Reaction Paper About Material Culture

870 Words4 Pages

What is material culture? Material culture is a physical item, resource, or space that defines one's culture. According to Mihali Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, material culture “express[es] the qualities of the self” and “serve[s] as a sign of status or symbols of social integration.” CITE Material culture demonstrates the lives of people from the past, giving us an idea of how they lived and what they experienced. Material culture is a symbol of social integration, gathering their people together as they create products for them to use. These physical artifacts have so much more meaning than a photograph or painting of what an item looked like in the past. Material culture provides real evidence, allowing you to use most of your senses, whereas a photograph or painting leaves you with just your sense of sight.
This artifact is a poncho serape that was made by an …show more content…

This artifact was gifted to the de Young museum by the Thomas W. Weisel Family in 2016. The de Young museum in San Francisco did not have a wide range of colonial Californian artifacts prior to 1821 or around that time. They could have possibly preserved the serape because of the scarcity of items in the museum. While reading up on the Thomas W. Weisel Family, it’s worth noting that he was a collector and advocate for Native American art, gifting the museum several Southwest American items from the early 1800s to the 20th-century. At first glance, this object looks like a long, rectangular, multipurpose blanket or tapestry. However, reading the description unveils that it is a poncho serape. A poncho serape is a blanket-like shawl with no openings. This wool poncho is mostly red, along with cream, grey, and navy. Because of the amount of dedication it takes to make a serape, it can be implied that they possibly only wore it on special occasions. Moreover,

Open Document