Material Culture Quotes

Warhol came from an ordinary family and he had a profound understanding about capitalism and material culture. He was probably one of the few Western artists - or artists from the United States - that could be considered a true product of his time and brought out that kind of spirit of the culture.

Technology is society made durable.

A lot of people are surprised when I talk so much about the present, but politics is just a crucial part of archaeology.

Archaeology can be overlooked as a discipline, I think, but it's incredibly important to have this other way of approaching the past - not just through historical documents, but through actual physical remains - objects, buildings and the layout of our towns.

Again, like I said, my life has been about being fascinated by objects and the stories that they tell, and also making them for myself, obtaining them, appreciating them and diving into them.

Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science.

I feel the world is over-saturated with products, and it isn't about what you're wearing as much as it is about what message you are trying to convey.

I was taught in my Introduction to Anthropology [course in college], it is not just the great works of [hu]mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.

In our life as a civilized person in the industrial age, we are invaded by objects; how could an object have a "force" when it no longer has individuality?

Never underestimate the power of a shoe.

Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.

I find the history of toys very interesting on an academic level - they're very much products of their time, just like paintings and furniture tell us about their time.

Even one's own home is a kind of anthology of advertisers, manufacturers, motifs and presentation techniques. There's nothing 'natural' about one's home these days. The furnishings, the fabrics, the furniture, the appliances, the TV, and all the electronic equipment - we're living inside commercials.

Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.

I'm interested in clothes in the way that other people are interested in cars.

Parents have railed against shelters near schools, but no one has made any connection between the crazed consumerism of our kids and their elders' cold unconcern toward others. Maybe the homeless are not the only ones who need to spend time in these places to thaw out.

From the point where our ancestors started making tools, people have been unable to survive without the things they make; in this sense, it is making things that makes us human.

The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.

Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.

I'm fascinated by delving into the historical context of what life was like in the past.

The shoe is very much an X-ray of social comportment.

Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life.

Objects are what matter. Only they carry the evidence that throughout the centuries something really happened among human beings.

I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.