Kenneth Haltman is a professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, and Translation and his Ph.D from Yale University in American Studies.

Some of his honors are "Thomas J. Watson, Fulbright-Hayes, Andrew W. Mellon, and Henry C. Luce Foundation fellowships; research awards from Winterthur, the Huntington Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senior Research fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Frick Art Reference Library; a Terra Foundation Visiting Professorship in the History of American Art at the JFK Center for North American Studies at Freie Universität-Berlin; and, most recently, a Distinguished Visiting Lectureship at the University of Western Australia".

At the University of Oklahoma Haltman has taught "introductory and advanced courses in American Art History and the Art of the American West, Undergraduate Methods, Graduate Methods, and a suite of rotating seminars in Visual Analysis, Material Cultural, and Critical Issues in Recent Art History at the core of the graduate curriculum".

Haltman's other publications are "Looking Close and Seeing Far: Samuel Seymour, Titian Ramsay Peale, and the Art of the Long Expedition, 1818-1823 (Penn State University Press, 2008), Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale’s Lost Manuscript (Abrams, with the American Museum of Natural History, 2015)".

Haltman has also translated French publications such as L’Évolution du goût aux États-Unis, d’après l’histoire des collections; Earth and Reveries of Will; Fragments of a Poetics of Fire.

“Kenneth Haltman, Ph.D.” University of Oklahoma , www.ou.edu/finearts/visual-arts/programs/bachelor_of_art_in_art_history/kenneth_haltman.html.

I chose the article "The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas" by John Maguire as my supplemental text. Maguire claims that students nowadays cannot write clearly and convey their ideas efficiently and he defends this claim throughout the entire article. Though Maguire states that a couple of decades ago students were generally better writers, he does not mention when the writing skills of the general population of students went downhill.

Maguire identifies over-abstraction as the cause for this phenomenon. He believes that students oftentimes focus on and emphasize abstract ideas they do not fully understand, perhaps due to their age and inexperience in life, in their writing, which results in vagueness and desperate repetition.

Maguire creates the impression that teachers who are obsessed with ideas, and not concrete things, are the main contributors to the poor writing skills of today's students. To better the writing abilities of students, Maguire suggests that students should focus on physical objects - specifically "things you can drop on your foot". He claims that this is something both skilled and unskilled writers can do and that eventually students will get a good grasp on more abstract ideas, since all abstract ideas derive from physical objects.

Maguire, John. “The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 Oct. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-secret-to-good-writing-its-about-objects-not-ideas/263113/.

The speculation process appears to be the most subjective part of the Prownian analysis since every single person will experience a given object in their own unique way. This is what separates one person's analysis of a material object from another's. The next step of the Prownian analysis, which is research, allows writers to consult other people's works on the selected object, so they can see other people's interpretation of the object and convince themselves that their work truly brings something new to the table.

related to teaching or education

Pedagogic (n.d.) In Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedagogic

Many people who enjoy reading, including me, would agree with this point. Though Haltman and Maguire reach out to different audiences, both of them would agree that over-description is an existing phenomenon and that it is desired to avoid it.

Personally, I could not agree more with this point because I detest complexity in writing that is done on purpose. I do agree that sometimes it is necessary to describe something in depth, be it for personal or philosophical reasons perhaps, but doing it all the time creates unnecessary confusion and makes me lose interest in the subject of matter. I do recognize the fact that some people naturally tend to over-describe objects and events and that they cannot do anything about it, however, I simply cannot stand them and I do my best to distance myself from them. On the contrary, there are people who despise those who rarely go in depth when it comes to objects and events. Those people might enjoy the works of writers like Henry David Thoreau and Jack London, but I, however, do not.

Since the introduction to American Artifacts will serve as a guide for most, if not all, of our writings this semester, it is important to come back to these ideas every time a material object is brought up. Practically any material object may spark at least some of these thoughts in our heads, and this list will definitely not let us get lost.

Maguire would surely not want unskilled writers to focus on these abstract ideas since this could result in a murky and repetitive writing. Personally, I have encountered such writing before and I support Maguire on this one. I also believe that a general philosophy course should be a prerequisite for a writing class, since philosophy analyzes and studies these abstract values.

In other words, Haltman suggests that we go beyond the object itself and analyze the abstract values that it could signify. Maguire, on the other hand, suggests that unskilled writers should avoid any kind of abstraction and focus only on the physical object. Haltman and Maguire appeal to different audiences and both of them are correct if that is taken into consideration.

These physical descriptions are exactly what Maguire would encourage his students to focus on when dealing with material objects. Haltman, on the other hand, suggests that the writer must utilize both abstractions and concrete adjectives and nouns, implying that the writer must find a balance between abstraction and concrete description.

• to permeate or influence as if by dyeing

Imbue (n.d.) In Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imbue

That is how a writer should interpret material culture. While American Artifacts focuses solely on writing, it is important to note that there are other ways of interpreting material culture. A historian would completely disregard this statement and analyze material culture in his own way, while a scientist would do something completely different. Personally, I think that utilizing all approaches to material culture would yield the best results possible.

While this statement is true, the interpretation of material culture can be subjective. Different people find different meanings and values in the same objects. If one decides to focus on the object itself, like Maguire suggests, then such ambiguity would be greatly diminished.

This is crucial to remember when analyzing the AIDS quilt. Normally, one would only describe a couple of remarks about a picture, usually something that stands out to the viewer, but for an "evolved" description one must focus on every single detail in that particular picture. In other words, for the best possible description of a material object one must explain it in such a way that even a blind person could comprehend what the object looks and feels like.

Since self-consciousness comes with age, it could be concluded that older people tend to be better at describing material culture than younger people because they would be able to form stronger bonds with the object they would describe. Maguire needs to take this point into consideration when analyzing the cause of poor writing skills among students these days. Personally, I think a couple of decades ago students produced better writing because they were more intellectually mature compared to students nowadays.

Haltman is correct here. A weak description is oftentimes full of ambiguity, which makes it lose its value as a description. A good description, on the other hand, allows the reader or listener to interpret the object described in his own way.

"Try to avoid foreclosing interpretive possibilities by narrowing your focus too far. For now, simply explain the direction (or directions) in which you find yourself headed, the sort of research you anticipate undertaking, and the research problems the endeavor poses."

Haltman, just like Maguire, recognizes that one can sink in over-abstraction, which is undesirable.

This point is also emphasized in Maguire's "The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas". Maguire identifies the importance of this skill in writing and claims that students these days do not bring concrete examples in their writings.

This is not only the key to good description, but also the foundation of good writing in general. Without a rich vocabulary one would, in certain contexts, sound like a clueless child, whereas a writer who posses an expanded vocabulary would make the reader think the writer is a mature adult. This point would certainly be emphasized by Maguire since he suggests to his unskilled in writing students that they focus solely on the physical objects when writing. For someone with a not so rich vocabulary, a thesaurus would be a great tool for writing better descriptions.

This statement highlights the importance of daydreaming when writing about material culture. Maguire needs to take this into consideration when looking for the cause of poor writing skills among students these days.

A study has shown that daydreaming plays a crucial role in boosting creativity and that technology such as smartphones, computers and television distracts us to the point where daydreaming becomes impossible, thus diminishing our creativity. Nowadays in most Western countries technology is so prevalent that you cannot even hide from it. Most young people nowadays spend most of their free time looking at their smartphones or playing video games on computers, whereas more than two decades ago youngsters spent most of their time outside. The effect of technology on the writing skills of 21st century students is not to be ignored.

Katie. “Is Technology Killing Creativity?” Hello Rindle, 3 Oct. 2016, hello.rindle.com/is-technology-killing-creativity/.

This statement will guide our future panel descriptions beautifully. It is critical that we provide the link, or evidence, of our conclusions to the panel that we are studying. Statements supported directly by the physical, tangible object are powerful because they are credible. A practical, scientific approach towards analyzing an object limits the amount of personal imagination and invention one might use to defend one’s argument. Connecting individual opinion to physical evidence and fact constitutes a strong argument. For instance, the painting Woman, I by Willem De Kooning presents a misogynistic fear of a woman’s sexuality and of her empowerment. The painting depicts a terrifying, monstrous woman, whose vacuous eyes lack humanity, and whose sharp teeth convey a sense of danger. This ugly portrait has a number of physical aspects (besides the image it portrays) that reveal the brutality of its message, and explain the horrific response of critics. De Kooning painted this woman so feverishly that parts of the canvas are coated in layers of paint, spots to which De Kooning returned to over and over, desperate to communicate the aggressive nature of the modern woman. Compared to the pin-up doll images of its time, Woman, I piles together so many colors that the image itself becomes jarring to view. The woman’s large breasts are disarmingly emphasized, whereas her smile is frightening in its mindless eroticism. Her feet appear to be hooves. Such details on the ragged texture of the canvas as well as some of its more bulging features provide a context from which a viewer cringes in disgust and horror. Who is this woman, and what is being done to her? Willem De Kooning, Woman, I These are texts that describe Woman, I and its historical context: Additional Analysis of De Kooning's painting Second Additional Analysis of De Kooning's painting This video involves a detailed discussion of the painting and its symbolism, as well as how it was made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=208&v=y0xbZTe1JSM

      The supplemental reading I chose to analyze is entitled “A Terminal Condition: The Cathode Ray Tube's Strange Afterlife.” Authors Josh Lepawsky and Charles Mather introduce their article with a skeptical probe into the New York Times’ conviction that the “cathode ray tube is dead” (qtd. in Lepawsky and Mather). Questioning what it means for the cathode ray tube (CRT) to have lived and died, Lepawsky and Mather first discuss the origins of the CRT by informing readers of a pivotal 17th-century debate. Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle, a political theorist and aristocrat respectively, disputed the significance of Boyle’s vacuum pump, an apparatus Boyle passionately defended as extensive in its impact. Later in the 19th century, two experimenters fundamental to the field of electromagnetic physics demonstrated why the vacuum was an essential component of the cathode ray tube, and was thus, significant. J.J. Thompson proved that electrons passing through a vacuum form cathode rays; Karl Ferdinand Braun built vacuum tubes that contained an electron emitter and a fluorescent screen that allowed him to view electrical waveforms. These cathode ray tubes had the potential to display information on a screen, and this potential was enough to integrate the technology into the mainstream. 
      As CRTs exited the laboratory, they swiftly found a new home and body in the television. Millions of CRTs were manufactured during the 1920’s, which required the additional mining and collection of plastic, glass, and metal, especially copper. TVs during this time only depicted static, but Americans still bought them. As this new cultural and technological phenomenon approached determinedly from the horizon, society eagerly and promptly began to reorganize itself in response. Advertisers envisioned a TV room as the new centerpiece of family life in the home, rather than a traditional piano, or even a radio. Additionally, CRT technology continued to develop with the advent of the computer in the 1950’s. Once CRTs utilizing a video display terminal (VDT) began to be introduced into the workplace, however, a number of health-related difficulties became apparent in the largely female population that worked with CRTs. High stress levels, skin damage, and miscarriages threatened the workforce. The study and revelation of CRT technology’s harms in the workplace took place in the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s. The discovery was an omen. 
      Together, flat screen technology and advanced computer monitors replaced CRTs in the homes and minds of Americans. CRTs began to rapidly enter the American waste stream, but the lead located in a CRT’s glass screen as well as its other toxic components prompted U.S. states to ban the unwanted technology from their landfills. Landfilling CRTs might cause toxic materials to leach into surrounding soil or bodies of water. Unfortunately, CRTs have been abandoned in warehouses across the country. Though a CRT recovery economy has met demand in places seeking televisions or arcade consoles, the toxicity of the technology is dangerous to those hoping to strip CRTs of their valuable metals by burning them in acid baths or open flames. Are CRTs thus “dead?” Are they worthless? Authors Lepawsky and Mather ominously reference a bacterium found to thrive in toxic electronic waste as they end their article. Clearly, the remains of CRTs continue to circulate and impact, indicating that even outdated material culture does not go away easily.  

Lepawsky, John and Mather, Charles. “A Terminal Condition: The Cathode Ray Tube's Strange Afterlife.” The Atlantic. April 29, 2014. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/a-terminal-condition/361313/. September 4, 2017.

All objects have meaning, given through their purpose in being created, or what their active use gives to them. The more interaction it has with people the more human qualities we can attach to it through its change and development, as well as our own changing view on it.

The supplementary reading that I chose is "The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas" by John Maguire. In the reading Maguire argues that many students today struggle with writing. He claims that students have trouble with being clearly and he says the way to solve this is through giving specific concrete examples. And the way to do this is through writing about physical objects.

Throughout the reading, Maguire states that students are too caught up in trying to write about abstract ideas that they have in their heads. He says that abstract writing leads to vague and unclear writing and this is why students struggle with writing. He tells his students that instead of writing abstractly, they should just write using "things they can drop on their feet" in order to write more clearly. Maguire uses this method since it is easy for students to write about concrete objects and that every student can do it. I agree with what he says in the article since I also had struggles with writing. I think that his tips would help me to portray what I am trying to write more clearly.

However, while looking at this passage I disagree with some of it, because I think that some of our writing should contain our abstract ideas and feelings. If we are able to write out these things in a concise manner, I believe that it adds emotion and power to our writing. If we only are describing objects throughout our whole writing, it can become boring and mundane. However if we are able to have a good balance between using abstract ideas and concrete description, our writing will improve greatly.

Maguire, John. “The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 Oct. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-secret-to-good-writing-its-about-objects-not-ideas/263113/.

The more we write and learn about the object, the more we become free to connect with the object in a relational way. We get to focus in on how the object makes us feel and how it makes us think. It is important to not just have a narrow mindset but to really think about how the object relates to us. I think that this is an important step in analyzing objects.

In the supplemental reading Maguire talks about using physical objects to help us write and form clearer observations ,I think that relates to this statement. Through writing about the object it forces us to think deeper and from it comes deeper analysis.

While studying of material culture may start in the tangible realm, only through careful studying and interpreting beyond just the physical aspects does the object's true significance appear and open up. I think that this is a clear contrast with what Maguire states. He emphasizes the importance of the physical object while writing, on the other hand, Prownian analysis emphasizes that the physical object is just the basis for deeper and more abstract interpretation.

While it is important to make sure to observe all the little details of the object to gain more knowledge about the object, it is also important to look at the bigger picture to understand the object in its totality. I think that this is an important theme in studying material culture, since such a big part of material culture is understanding the big picture of the object.

This is almost the complete opposite of what Maguire believes. This emphasizes using non-physical and abstract ideas to find meaning, whereas Maguire writes about using concrete ideas. I find it interesting how some parts of this essay totally matches with what Maguire writes, while statements such as this are completely different.

This statement has a sharp parallel with what Maguire is writing about. Maguire strongly emphasizes the point to not use vague writing. I think that the statement "just describe what you see" is a big point that Maguire is trying to make in that you don't always have to come up with these creative and abstract ideas. Sometimes, you can just write about the simple things.

Prownian analysis is a means of identifying, analyzing, and categorizing historical objects. Essentially it has 3 steps:

1. Obsessively describe: Endeavor to analyze every aspect of the object in question. Nothing it considered too obvious. Create a rolling list of said aspects for future reference.
2. Guess at use: While analyzing the object, assume potential uses for it. It’s intended purpose may be easily noticeable, but alternative uses are also worth investigating. Again, make a rolling list for future reference.
3. Treat the object as fiction: Act as though the object in question does not truly exist. Paint as vivid a mental picture as possible of the object and relate it to basic, universal concepts. Catalog these metaphors, similes and likenesses (or contrasts).

(https://mnmalone.wordpress.com/prownian-analysis/)

I think that this comic is a good example of how important having a rich vocabulary is. If all we do is just add in big words without know what they mean, it can make our writing look like a big mess and it will lose clarity. This is supported by Maguire as he tells his students to not just put in words like "market" or "productivity", but to explain those words and describe them with concrete and vivid words.

http://www.magartsblog.net/bad-comics-learning-from-the-worst/

This method works because it is so easy for us to just describe something. This relates with what Maguire writes about as he tells his students to just describe physical objects. I think that he teaches this technique because it's simple for students to use.

When we formalize our observation on the objects, we have to be diligent in writing the description as it can be a key part to opening up new ideas and realizations.

This kind of deduction has happened so much and so quickly that it has become natural to us and we may even see such deductions as common sense. This may cause us to skim over some things but we have to remember to slow down and think deeper.

The Prownian analysis works because of how easy it is to just describe everything that you see. This relates with Maguire that claims that students should describe abstract ideas with physical objects until you find the perfect words that fully represent your idea.

The more closely you look at an object, the more you understand the object and the more you learn about its history.

Having a lot of imagination is the key in understanding material culture. One has to open their mind and think freely to understand the cultural objects.

All of our senses help us get a unique feeling from the object we are identifying. Objects can be made of different textures and different textures elicit different feelings. For example, something smooth may give you good feeling, but something rough will give you bad feelings. The individual panels of the AIDS quilt all have different textures. This makes some people feel a response to a certain panel that another person might not get.

The author is saying the material culture begins with just objects but is then further expanded with descriptions. Describing everything you see in an object brings out things in the object which someone would normally look over and miss. Maguire, in his article, mentions something similar to this but he says instead that abstract ideas come from the physical objects.

Speculation acknowledges that an object may have multiple meanings, and must analyze how these meanings came to be, and how they fit together with and arise from the same object, as well as how the meanings overlap.

The physical objects of culture are important in helping us, future historians, understand the culture better. These physical objects are easier to be preserved over generations compared to abstract forms of culture. With the physical objects, we can infer what the culture was like and how the people of that culture lived.

During our first perception of an object the resulting description is what we base the rest of our analysis off of, mixing in our personal descriptions and becoming accustomed to certain words or emotions which we ingrain..

Summary of Supplementary article?

Article Chose: "What is a Machete, Anyways?" by John Cline

A machete is often considered a weapon, due to its modern day usage as a weapon in horror and action films, as well as its historical use as a weapon of the poor and those in servitude. However, this was primarily due to its many uses, ease of maintenance and durability leading to its widespread distribution among the poor as a harvesting and agricultural implement, and thus commonality and ease of access when in need of a weapon. However, due to the development of modern agricultural practices, technology, and methodology, the Machete is seeing reduced use, leaving an absence of an applicable substitute for use as an emergency weapon or symbol of the proletariat.

This ties in to the main article in how the view and nature of an item has shifted over time due to its usage to deviate from its original intended purpose, and how it now carries more meaning than its expected usage.

Polyvalent: "Having many different functions, forms, or facets." - Oxford Living Dictionaries

So what this sentence means is that enterpretive analysis allows users to understand complex, multiparted meanings.

In the article "What is a Machete, anyways?" by John Cline, a point is made about how the machete, originally primarily used as an agricultural tool, has over time had its use evolved into a symbol of violence and war, demonstrating this principle of how an object is used and the context in which it appears may provide more insights than the creation or creators of the object itself.

To merely explain the picture would be to observe and understand it in its physical state alone. Objects exist in more than just a physical state. When Michael Baxandall says that,"we explain remarks about pictures," he is speaking of the historian's duty to observe and understand an object in more than its physical state. The 'remarks' so to speak are the effects that the non-physical state of the object has on an observer and his 'explanation' of those remarks would be the explanation of that non-physical state, and possibly bring about the understanding of why it caused said remarks.

When analyzing an object, the object already has any data which may be extracted from it already inherent in its state of being, and thus provides more accuracy and validity in its state of being than from external analysis, without any of the biases that may come from alternate sources or viewpoints.

The duality of an object is formed when the observer takes a physical object and attempts to translate it into a non-physical form. This is the historian's job, to research and understand the object so that they might translate it into a more understandable form. When the observer goes a step past merely observing the physical object and begins to look more in-depth, it becomes more than a physical object.

Although not every step needs to be listed, the fact that you did complete said steps should be inherently apparent in the result.

Much like the duality of an artifact, having physical aspects and non-physical aspects, the analysis of said object must have a sort of duality. It must have a strong base in undeniable, scientific fact (physical aspects) such as what the artifact is made of, and a fluid estimation of its significance and what it could communicate of its culture (non-physical aspects).

I would go as far to say that this isn't limited to the analysis of artifacts. Even objects that are created in the modern day, that can be looked at without the veil of uncertainty and guesswork that shrouds objects from the past, can communicate different things to different people. Therefore, earlier in the text when the author describes the type of object that historians seek to understand, those objects that communicate more than their physical form, it is reasonable to assume that all objects carry this form of duality.

The following polarities he lists seem to be rooted in common desires and fears, or things which may be considered as part of an us vs. them mentality defining and separating groups of people into the haves and have nots of each listed duality. The biggest differences are not in what a person may believe about, but which they prioritize and how they react, and how each person uses these dualities to construct their own worldview and analyze their surroundings.

Annotations from supplementary reading

But the machete bears an unusual character. It’s possible to conceive of it as a weapon, yes, but it’s also very much a tool—not altogether different from, say, a shovel. A human being could do a great deal of damage to another human being with a shovel; it is weighted enough, has an edge, and a long handle to allow for a very leveraged swing.Why is it that the machete is seen so differently? Both items could do serious damage to a person, however, I couldn't imagine a man being arrested for carrying a shovel over his arm.

benrperry Sep 5 Tools are fine things for workers, but politics dictates that violence be concentrated in the hands of the State, and dispensed by its agents. The slipperiness between innocuous utensil and deadly device represents the risk of insurrection. … More This brings forth the interesting symbolism of weapons being seen as a type of power. If workers are allowed to carry weapons then they posses some sort of power, a power that is meant to be held only by those in charge. It is this fear of the power, and subsequently that power falling into the wrong hands, that causes the line between tool and weapon to become so ill-defined: of course the worker must be able to carry tools but how powerful a tool can they posses before they should be considered dangerous and that tool be considered a weapon?

benrperry Sep 5 Looking at the cover now, it’s hard not to notice that one of the villainous figures looks a lot like Fidel Castro, and one of his comrades wields a machete. The machete isn't only seen as a weapon; it is a sinister one. Many fictional villains such as the one in the author's book are portrayed with machetes. In Haltman's introduction to American Artifacts, he describes objects as being not only a record of themselves in a physical sense, but also as carrying non-physical record of things like concepts and times with which they are associated. Because of their value as tools, many oppressed peoples, such as slaves and oppressed workers, had access to machetes and because of this the machete is the weapon that was used in many violent uprisings of workers and slaves in the past, such as the Philippine Revolution and the Haitian Revolution. The machete was also a weapon of choice in the horrors of the Rwandan Genocide. This past of cruelty and violence is imprinted upon machetes in exactly the way that Haltman describes.

source:(https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/the-history-of-the-machete-history-essay.php)

benrperry Sep 5 I’m certainly not proud of this moment, but it does illustrate the machete’s ability to change quickly from a boy’s plaything to an instrument of violence. The machete carries with it a unique duality. Whereas guns are distinctly weapons and things like hoes are distinctly tools, the machete's purpose can change on a whim and the transition from tool to weapon is seamless, where as it would not be naturally easy for a hoe to be used as a weapon.

Without an argument to carry through after analysis, the analysis is not overly useful; it just becomes information and ideas floating by. The need for argument is necessary for it to be brought to others' attention. Argument leads others to similar thoughts, whether for or against, but nonetheless, these thoughts shed light on a particular idea.

Upon searching for why an object is viewed in a specific cultural setting, we can see how in interacts with and is acted on by its setting. This gives not only a better understanding of the object, but also a better understanding of the culture and its people. This is key in archaeological fields, because to understand a civilization previously unknown of, one must examine the tools and technologies that were available to that civilization.

Introspection is the key to understanding and and viewing something for what it really is. As you become aware of why you feel a certain way, you can chose whether or not it was a fair or unfair judgement, and whether or not to continue to act out based on that feeling. This inner thinking provides a truthful look upon an object or being for us as viewers to gain a better understanding of.

Before even considering other possibilities, many chose instead to make assumptions about what they see. This lack of reflection is the cause of much strife in the world, from the automatic confrontation and arrest of Jason Wilson for his carrying of his machete, which was perceived as a dangerous weapon, to the widespread issues of racism and xenophobia experience by many in the country. (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/what-is-a-machete-anyway/280705/)

"to provide clarification; explain." ex. I elucidated this word to clear up any confusion.

(http://www.dictionary.com/browse/elucidate)

Once again, the example of the machete from "What Is a Machete, Anyway?" can be used here in order to understand the author's meaning. The machete is not the only object that signifies atrocities and and bloody revolutions. In the lead up to the Rwandan genocide, the citizens were forced to carry identification that classed them as either the dominant, or lesser ethnicity (much like the star of David during the Holocaust). Why is it that an ID is not as perceived in such a sinister way as the machete? Surely without it the genocide would have been hampered whereas, with all of the other weapons at the time, the lack of the machete could have easily been compensated for. The machete represents the atrocities in a different way than the identification papers did; the machete gives a clearer, realer look into the violence of the Rwandan genocide.

source: (http://www.history.com/topics/rwandan-genocide)

In simple terms, pedagogic just means related to teaching. So this "pedagogic sampler" is a useful set of teaching examples for the "practical approach to understanding things".

Part of Prownian analysis, as displayed here, is to break down an object to all of its most literal physical characteristics.

I feel like the AIDS quilt is meant to express this. Both are major topics to the class, and as such I feel like they go hand in hand. The quilt, at first look is just a quilt, but when inspected, it clearly depicts those affected and the aftermath of AIDS.

Do to a history of bloodshed and brutality, the machete has been transformed in the minds of many from a simple utilitarian tool into a much more sinister symbol of violence. (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/what-is-a-machete-anyway/280705/)

Essentially, Prownian analysis refers to an object in such a way that it becomes more of a concept. So the essays mentioned express exactly this: using object to define large scale ideas.

Jules Prown is a Professor Emeritus of Art History at Yale University. He developed Prownian analysis, a method of "identifying, and examining objects through detailed physical description, guessing at uses of the object, and treating the object as a fiction as a way of relating the object to more broad concepts." (https://gregcotter.wordpress.com/prownian-analysis-2/)

"The supplemental text is chose was The Atlantic article "What Is a Machete, Anyway?". In this article it is discussed that due to cultural actions around the machete, it was transformed from its original use as a farming and utility tool, into a symbol of violence and brutality. During numerous slave revolts as well as murders during the Rwandan Genocide the machete became a source of fear; in the hands of those using them for violence, those who witnessed these uses were conditioned to view a tool for cutting sugar cane as a weapon for cutting down others.

Taking the time to think freely and in the context of the object can lead to better conclusions. You have to remember to think like the people of the culture because your opinions on some issues, for example death, can be very different to the opinions of the culture. You may think death is terrible and scary, whereas the culture could see death as the way to another life.

The more time you spend looking at an object, the more you will discover about the object. You will not see everything an object has to offer by looking only for a few seconds. If you take the time and fully analyze the object for a few minutes or longer, you can start to really notice more subtle things which you would have missed had you not taken the time to see for a longer time.

Earlier in the text, the author mentions the existence of different ways that an object can carry a non-physical aspect or concept; he explains that attention must be paid not only to what an object may signify but also how it signifies it. In this selection of text the author does his best to explain how he is able to determine the significance of objects with a proverbial blind eye. Understandably it is impossible to obtain a perfect understand of an artifact and all that it represents, however I feel that this slightly hypocritical. The author himself admits that there is a limitless number of way for objects to be read and then goes on to pigeonhole the way in which his students read objects, forcing them to look only at objects that he is able to read regardless of the student's possible connection with the object.

As described in "What is a Machete, Anyway?" by John Cline, the machete carries with it a number of cultures as well as a number of conceptual and abstract aspects of those cultures. In his article, John Cline speaks of the duality of the machete as both a tool and a weapon and the baggage that it carries from both classifications. He explains the importance of it as a symbol of activities such as banana farming in Jamaica as well as the imprint that it has left on human memory as being a weapon used in places like Cuba and Nicaragua and Costa Rica. He describes it as containing an abstract, symbolic political power because of this duality. It is both a tool used by farmers, and a weapon used by revolutionaries. It is more than a mere physical object. The concept of both the worker's tool and weapon is as present, and important, in a machete as its physical aspects

Here, Haltmann defines the word "object" in an archaeological sense. Throughout the text, this definition of "object" is what he will be referring to. It is important to have this definition of object in mind as the reader continues through the text as a key idea is presented in this statement: that objects record more than just the sum of their own physical parts, that objects carry with them an abstract, non-physical record of themselves, the people that created them, and the time and place in which they were created.

Once again the author alludes to the answer to his rhetorical question being within the contents of his collection of essays.

A rhetorical question that will be pondered by the collection of essays. This is previously alluded to in the beginning of the introduction when the author explains that the collection of essays all "exemplify the methodology they share." This 'methodology' is described two sentences later as "experiments in or elaborations of a[n]... approach to understanding things."

Prownian analysis is the first part of what has been named the "Prownian method," a method that is used to identify, analyze and categorize objects in historical archaeology. Prownian method consists of three steps: obsessively describe, guess at uses, and treat the object as fiction.

source: (https://mnmalone.wordpress.com/prownian-analysis/)

Kenneth Haltman, the author of this text, is a professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma.

source: (http://www.ou.edu/finearts/visual-arts/programs/bachelor_of_art_in_art_history/kenneth_haltman.html)

Etymomlogical means "relating to the origin and historical development of words and their meanings." from dictionary.com. So apparently this seeks to provide a historical or scientific approach to understanding the flow of language and analysis over time?

An excerpt from earlier in the reading sheds more light on the idea behind the creation of a wood splint basket as a communal process:

"Wood-splint basket making was not a solitary effort; it was one that involved contributions of labor from within the community." (pg 53)

In much the same way that a traditional novel follows a plotted course from author, to editor, to publisher, to binding companies, a Mohegan basket, from selection of the appropriate log to the binding of the final splint, is influenced by each member of the community that oversees its creation. The basket's completion and effectivity serve as testaments to the cohesive nature of the community, without need of signatures or individual accreditation.

The painted wood-splint basket, a practical day-to-day object, demonstrates the same reverence towards the eastern and western facing openings that are observed in Mohegan ceremonial arbor. This alone exemplifies the cultural significance of the basket. In what other context would a household item be adorned with a culturally prevalent design than the basket itself holding cultural significance?

Mohegan woman played an important role in in cultural preservation. Without them creating of each basket, the story of their tribe and spirituality potentially could have been lost in translation.

Here we have Gladys Tantaquidgeon, a Mohegan elder who passes down the tradition and stories to younger generations. She is also known as the medicine woman of the tribe. She recalls, “One day, we are told, an old chief, looking out across the Great Water, toward the sunrise, saw a ‘Great White Bird’ coming toward him. . . The chief was fearful for his people. He sadly told them that many changes would take place after the coming of the white man" and ever since then, the dynamic of oral tradition has changed. The Mohegan tribe endured the challenge to protect and uphold their culture.

The Standing Rock Sioux fought to preserve their land and culture. An oil pipeline not only threatens the environment that surrounds it in the case of an oil spill, but it also it is threatening the survival of the Sioux tribe. Fishing and hunting is how they get their food and if a disaster to the pipeline would occur the Sioux would have to relocate to find food.

In the past, the superiority complex of western society threatened many Native American tribes and ultimately stripped them of their everyday life. Regarding the final approval of the construction of the pipeline, President Trump stated, “Nobody thought any politician would have the guts to approve that final leg. And I just closed my eyes and said: Do it.” which exemplifies the ignorance Western society has toward the cultural threat to Native Americans. The land of the Sioux, along with their hunting and fishing practices and other cultural aspects will be forced to change if an oil spill happened.

Imagine forcing all Mohegan basketry to cease. Imagine the loss of tradition and storytelling. The Mohegans could talk about how they once made the baskets, just like the Sioux could talking about the way they once hunted and fished, but there wouldn’t been “multiple layers of meaning” to these practices.

Supplemental Source: The Standing Rock Sioux Claim ‘Victory and Vindication’ in Court By: Robinson Meyer https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/dakota-access-standing-rock-sioux-victory-court/530427/

This statement describes the Tree of Life and the spirituality of the community as a whole.

Developed by the Mohegan Strategic Planning Committee and adopted by the Council of Elders in 1997.

"We are the Wolf People, children of Mundo, a part of the Tree of Life. our ancestors form our roots, our living Tribe is the trunk, our grandchildren are the buds of our future.

We remember and teach the stories of our ancestors.

We watch. We listen. We learn.

We respect Mother Earth, our Elders, and all that comes with Mundo.

We are willing to break arrows of peace to heal old and new wounds. We acknowledge and learn from our mistakes.

We walk as a single spirit on the Trail of Life. We are guided by thirteen generations past and responsible to thirteen generations to come.

We survive as a nation guided by the wisdom of our past. Our circular trails returns us to wholeness as a people.

Ni Ya Yo."

I relate this to the Sioux tribe and their struggle right now. They respect their land and hope that wisdom will guide them forward. They also plan on many more generations to come and don't want to jeopardize their culture because of a pipeline.

https://mohegan.nsn.us/about/information/our-tribe

The four-domed medallion consisted of four semicircular domes, four sacred trees, thirteen dots around the center circle, and the sacred center circle.

This specific design is the most common. There is a greater spiritual connection that flows through each basket and is “felt through the universe”. The Mohegans believe that all inanimate objects have a spirituality that will transcend through generation.

Here is an image of the four-domed medallion:

To truly grasp the meaning of this specific basket lined in newspaper, it is important to analyze how the Western print juxtaposes with the Mohegan communicative practices.

During this period, American settlers were flowing into Connecticut, Vermont, and surrounding states. As more land was bring occupied for the settlers, the Native Americans were forced to relocate. In her article, Thatcher states that Native Americans had two options to choose from; they could either sink into the crowd of the settlers or assert themselves within the new communities. Basket-selling was a form of preserving their native identity.

A Woodsplint Basket By: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich http://harvardmagazine.com/2002/03/a-woodsplint-basket.html

The baskets were more than just a piece of art from one specific artist. They all played an important role in creating the culture and telling the historical story. While some of the newer baskets have a signature of the artist on it, baskets were seen as part of the community and were left unsigned to eliminate the individuality aspect and present a communal component.

Baskets were used for various parts of Mohegan life (games, ceremonies, transportation of objects, storage, religion, etc). Fitzgerald expresses an idea that basketry contains a “spiritual power” since it can touch all aspects of life for multiple generations. From a Westerner point of view, these baskets are simply well utilized objects, but from a Mohegan view, these baskets are vital to the very foundation of their society.

Types of Native American baskets that have different purposes: http://www.aaawt.com/html/item/feat_1740.html

To read a baskets narrative, we must first consider material culture and its role in preserving history.

Material culture opens the undocumented parts of a society from one generation to all generations. It refers to all tangible objects from past or present societies that were utilized by the people. Examples are houses, books, mugs, chairs, etc. To study material culture is to study how each object affected the lives of those who obtained them and to understand that there is a deeper connection between objects and people.

Today, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is an example of material culture. The quilt is a representation of all the lives that were lost due to AIDS/HIV and gives hope that one day there will be a cure. All the different sections of this quilt are from all around the world and have individual background stories, yet they all come together to share the same narrative.

AIDS Memorial Quilt display in San Francisco, California Material Culture – Artifacts and The Meaning They Carry By: K. Krist Hirst https://www.thoughtco.com/material-culture-artifacts-meanings-they-carry-171783

Why are they excluded from historical records? Western concept of historical preservation and research include analyzing artifacts along with written texts. While the material aspect is important, I am shocked that these baskets have been so easily dismissed from historical records.

Symbols and objects were just as effective as literature in a sense that the Mohegan cultural background is preserved and shared throughout time. Since writing and painting utilize the same word for the Mohegan's, this solidifies their belief that communication is not just though literature. The feeling one gets from an object is sometimes stronger than words can describe.

This concept is different from the Western idea of literature. In our society, when communicating with others there is a clear difference when we use pictures verses written text. Images and objects cannot always portray the exact meaning we are trying to share with others since we all are from different backgrounds and cultures.

With American culture, objects we treasure seem to have a more materialistic vibe surrounding them. Today, we experience a connection with objects used throughout our lives such as televisions, cell phones, and laptops. Many of us cannot go hours without using one of these devices and it is due to the surface-level connection we share with them and how they can communicate our personal ideas to others around us.

The words from the newspaper that are woven into the basket have absolutely no literary purpose. While the Mohegan's might have been able to comprehend the article, the basket was created for its own unique function to serve the community. This basket shares a story with the community without having to use words. To an outsider, the artifact looks just like a standard basket, yet decades of life experience transpire from this object.

It's interesting to see the story of a migration like this from the point of view of the Native Americans who were affected by it. I've only ever read history from the point of view of those who wrote it, written and told in a traditional western style and language. It's very different and eye opening to see the story told from the Natives' perspective in their own unique way of storytelling and tradition keeping.

It's excellent that historians are able to communicate with the elders of the tribe. That important link makes it possible to verify information that's garnered from the basket. The definite knowledge of what those symbols mean could be used to decipher the meanings of future baskets when it may not be possible to verify with the tribe itself.

The physical description of the basket is extremely important to the reader, as sometimes a photograph (especially a low quality one such as the one that's presented her) is not enough to fully grasp how much work could have gone into something. The description of the reinforcements on the basket and its sturdiness possibly hint at what the basket could have been used for, perhaps heavier items. The inclusion of decorations on the basket are also especially interesting. The Mohegan's added personality to their work and cared about making it beautiful as well as functional. I also found the lining with newspaper pages to be interesting, as it indicates that the Mohegans also had contact with cultures other than their own. Having a newspaper from Hartford, Connecticut, a fairly large city in 1817, shows that they were not closed off from those who colonized land near theirs not too long before. I found a color photo of a different Mohegan basket that's a bit similar to this one, especially with the cross/medallion pattern.

Western artifacts, especially those that are from the colonials in the United States, tend to be written out and blatantly tell the truth of what happened, at least from the perspective of who wrote it. Mohegans don't decisively lay out the events that occurred because they don't have a written system that would permit them to do so. Instead of simply reading what someone said happened, as is done with recent Western history, when looking at native artifacts it's important to think of what different choices in craft represent in terms of the culture that the artifact came from.

Since white people tend to write history of events, it would make sense that we've convinced ourselves that the natives would immediately leave behind their rich culture for our modern technology. Especially back in the 19th century, many people saw the natives as uncivilized and believed that if they were exposed to the technology of the colonists then they would suddenly become integrated. This is a non-native bias though. The photo below shows the extremely negative stereotypes that white people tend to have, especially back when this propaganda was created.

Not only is the land imbued with spiritual significance, but the water is as well. Mohegan cosmology holds that the first humans crossed ‘the great fresh water’ to settle Mohegan lands. Water is an important part of their cultural identity. This is why building the DAPL is so careless and so devastating to the Sioux people. Not only does it violate treaties, not only could it potentially damage their water supply, but in a cruel imitation, it mimics a Native American conception of the creation of humanity. Could there be any more of a symbol of Western greed than an oil pipeline thoughtlessly constructed over the Sioux people's water supply?

The way that many Westerners use land is for almost purely exploitative reasons. In a capitalist economic system,land represents untapped resources which in turn represents profits not being made. Westerners, by and large, ravage resources and funnel it into this capitalist system where greed and cutthroat competition makes you the most money. If someone were to analyze an oil rig in the same way Fitzgerald analyzes a Mohegan basket, they would discover that one of our cultural values is a total lack of appreciation and respect for nature. Even though steps are being made by Americans and Westernized people to place a much larger emphasis on the protection of the Earth, our mines and drills and pollutants and factories paint a much different picture of abuse and exploitation of the planet's resources.

Native conceptions of land and how it should be used are totally different. Land is not a resource to be exploited. It inhabits the world of physical objects, but, as Gladys Tantaquidgeon said, the land is also elevated to a spiritual realm of utmost significance. In the same way that we analyze a Mohegan basket, we can also examine the land as a physical object that is reflective of Mohegan cultural values, and really all Native cultures including the Sioux tribe.

It's clear from details like this that the natives functioned very much as one unit rather than looking for glory by doings something on their own. Western values, especially at the point in time in which we were colonizing, rest heavily on the idea of glory for one rather than for a whole. The fact that basket making was a group activity that was still fun and culturally rich, including the singing of songs and telling of stories, shows that the natives were truly devoted to each other and their community. It's a far cry from the values of Europeans and even those in the United States at this point in time. This statue of Christopher Columbus shows the Western value of glory, even if the person had help or did terrible things.

The dedication to nature is certainly clear in the way that the Mohegans liked to decorate the basket. Even when painting a specific design, they still incorporated nature into the design.The simple color choice of pink and green suggests at brightly colored flowers and fruits tied in with grass and leaves. It's interesting that they chose to specifically paint those aspects of nature on a piece of art that's also considered a part of the maker's "spiritual force", as mentioned earlier in this piece. It truly shows how much respect Native Americans have for nature and how it's a large part of many of their cultures. The Mohegan tribe actually describes their Wigwam festival in the following source, in which they'd thank the earth for its may gifts. Their love for nature is certainly an important part of their culture. A photo from the festival in modern times is also included.

https://www.mohegan.nsn.us/explore/heritage/wigwam-festival

These woven baskets (and other materialistic cultural items) should not be considered and analyzed as texts, and therefore not be treated as such. In general, doing so would result in missing some of the most critical components of the reason they exist or what they truly symbolize. There is no true author, there is no audience, and there are no literary devices to analyze.

http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/about/

The Oneida Indian Nation is an indigenous nation of Native American people whose sacred and sovereign homelands are located in Central New York.

Samson had compared his uprooting to the original migration tale of his people. He probably felt a deep connection to the story, as he could relate to it, and in order to fully reflect the message back he sent a basket with that story to his sister. An act like this proves that physical objects contain more feelings than a simple letter would have been able to impart.

This is the core of material culture analysis: examining an object that may not have been considered worthy of analysis because it’s seemingly just a chair, or an arrowhead, or a basket. The failure to study Ashanti stools with the same intensity and dedication that a historian might review a Roman official’s personal correspondence points to a historical ignorance towards the importance of cultural significance in analysis. The magic of material cultural analysis is that it allows us to examine the emphasis that a culture places on things.

When societies of the future write and communicate about the importance of the iPhone in the United State’s culture during the 2010’s, they may begin by explaining the technical details of precisely how the iPhone is engineered, or a physical description of its minimalist design aesthetic, but any study of the iPhone that doesn’t include the psychological impacts of being always connected, the zeitgeist of dating apps, and the way that the iPhone, an object, changed the way Americans work, play, and relate to one another would be incomplete. In previous eras of historical analysis, the iPhone may not have been studied this way, but anyone living in America today can tell you that as a matter of historical significance, this object we all carry in our pockets today can explain our current culture better than almost anything else.

More information about Ashanti stools here: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/africa-ap/v/sika-dwa-kofi-golden-stool

Image source: www.hamillgallery.com/ASANTE/AsanteStools/AbstractStools/AsanteStool34.html

The iPhone Project: Multimodal Object Analysis http://represent.danieltlamb.net/multimodal-object-analysis/

Created a sense of community within the Natives. It was a collective effort to weave the baskets. Possibly a type of ritual where everyone felt they had their own place

No one person truly created the baskets. The essences of the lores spoken to the weavers made their way to the look of the baskets. This excerpt also shows that women played a vital role in passing on the culture of the tribe; they weren't excluded from the history.

These baskets were not only for decoration within the community, they were also used for trade. These people made a living out of passing on their traditions to whoever liked them, either for the historical context or for the aesthetic. When was the last time someone paid hard earned money for a letter you wrote to a loved one? The Natives managed to sell one of the few and unique things they had to offer to the world: their culture.

They had to send their most charming and most popular people in order to sell and encourage people to buy the special cultural baskets.

The significance of basic materials created within a certain cultural structure is vital to the advancement of the traditions and ideals of the cultures. In both "Mohegan Wood-Splint Basket" and "Mark Their Words: Medieval Bookmarks" two incredibly overlooked yet culturally significant material usage objects are observed. It's the simplest of items, the ones that are rooted in the daily routine of the people, that have the most stories to tell.

The woven baskets (and other materialistic cultural items such as bookmarks) should not be considered and analyzed as texts according to the Mohegan Wood-splint Basket chapter, and therefore not be treated as such. In general, doing so would result in missing some of the most critical components of the reason they exist or what they truly symbolize. There is no true author, there is no audience, and there are no literary devices to analyze.

Rather than analyzing the literal contexts of the materials, one has to make meaning of each three dimensional detail and why it is there. For example, in the case of the Mohegan basket, the lining contains scraps of newspaper from 1817, which gives an accurate time period of when it was made. The same can be said about the found item type of bookmark during Medieval times. For example, a leaf used as a bookmark can tell you that the person had been reading outside, and you can even go as far as to find out what type of tree the leaf was from, and draw conclusions based upon that.

There may exist some opinions that stake the claim that typical items that were used in the general lives of individuals are not as important as written primary source documents. Although it is true that written documents are more likely to contain confirmed specific details, they sadly cannot provide a true visual perception of the writer's life. Materials are far more tangible and physical to provide a deeper look and the historical aspects of a culture that cannot be represented on text.

Culture analysis does not have to solely focus on written media. Looking past the surface of materialistic culture is also as vital to the development of ideas of how a certain community lived in the past.

http://www.stjo.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5673

East (Yellow) - ...the beginning of a new day. It is also the beginning of understanding...

South (Red) - ...warmth and growing. The sun's rays are powerful in drawing life from the earth. It is said the life of all things comes from the south....

West (Black) - ...the end of life. ...also the source of water: rain, lakes, streams and rivers. Nothing can live without water, so the west is vital.

North (White) - ... hardships and discomfort to people. Therefore, north represents the trials people must ensure and the cleansing they must undergo.

Because they were losing their culture, the Natives now have another reason to create these already-important materials; so they don't forget were they come from due to the cultural genocide happening to them.

The baskets were a form of writing to the Mohegans. They were a way of preserving their stories and history. Because of this the Mohegans would not sign the basket because to sign the basket would be to take credit for the history of all the Mohegan people.

The Mohegan use the same word for both writing and painting. This implies that to them art is writing. They communicate ideas, feelings, and concepts through their artwork. Much like modern day artists, the "paintings" created often have a much deeper meaning to the artist that is intended to be communicated to both current and future generations.

Over the course of almost a full year, protestors gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to rally against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which, if constructed, would cross into Sioux lands and potentially cause irreversible damage to the reservation’s water supply. The fight against the pipeline was waged on two fronts, the reservation and the courtroom. The physical world and the world of words.

On a broader scale, the showdown at Standing Rock is just another example of a much deeper, older fight between Western and Native culture. A fight that started when Christopher Columbus landed his ships in the Bahamas, claimed it as property of Spain, killed and enslaved Native Americans, and began a process of Westerners stealing land and resources from Indigenous populations that continues into today.

The superiority Western people feel they have over Native people boils down to a critical misunderstanding of Native culture. Western culture and history is recorded as the achievements of rich white men. Native culture has a more communal, holistic approach to recording history, an approach that historically has been categorized as ‘primitive’, or with the racially charged term ‘savage’. Material culture analysis levels the playing field of historical analysis and allows us to examine a culture not just through written records, but through objects of immense cultural significance, objects that give insight into how a culture views the greatest polarities of life. Jules David Prown, the grandfather of material culture analysis, gave us a few examples of these polarities, like life vs. death, acceptance vs. rejection, and security vs. danger. I would like to suggest a few more that I think are helpful in thinking about the cultural divide between Native culture and Western culture: duality vs. nonduality, Capitalism vs. resources, advanced vs. primitive, and individuality vs. community.

This cultural divide, and our conceptions of where these two cultures side on these polarities, is the bedrock upon which Christopher Columbus committed Genocide, upon which Andrew Jackson ravaged lands, and upon which our government built a pipeline across what wasn’t ours. This is why material cultural analysis is so crucially important. The failure of Westerners to understand Native culture and see it as equal to our own, instead of inferior is the crux of one of our Nation’s greatest sins.

Ancient Bookmarks https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/mark-their-words-medieval-bookmarks/

Bookmarks have been used to save reading spots in books since the middle ages. In general, they were used for Mass book readings. There were originally three different kinds of bookmarks; Fore-edge bookmarks, Register bookmarks, and Found Object bookmarks.

These cultural bookmarks ranged from complicated to generally simple designs. Register bookmarks were the most overtly complex, either from having multiple strips or ribbons to mark multiple places, or a mechanic type of dial that can mark exactly what paragraph and column one left off on. Fore-edge was a basic index tab type of bookmark; pages were cut and folded in such a way that they jutted out and could easily lead to a marked page. The simplest bookmark was just created from found items.

Personally, the most intriguing bookmark was the found items type of bookmark. Seeing what type of random items people had laying around when they were reading is almost like a time and location stamp. For example, a leaf used as a bookmark can tell you that the person had been reading outside, and you can even go as far as to find out what type of tree the leaf was from, and draw conclusions based upon that.

Jansen, Jeneka. “Mark Their Words: Medieval Bookmarks.” Medievalfragments, 10 July 2014, medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/mark-their-words-medieval-bookmarks/.

I think it would actually be extremely hard for the Mohegans to leave their culture behind in the seemingly 'easy' way that McMullen describes. Their culture is so rich that it'd be impossible to leave that culture behind simply because the tribal lands are being left behind. This CNN article about historical treasures and sites in Italy being lost to an earth quake is evidence that the loss of one's cultural grounds and artifacts can definitely be extremely damaging to morale, but it doesn't destroy the culture altogether. It's true that artifacts can be very important to understanding other cultures, especially cultures that had no written language, but members of that culture will come together to preserve the culture that they're proud to be a part of. It's actually a bit insulting to presume that the culture was specifically tied solely to the tribal lands that the Mohegans lived on, as it was a principal of theirs that their culture actually lived within them more that anything (as mentioned at another point in this piece).

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/25/europe/italy-earthquake-historic-sites-damaged/

Even in Western society, specifically around the time that the basket was made, it was considered an integral part of a woman's job as a mother to teach their children. Since there was no written history in terms of Native American culture, the women would teach their children and the community's children about the history of their culture through creation, as opposed to through written word in the western sense. Still, both cultures seem to see it as a woman's responsibility to be a teacher at this point in time, a sort of nurturer. This ideal reminded me a bit of the Western idea of Separate Spheres, wherein men were to be the ones that went out and did the work while the women stayed home and cared for the children while also educating them about current news, philosophy, and history. We learned about this in my history class in high school, but I've found an article online that tells the same story.

https://www.thoughtco.com/separate-spheres-ideology-3529523

The Mohegans link the world of objects and the world of words in a way that is foreign to Westerners. We have rhetorical forms of communication that are visual, like a moving painting, written, like an academic essay, and spoken, like a rousing call to action. Typically, these categories are fairly static. We don’t often mix visual rhetoric with written analysis, except in fringe forms like a photo essay.

The Mohegans have no such distinctions. Their culture infuses communal activities, like basket-weaving, with written, visual, and spoken rhetoric, in a way that makes the finished product a truly all-encompassing record of their shared societal values and customs. This practice is foreign to many Westerners and people who are used to analyzing Western rhetoric, and is why material cultural analysis is so useful. It allows historians to examine a culture like the Mohegans through a lens that is not rich, white and male. As we see at Standing Rock, the failure to examine other perspectives that don’t cleanly fit into our standards of historical record result in devastating results for populations that aren’t rich, white and male.

This is an example of Western individuality that isn’t as present in Native culture. The basket is a shared cultural document, the work of an entire village or population. They craft it together, they literally sing it into existence together. Western historical records, particularly physical objects are typically one individual’s possession or creation.This is not the case in Mohegan culture and represents an interesting polarity between Western and Native culture: individuality vs. community.

Our country was founded on the premise of individuality. The American Dream is centered on individuality. The power of one person to start a business, create a product, build a home. When the entire framework of our reality is built upon individuality it can be exceedingly difficult to imagine and understand a culture who operates as a cohesive whole in creating historical and cultural objects.

The Mohegan culture fuses together the world of words, through oral tradition, and the world of objects, through communal basket weaving. This is demonstrative of a culture that embraces non-dual thinking, pushing past the binary culture so many Westerners embrace. The basket is a touchstone for all aspects of their culture and should be studied as a prime export of the Mohegan’s values and history.

Here are some examples of Mohegan songs: https://www.moheganlanguage.com//Listen.aspx?CategoryID=1

The first song is one that might have been sung during the weaving of the basket, the second is a lullaby, and the third is a song women sung while harvesting food. The lyrics of the third song say “Thank you God for the corn, thank you God for the beans, thank you God for the squash, thank you God for the Earth.”

Moving from a Western to a Native perspective is not an easy prospect. It requires us to not just examine an object differently or use different research and analytical methods; it requires us to examine our role in all of it and confront our own biases.

Haltman writes this in Introduction to American Artifacts, “Composing and revising an objective-as-possible description frees one to move from a narrow focus on the object itself to a focus on the relationship between the object and oneself as its perceiver.”

If we don’t, then we end up knowing a lot about the object, but not actually knowing the object and the truth it represents. We end up being ignorant to that culture and its values, its philosophy, its activities, and its practices. This sort of ignorance serves to diminish the humanity of cultures that are different from our own and can have disturbing results. Cultural ignorance is complicit in cultural destruction.

In Western culture, we tend to be dualistic people. We like to separate and categorize things. An object has one purpose, and that is to be used. We use baskets as baskets, nothing more. Native cultures embrace a more non dualistic view of the world, in which a possession can inhabit both a utilitarian space, the world of of objects, but also function as a vessel for expressing shared cultural values

This is emblematic of a larger schism between Western and Native people over the nature of duality and nonduality. Native cultures are adept at having an object serve multiple purposes. There isn’t an obsession over specific duties and functions for specific things. This is a firmly Western idea of objects, and is one of the main contributors to our materialistic, consumer culture that we inhabit today. Native cultures would never own a lemon squeezer, or a garlic press, because these are things that only serve one very specific thing. They have no power to communicate a narrative or share a cultural value.

Background on Mohegans: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mohegan

The Mohegans occupied most of the upper Thames valley in what is now Connecticut, U.S. They later seized land from other tribes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The traditional Mohegan economy was based on the cultivation of corn (maize) and on hunting and fishing. Colonial settlements gradually displaced the Mohegan, and their numbers dwindled from imported diseases and other hardships. Many of them joined other native settlements.

Article on Modern Day (1990) Mohegans: http://articles.latimes.com/1990-11-11/news/vw-5965_1_mohegan-museum

The name Tantaquidgeon was a family name among the Mohegans long before the Mayflower came to New England shores. The name means going fast. Gladys Tantaquidgeon's aunt, Fidelia Fielding, who died in 1908, was the last speaker of the ancient Mohegan language. Gladys' father, John Tantaquidgeon, who lived from 1865 to 1949, was the last Mohegan basket maker.

I think it's an incredible thing that the natives are focused on projecting pieces of the souls of their community onto the things that they create. On top of being able to look at how the basket was made, historians can also learn a lot about the context that the basket was made in and even learn about the specific person who made the basket. I feel like I can speculate that different basket makers may have different ways of representing the same things, similar to how different writers or poets can use very different metaphors to try and describe the same feeling. Seeing how one person represents an even compared to another can provide different points of view, helping catalog information to decipher artifacts that are found down the road.

It's very important to be able to say decisively that the baskets do, in fact, hold cultural significance to the Mohegans. It would be damaging to try and create an nonexistent narrative by assigning meaning to something that wasn't intended to have meaning to begin with. Once it's been established that the baskets and their decorations were meant to be 'communicative or narrative devices' we can then begin to try and decipher what kind of history is being depicted by the basket.

In this article, the author John Maguire attempts to solve the problem of why current college students are bad writers. Maguire says the students of today are much worse than students from the past because modern day students are not being taught certain skills that would have been commonly taught in high school back in the day. He says that now some students do not even know how to use basic elementary words in sentences such as "although" and "despite" despite them being college students.

One of the skills Maguire claims students are missing is the skill of giving specific concrete examples. He says an easy way to become a better writer is to write physically because all abstract ideas come from objects. The other problem he mentions is that students nowadays write too abstract. His solution is to get the abstract idea but then find objects which relate to the idea. This method helps the students write better examples. According to Maguire, although you may not become the best writer in the world, mastering these two skills will make you a better writer than before.

This serves as an antithesis to the article. What the author is saying is that the specifics of ideas truly do matter. While abstract ideas are important, there is an ever-present inability to ground these ideas into a usable form.

The machete carries with it a unique duality. Whereas guns are distinctly weapons and things like hoes are distinctly tools, the machete's purpose can change on a whim and the transition from tool to weapon is seamless, where as it would not be naturally easy for a hoe to be used as a weapon.

The machete isn't only seen as a weapon; it is a sinister one. Many fictional villains such as the one in the author's book are portrayed with machetes. In Haltman's introduction to American Artifacts, he describes objects as being not only a record of themselves in a physical sense, but also as carrying non-physical record of things like concepts and times with which they are associated. Because of their value as tools, many oppressed peoples, such as slaves and oppressed workers, had access to machetes and because of this the machete is the weapon that was used in many violent uprisings of workers and slaves in the past, such as the Philippine Revolution and the Haitian Revolution. The machete was also a weapon of choice in the horrors of the Rwandan Genocide. This past of cruelty and violence is imprinted upon machetes in exactly the way that Haltman describes.

source:(https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/the-history-of-the-machete-history-essay.php)

This brings forth the interesting symbolism of weapons being seen as a type of power. If workers are allowed to carry weapons then they posses some sort of power, a power that is meant to be held only by those in charge. It is this fear of the power, and subsequently that power falling into the wrong hands, that causes the line between tool and weapon to become so ill-defined: of course the worker must be able to carry tools but how powerful a tool can they posses before they should be considered dangerous and that tool be considered a weapon?

A human being could do a great deal of damage to another human being with a shovel; it is weighted enough, has an edge, and a long handle to allow for a very leveraged swing.Why is it that the machete is seen so differently? Both items could do serious damage to a person, however, I couldn't imagine a man being arrested for carrying a shovel over his arm.

Due to cultural actions around the machete, from its original use as a farming and utility tool, to a weapon used to carry out slave revolts as well as murder during the Rwandan Genocide, it has become a symbol of violence and brutality rather simple a simple tool.

https://gregcotter.wordpress.com/prownian-analysis-2

Jules David Prown is the Paul Mellon Professor Emeritus of Art History at Yale University, and developer of the “Prownian Method” in which is included “Prownian Analysis”. Prownian Analysis is a means of identifying, and examining objects through detailed physical description, guessing at uses of the object, and treating the object as a fiction as a way of relating the object to more broad concepts. By applying Prownian Analysis to the examination of an object, the examiner should end with a rich description of the object, as well as a vivid idea of why the object was produced, and for whom.

How do we go about studying material culture through the Prownian method?

This is to be viewed as more or less a practical guide, a manual for entering into the practice of understanding material culture.

Material culture begins in the tangible, physical realm, in the purpose of not just examining the artifact itself, but also to understand the culture surrounding it through the way they used artifacts and the value and worth they imbued it with.

Prown's explanation of how to choose an object that is worthy of undergoing material cultural analysis.

How does an object or artifact relate to the greatest polarities of our life, like pain and comfort, or freedom and constraint? This is the sort of question that people who analyze material culture ask.

Prown juxtaposes the binary, philosophical bedrock of a culture that objects often are able to express, with physical traits of objects themselves, such as smooth and rough, light and dark. His argument is that an object's physical characteristics are linked to a culture's greatest values and beliefs, and that the study of the link from Physical to Metaphysical is material cultural analysis.

All aspects of an object's physicality.

By being constrained by words and having to figure out which words suit the situation, tone, and meaning, we are forced to further analyze how we feel about something, and how it works in the context that is provided. As different languages have different words and connotations, there may be more appropriate phrases or more difficulty, giving a further avenue for observation and analysis of subject matters.

When we examine material culture, we don't then express our analysis in our own culture's form of material culture, we express it in rhetoric.

It's interesting that in an essay about material culture, Haltman spends so much time elaborating about words and writing; the realm of words, not the realm of objects.

As we write, we are forced to examine our own cultural biases and the full implications that those biases might have on clouding our analysis.

When normally percieving a picture or an object, we form our own view base on our own collected memories and resultant perceptions. However, through a shared link, such as language, we are able to peek at other's perceptions and be influenced by their through processes, diluting our own thoughts with theirs and changing our thinking.

After we describe the object in all forms, "material, spatial, and temporal." and examine our own biases, we can then proceed to subjectivity; 'how does this make me feel?', 'what does it do to me?'

Description to deduction, deduction to questions, questions to speculation.

These stages of the analysis of material culture are done in this particular order because it effectively extrapolates true the cultural impact of an object

Engage with it, and see what happens. It is not meant to be a cookie-cutter exercise

Description and deduction are two sides of the same coin, one providing information in mass, while the other provides by lacking, the empty space and the filled areas contrasting each other and providing a deeper, more nuanced meaning. Although it may be possible to have discussions or interchange of ideas with only one, it is far more beneficial and intresting to have both.