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Art makes society: an introductory visual
essay
Elizabeth DeMarrais
a
& John Robb
a
a
Division of Archaeology , University of Cambridge , Cambridge , UK
Published online: 21 Jun 2013.
To cite this article: Elizabeth DeMarrais & John Robb (2013): Art makes society: an introductory visual essay,
World Art, 3:1, 3-22
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2. Guest Editorial
Art makes society: an introductory visual essay
Elizabeth DeMarrais* and John Robb
Division of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
In this visual essay that serves as an introduction to the set of articles
presented in this issue, we illustrate four ways that art makes society.
We adopt a stance informed by recent perspectives on material culture,
moving away from thinking about art purely in aesthetic terms, instead
asking how art objects have significance in particular cultural and
social contexts. Arguing that art is participatory as well as visually
affecting, we first suggest that art creates sites of activity for shared
interaction. Second, we discuss the varied ways that people use art to
create and assert representational models for social relations. Third, we
consider the varied roles of art as cultural capital, marking out
members of society through shared forms of knowledge or access to
art. Finally, we document the ways that art serves as a medium of
exclusion and as a means for resisting authority or challenging power
relations. We highlight the layered meanings inherent in many
artworks.
Keywords: art; material culture; performance; social relations;
archaeology
Introduction: art is doing, not viewing!
Anthropological perspectives on art have changed radically in the last three
decades. In the modern West, ‘art’ has traditionally been understood as a
form of high culture, participated in through norms of connoisseurship,
patronage, and individual expression. Images and objects have been
primarily seen as things to view, set apart in museums, galleries, and other
public places. Archaeologists and anthropologists have traditionally treated
art in a parallel way, as symbolic expressions of meanings and values. In
such an approach, scholars viewed art with the aim of interpreting (or
decoding) an act of communication expressed in conventional symbolic
forms.
Recently, however, scholars in both anthropology and the various
disciplines focused on art studies have expressed scepticism that such a
perspective can encompass the realities of art as it is experienced,
thought about, and engaged with, both in Western settings and in the
*Corresponding author. Email: ed226@cam.ac.uk
World Art, 2013
Vol. 3, No. 1, 322, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2013.782334
# 2013 Taylor Francis
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3. wider world. In art studies, a material turn has foregrounded the
presence of objects more than their interpretation (Moxey 2008).
Anthropologists argue that concepts of the uniqueness of artworks, for
example, may be emphasised more in the West than elsewhere. In line
with developments in material culture theory (Miller 2005; Tilley 1999;
Tilley et al. 2006), art is now seen more in terms of its participation,
engagement, and actions with people, rather than simply as objects
and images to be passively viewed (Gell 1998; Morphy and Perkins
2006).
Dissanayake expresses this succinctly:
Regarding art as a behaviour an instance of ‘making special’ shifts
the emphasis from the modernist’s view of art as object or quality or the
postmodernist’s view of it as text or commodity to the activity itself (the
making or doing and appreciating), which is what it is in many pre-modern
societies where the object is essentially an occasion for or an accoutrement
to ceremonial participation . . . (Dissanayake 1995, 223)
In this introduction to the special issue ‘Art makes society’, we explore
the implications of this approach. We do not consider the theoretical
arguments in depth, but instead illustrate with examples the range of ways
that art helps to constitute social relations. Our aim is to provide a general
context for the articles which make up this issue.
Writing as archaeologists and anthropologists exploring a topic which
stands at the crossroads of many fields, we wish to position ourselves
clearly. One goal of the contributors to this issue is simply to provoke
archaeologists and anthropologists to think about art in relation to societal
dynamics. In response to doubts about the relevance of a traditional,
Western category of ‘art’ for the understanding of other cultures, many
anthropologists have abandoned the term altogether in favour of a focus
on material culture. Exceptions are anthropologists working at the
interface of Western and non-Western cultures, who ask how the
specifically Western conceptions of art are used in appropriating and
commodifying indigenous creations (Küchler 1988; Marcus and Myers
1995; Thomas 1991). Archaeologists generally follow suit. As a consequence,
art is left untheorised, except through a semiotic/representationalist
paradigm that limits what we can do, beyond trying often fruitlessly
and usually contentiously to interpret the content. If instead we
acknowledge that art is material culture with specific properties and
capacities, we can understand much more. Looking beyond the disciplin-
ary boundaries of archaeology and anthropology, we also recognise
important theoretical developments in fields such as art history and visual
culture studies. The movement towards regarding the art object as
influential through its presence and material qualities (Moxey 2008) is
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4. parallel to the material turn happening across the humanities and social
sciences more broadly, an art-theory cognate to ‘thing theory’ in literature
(Brown 2001) and approaches to materiality in anthropology (Miller
2005). Indeed, since these themes are already commonly explored in the
archaeological literature, we see great potential for studies of art to open
up a rich dialogue across disciplines.
Art as material culture
The shift in perspective described above is intertwined with broader
transformations in anthropological approaches to art. Some of the impact
of art certainly derives from its aesthetic properties; for example, in ritual,
emotional impacts may derive in part from the beauty or tactility of the
objects or aspects of performance, or from the virtuosity displayed by an
artisan (DeMarrais 2013). In most cultures, some objects are fashioned
with effort and skill to create a strong aesthetic impression (Coote 1992;
Morphy and Perkins 2006); the natural world similarly has aesthetic
qualities that inspire artists as well as viewers. At the same time,
anthropologists have traditionally and rightly been cautious about impos-
ing a high culture, aesthetic view of ‘art’ on non-Western peoples and,
indeed, on European works before the Renaissance. The category of ‘art’ is
often problematic, as ethnographers have repeatedly demonstrated (Gell
1998; Layton 1991; Myers 1991). As Appadurai (1986) pointed out over 25
years ago, an object’s significance is as dependent on its cultural context
and history as on its intrinsic properties. Indigenous ‘art’ often operated
within completely different frames from those which Westerners habi-
tually impose on things designated as art. An excellent example is
Küchler’s (1988) study of Malanggan statues, which were never intended
to last. Although Western collectors treat the statues as art, purchasing
them for display in museums, the statues were meant to decay, with the
making of the statue serving to cement and to secure the memory of the
deceased. Thus, the things archaeologists and anthropologists understand
as ‘art’ include images and objects produced for uses that range well
beyond what ‘art’ does in our own society. Further examples include
numerous medieval paintings framing ritual settings (as altarpieces for
example), the sculptures of Classical Antiquity that became objects of
veneration, and much prehistoric and non-Western rock art executed as
acts of participation with perhaps little concern for creating permanently
visible or lasting designs (Fowles and Arterberry 2013).
A further excellent example of the interpretive problem emerges from
Gell’s (1992, 1998) insights concerning the Trobriand Islanders’ canoe
prow-boards:
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5. . . . These boards are richly carved and painted, and they are the first thing
that the Trobrianders’ overseas exchange partners get to see when the
Trobriand flotilla arrives on their shores, before exchange operations get
under way. The purpose of these beautiful carvings is to demoralize the
opposition . . . Neither the Trobrianders nor their exchange partners operate
a category of ‘art’ as such; from their point of view the efficacy of these
boards stems from the powerful magical associations they have . . . (Gell
1998, 69)
As both Gell (1998) and Dissanayake (1995) have argued, from different
starting points, the visibility of the objects, their social effects, and their
distinctiveness (often indicated by the time and effort put into their
making) reveal that these objects were intended to have an impact.
In this collection of papers, in line with ongoing theoretical debate,
contributors emphasise not aesthetic qualities per se, but the material
realities of art (objects and images) in their social contexts. If art is seen as
(visual) material culture, we need to look past approaches to art as
meaning, as symbols and as representation (and beyond aesthetics) to
consider how art as material culture has direct and lasting influences
on human beings. Contributors explore how art mediates power relations,
establishes ideational realms, as well as influencing the routine encounters
and engagements of everyday life. Similarly, art as material culture has
political significance, expressed in varied ways, often tied to the acquisi-
tion and circulation of desired objects by the powerful (Helms 1992).
While art can be displayed or used in rituals to generate consensus
(DeMarrais 2011), contributors to this collection also explore cases in
which the shared act of making art may generate new social ties or
reinforce sentiments of solidarity (Fowles and Arterberry 2013). Art can
innovate, express cosmological themes, engage with a narrative, or re-
work elements of an existing cultural tradition. All of these effects are
elements of the way art facilitates social action and agency, rather than
remaining a passive object of viewership.
In understanding art as action, the question we ask is: What does an
(art) object do, and how? The interpretative movement involves recognis-
ing that what we call art is a form of material culture intended to have
specific social effects. To examine its material and design characteristics is
to begin to understand how it worked. In the following section, we
consider the implications of an approach to art as action.
Art as action
To the extent that art grows out of performance and participation, it
involves a sequence of gestures that may draw groups of people together.
In this way, art may constitute a group of participants, involve them in
making it or using it in ritual and other ways. These social activities will
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6. frame art for discussion or reaction as well as, in some cases, involve
viewing by an audience. These approaches to art are distinct from recent
conventions invoking a solitary artist producing work for the museum or
gallery wall.
In modern society, art allows people to ‘remake themselves and their
worlds, while commenting on their values and beliefs’ (from the World Art
website, http://www.tandfonline.com/action/aboutThisJournal?show=
aimsScopejournalCode=rwor20). Archaeologists, of course, rarely have
access to thought processes; however, the range and diversity of art from
past societies is, in our view, testament to the importance of this ongoing
‘commentary’ among human beings. The archaeological record contains
not only the objects and images (‘art’) of past societies, but also the
locations where they were made, displayed, or used. Further insights come
from art that decorated buildings, was erected as monuments, or made
visible in other settings in which fixed objects or images are found. The
scale, visibility, and accessibility of these objects and images are further
sources of information about their cultural significance.
In the rest of this essay, we present a range of examples to consider the
varied ways in which art makes society. We consider: (1) the ways art can
frame a setting; (2) art as participation; (3) art as representational models
for social relations; and (4) art as a medium for exclusion or resistance.
Art creates sites of activity
Art establishes settings for action, framing architectural or open air spaces
used for gatherings, public events, or collective action. Large-scale or
monumental installations, such as memorials, create sites for the re-
enactment of shared memories. Visual art can help to create a ritual
setting by setting it apart, distinguishing ritual space from quotidian
contexts; art may also help to set the scene through references to liturgical
narratives. At a more intimate scale, a framed reproduction of an
Impressionist painting in a doctor’s waiting room can establish an
unthreatening atmosphere of middle-of-the-road gentility to comfort
anxious patients.
In acts of monumentalisation, people deploy large-scale artworks to
create settings in which group memory is established and experienced.
Often, as is the case with war memorials, these settings involve rites of
commemoration (Figure 1). On other occasions, memories may actually be
created or invented through the art, as in the African Burial Ground
monument in New York City.
Large-scale art framing a ritual setting is visible in Figure 2, a rock art
panel from the American Southwest. These murals were widely distributed
and highly visible; this image of San Juan anthropomorphs was pecked into
an outcrop in Butler Wash (south-eastern Utah) during the Basketmaker II
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7. Period (AD 50500). It shows a central figure who is ‘life-size’ (about 5 feet
tall) flanked by additional figures wearing ritual adornments and head-
dresses. Rock art panels were often created at open-air sites, near locations
used for autumn gatherings for ‘. . . exchange of marriage partners, trading,
gaming . . . and political maneuvering among shamans’ (Robins and Hays-
Gilpin 2000, 234). Rock art was highly visible and public, created on alcove
walls, cliffs or on boulders near water sources. Reuse of some locations is
indicated by the crowding of images or superimposition, suggesting
ongoing modification (Charles and Cole 2006, 194).
‘Decorative’ rather than political or ritual art is far from unknown in
the ancient world, as in the famous frescoes and mosaics from Roman
Figure 1. Ypres, Belgium: memorial arch for British war dead of World War I. The
walls are covered with the names of the dead, in a form of textual art; note space
for ceremonial assembly within monument. Photo: J. Farr.
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8. Figure 2. Prehistoric rock art panel, Basketmaker II period, AD 50500, Butler
Wash, Utah. Photo: Robert Mark and Evelyn Billo of Rupestrian CyberServices.
Figure 3. Decorative frescos and mosaics in a bedroom from the Villa of
P. Fannius Synistor, Pompeii, Italy, first century AD. The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, Rogers Fund, 1903 (03.14.13a-g), photographed by Schecter Lee. Image:
# Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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9. Pompeii (Figure 3). While ancient people no doubt took aesthetic pleasure
in such settings, we cannot simply regard them as ‘art for art’s sake’ in
the modern sense; much as in the example of paintings in a doctor’s
waiting room, the choice of content, style and placement for such
imagery whether theological and mythological, naturalistic or erotic,
or geometrical may have helped create appropriate spaces for particular
activities or social relationships.
Art is participatory
Art often invites participation, creating a focus or medium for relational
action (Fowles and Arterberry 2013). Adornment of the body through use
Figure 4. Mask, Torres Strait, nineteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Nelson A.
Rockefeller Gift, 1967 (1978.412.1510). Image: # Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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10. of masks, costumes, body paintings, or tattoos transforms the body
temporarily or permanently, while drawing attention. Figure 4 shows a
mask from the Torres Strait. Made from turtleshell, wood, feathers,
coconut fibre, resin, shell, and paint, this mask not only demonstrates the
skills with which ritual adornments were produced, but also reminds us of
the dramatic impressions they likely generated when worn. Masks are
quintessentially participatory art; they enrol people into temporary
assemblages of people and artifice, or create composite, living moments
of altered realities.
Beyond specific events, the wearing of badges, insignia, or regalia in
daily life also generates shared identities, marking out individuals as
members of groups. Figure 5 shows a pilgrim badge from England, worn to
display the pilgrim’s active participation in pilgrimage and his or her wider
affiliation with Christianity. Such forms of dress not only allowed people to
objectify and to categorise themselves; they also enmeshed others in
political relations such as colonialism (Loren 2013).
In addition, the making or using of art objects or images may involve
multiple participants, who forge bonds of solidarity through shared
activities. The making of the art may be as (or more) important as the
final product, seen for example in the collective endeavour of sewing a
handmade quilt. Handprints attesting presence and participation are
among the oldest motifs in human art, occurring in Palaeolithic painted
caves. Around the world, rock art often consists of repeated motifs,
surprisingly inconspicuous and sometimes ephemeral, which may result
from gestures that comprised parts of a performed narrative of some kind.
Figure 5. Pilgrim badge, England, fourteenth century. British Museum
1898,0720.1. Image: # The British Museum.
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11. In modern settings, graffiti can attest to a human wish to assert one’s
presence. Figure 6a shows a monument marking the location where
Garibaldi, hero of the Italian Risorgimento, was wounded in a minor
skirmish; Figure 6b shows graffiti applied by school children during a visit
to the site. The epigraphs, all along the lines of ‘Peppe loves Maria’, convey
anything but the patriotic sentiments that the monument is supposed to
evoke, but they do attest participation in the spirit of a school trip.
In archaeological settings, decorated pottery was often used to
distinguish feasts as special events. In northwest Argentina, libation
vessels decorated with modelled figures of animals are common in sites of
the Regional Developments Period (AD 9501430). Figure 7 shows a
libation bowl; adorned with a feline head at one end, the bowl has an
opening on the opposite side to facilitate drinking of its contents. More
generally, the sharing of food and drink in ritual settings helps to sustain
social ties; in the south Andes, the use of animal depictions probably also
referenced shamanic or cult activity.
Finally, some art objects require considerable expertise or skill to make
but are consumed or destroyed during their intended use. Malanggan
objects, mentioned above, are excellent examples since they are implicated
in forging memory. Other art objects whose appropriate use involves
destruction include Mexican piñatas, elaborately decorated wedding
cakes, ritually punctured Mimbres bowls of the American Southwest,
and ‘Celtic’ metalwork deposited as votives in rivers and bogs. As a further
Figure 6a. Garibaldi monument, Aspromonte, Calabria, Italy: monument. Photo:
J. Robb.
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12. archaeological example, the earliest clay figurines, made during the
Palaeolithic of Central Europe, may have been ‘action art’ intended to
explode dramatically when placed in a fire (Farbstein 2013).
Art creates representational models for social relations
Art frequently represents social relations. Over time, images are inter-
nalised as people absorb cues that guide behaviour and ensure conduct
Figure 6b. Garibaldi monument, Aspromonte, Calabria, Italy: school-child graffiti
on base of monument. Photo: J. Robb.
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13. appropriate to a given social setting. Bourdieu’s (1977) insightful analysis
of habitus made clear that children and others learn by doing (and by
observing others), rather than through direct instruction. Since art objects
are often lasting, durable, and visible, they reinforce a vision of ‘the way
things are’ that may be difficult to contest. This dynamic encompasses
varied aspects of identity and social conduct as prescribed by gender, age,
social position, or ritual status. Many images are ideologically loaded, such
as the Greek red-figure drinking cup in Figure 8, which inculcates the
privileged position of males, depicted here sharing drink in the ritualised
male-only setting of a symposium.
Even more common is the commissioning of richly detailed and
aesthetically pleasing art objects, made from rare materials by skilled
Figure 7. Prehispanic libation bowl with feline head, Regional Developments
Period, AD 9501430, northern Calchaquı́ Valley, Argentina. Photo: E. DeMarrais.
Figure 8. Greek red-figure cup with scene of male bonding in ritualised drinking
at symposium, Vulci, Italy. British Museum 1836,0224.212. Image: # The British
Museum.
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14. artisans, to legitimate the privileged position of elites. Veblen’s (1899)
insightful comments about conspicuous consumption resonate particu-
larly well with the crafts produced for elites in many archaic states,
including those of coastal Peru before the Incas. Figure 9 shows an image
in silver of a ruler seated on a throne, its iconographic theme of hierarchy
meshing seamlessly with the use of privileged materials such as rare
metals and the virtuosic skill of Chimu artisans.
Art is also almost always concerned with the wider social group,
promoting ideas about the nature of the collectivity through representa-
tion (temporary or lasting) or by inviting participation in an event (a rite, a
moment of creative activity, or a shared experience of viewing and
Figure 9. Silver ‘throne vessel’ depicting hierarchical group, fifteenth century,
Chimu, Peru. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller
Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1969 (1978.412.170). Image:
# Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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15. appreciating) (DeMarrais 2011). Figure 10 shows La Venta Offering 4 from
pre-Hispanic lowland Mexico, shown here during its excavation, rightly
famous for its revealing insight into Olmec social relations and ritual. Like
many other works of art from around the world, it represents a moment
when people are assembled to create a group, highlighting an idealised
collectivity as a model for social participation. Spielmann (2013) devotes
considerable attention to this potential role for art, as part of ritual, in
generating cohesion among Hopewell villages and for bolstering the claims
of ritual specialists.
Art as cultural capital
Art also represents cultural capital concentrated, privileged access to
items of value. In this sense, art can be a vocabulary for the shared habitus
of members of the same social class, a tangible yet dynamic means for
relating or dividing groups. This may often be simply through shared
styles or ways of doing things. Farbstein (2013), for example, shows how
small prehistoric communities creatively formulated different artistic
representations as part of creating local networks of shared identity.
In class-stratified societies or power-laden colonial relations, art has
the capacity to unite, divide, or position people (Bourdieu 1984), since not
all people are equally able to decode or to appreciate art and since art may
be used to encode values privileging dominant groups. Herring (2013)
eloquently traces the ways that Andean art has been appropriated, and
misunderstood, in the unfolding discourses of Western Modernist art
Figure 10. La Venta Offering 4, Mexico, showing a leader conducting a group
ritual, Olmec, Formative Period. Photo: John Clark and Pierre Agrinier.
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16. history. Architectural styles provide a particularly prominent way of
asserting cultural capital; in recent European and American history, for
example, there have been two architectures of power: the Classical and the
Gothic. Both were deliberately revived and reworked to be widely used in
public buildings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Figure 11),
asserting institutional legitimacy by evoking the imagined splendours of a
Classical or medieval past.
Maya art is similarly well-known for evoking a world of privilege and
power surrounding elites and their entourages. Evidence increasingly
suggests that Maya elites were in some cases also the artisans. Inomata
argues that craft production by elites during the Classic Period ‘. . . was at
once a highly political act closely tied to power and an expression of elites
ascribing to cultural and aesthetic values’ (2007, 137). He suggests that the
willingness of high-status individuals to engage in demanding craft produc-
tion work is evidence of their commitment to cultural ideals. Figure 12 shows
a relief panel depicting a ruler in full regalia. Both the personae represented
and the creation, control and use of such objects tied high status people to a
world of symbolic capital. Virtually all ancient civilisations, from the
Egyptians through the Incas, engaged in a similar materialisation of the
cultural capital of their rulers in large-scale or finely-worked art.
Figure 11. Senate House, University of Cambridge (1730): as on many university
campuses the Classical columns and façade proclaim the university’s role as heir
of ancient Greek civilisation, as well as partaking in a more general architectural
aesthetic of power. Photo: J. Robb.
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17. Art as a medium of exclusion, resistance, or layered meanings
Art does not simply present and reinforce dominant ideologies or assert
social models; it may contain hidden, layered, or contested messages or
meanings. Likewise, the knowledge asserted in (or by) an artwork may be
contested. For example, Brumfiel (1996) provides a compelling case that
healthy-looking, standing female figurines, produced by local communities
in the Aztec hinterland, were intentional forms of alternative art, produced
in response to negative depictions of women (often shown dismembered or
kneeling in submission) promulgated as part of the Aztec imperial ideology.
Arts of protest and resistance are two manifestations of this phenom-
enon. Both may be expressed through unsanctioned, counter-authoritar-
ian genres. The graffiti example above seems innocent of political critique,
but graffiti and defacement often express political sentiments. The spray
can may be an ubiquitous tool for contemporary dissent, and sometimes
this contestation of meaning is intentionally foregrounded in art. In a
recent article on the BBC website, the artist Antony Gormley described his
experience of erecting an early sculpture of a life-size human figure in
Figure 12. Classic Maya relief with enthroned ruler. The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A.
Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.1047). Image: # Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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18. Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 1987, during the Troubles, a time of
often violent political conflict (McCann 2011). Intending his work to be ‘a
poultice, and a benign piece that related to the feelings of the people in
that place and their situation’, he remembers the vigorous attack on the
work as it was being placed in the ground. ‘They were throwing stones and
sticks and then spitting on the sculpture. The sculpture came over the top
dripping with saliva, the missiles kept coming.’ The work was eventually
doused in petrol and set alight. Gormley continues, ‘This was excellent.
This was the work as poultice throwing violence and evil onto itself that
would otherwise be experienced in other ways.’
Moreover, art allows ambiguity, or layers of interpretation, that
facilitate multiple understandings, as explored in Robinson’s article
(2013) on the significance of graffiti in Barcelona. Ambiguous or multi-
layered imagery is common in the European medieval period, for instance,
where images may express visual puns. An artist might playfully portray
himself (or others) in mythological or Biblical scenes in a manner
undetectable to those unfamiliar with his visage, giving the work both
public and personal significance. Medieval manuscript illuminations and
woodcarvings often show obscene or grotesque imagery in the margins of
sacred texts or settings. For instance, underneath a carved church seat
from King’s Lynn, England, lurk two grylluses (Figure 13), imaginary
creatures thought to embody humans’ baser instincts, a suggestion
underlined by their ambiguously phallic noses and by their intended
proximity to churchgoers’ backsides. Is this the illustration of an obscure
theological text? Satire? Permissible playfulness? The answer may have
been as ambiguous to medieval people as it remains to us.
Figure 13. Hidden misericord imagery on the bottom of a carved wooden church
seat, King’s Lynn, England, fourteenth century. Victoria and Albert Museum W.7-
1921. Image: # Victoria and Albert Museum.
World Art 19
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19. Conclusions
We have argued, through examples from past and present, that art is
deeply embedded in everyday life as well as integral to special occasions of
ritual, political or biographical importance. As one would expect from a
profoundly varied phenomenon, no single explanation can encompass the
diverse ways that art establishes, sustains, or transforms social relations.
Through its making, using, and display, art helps people share underlying
understandings of the world, allows individuals and groups to create and
express values, to assert social capital, and finally art creates venues
and media for the performance of identities and social relations. In the
collected articles of this issue, contributors illustrate these varied
perspectives; the case studies range across world archaeology from
Palaeolithic to historic periods.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to John Clark and Pierre Agrinier for permission to use
Figure 10, to Johanna Farr for the use of Figure 1, and to Robert Mark and
Evelyn Billo of Rupestrian CyberServices for use of Figure 2. We thank The
British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Victoria and
Albert Museum for use of varied images as noted in the captions, and the
two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. We thank
George Lau and Veronica Sekules for their editorial oversight and helpful
comments.
Notes on contributors
Elizabeth DeMarrais and John Robb teach archaeology in the Division of
Archaeology, University of Cambridge. Working in the Americas and Europe,
respectively, they share broad interests in art, material culture, theory and social
relations in the past. Two years ago, they established a Material Culture
Laboratory to provide a setting for students and researchers interested in theory
and material culture to meet and to exchange ideas in an interdisciplinary setting.
The current collection of papers was initially presented as part of a symposium
entitled ‘Art Makes Society’, organised for the Society for American Archaeology
meeting in April 2012, in Memphis, TN, USA.
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