient peoples. That there have been since early days in the history of man, innumerable instances of contact, migration and conquest, and that such relationships have led to transmissions of culture, or of cultural elements, from place to place and from people to people, is generally agreed. The attempts to ascertain how far an existing culture in any part of the world can be resolved into its historical elements—how far stratification can be detected, and transmissions be traced to their sources—have necessarily been based on analyses which take into account not material culture alone, but linguistic, religious, social and physical characters. Reconstructive work of this kind, though sometimes one sided, is the only approach to a scientific history of mankind, as distinct from literary histories of nations and peoples.