In this section my central concern is both with elucidating dominant principles by which arrays of artefacts are ordered and with showing how these are derived by means of different methodologies developed for the study of material culture. Both historians and anthropologists have argued that particular societies or particular historical periods have tended to emphasize particular principles of classification. Foucault, for example, divides European history into separate ‘epistemes’ based on the dominant principle of classification employed in each. He argues that with the rise of natural history, sight became dominant over smell and touch (1970:132–3), while forms of resemblance and affinity were similarly demoted as against other principles of order. With the rise of the sciences it was not enough to assume that a root which happened to have a shape reminiscent of the human body was therefore likely, when eaten, to have an effect upon the body. Rather, from systematic collections of natural objects, such as butterflies or rock forms, patterns of affinity were sought which could then be analysed in conjunction with consistent theories of their connectivity.
In this section my central concern is both with elucidating dominant principles by which arrays of artefacts are ordered and with showing how these are derived by means of different methodologies developed for the study of material culture. Both historians and anthropologists have argued that particular societies or particular historical periods have tended to emphasize particular principles of classification. Foucault, for example, divides European history into separate ‘epistemes’ based on the dominant principle of classification employed in each. He argues that with the rise of natural history, sight became dominant over smell and touch (1970:132–3), while forms of resemblance and affinity were similarly demoted as against other principles of order. With the rise of the sciences it was not enough to assume that a root which happened to have a shape reminiscent of the human body was therefore likely, when eaten, to have an effect upon the body. Rather, from systematic collections of natural objects, such as butterflies or rock forms, patterns of affinity were sought which could then be analysed in conjunction with consistent theories of their connectivity.
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