Oral Tradition and Material Culture: Multiplying Meanings of 'Words' and 'Things'

Bojale Drum: Material Culture in Living Contexts

“…Unfortunately its documentation, display, and interpretation within the museum walls turned it into a passive museum object. Material culture can be transformed by its contexts in such a way that an object within a living culture can change meaning once it is acquired into a museum (Cruikshank ).…”

“…Sacredness of objects is based on various criteria such as space, use, status, or symbolism. An object's meaning can also be contested within the same society according to age, gender, and class (Cruikshank ). For example, an object can be sacred to the elderly but can have less value to younger generations.…”

“…In the Pacific region, there are instances where community members are allowed to take their artifacts from museum exhibitions to use in their sacred altars (Dobkins 1999). It is important for museums to curate objects accordingly, because in some communities, their value increases according to their lifecycle despite their keeping place (Cruikshank ). This is crucial in community museums because, to some communities, objects are bestowed with ancestral divine energies and spirits which dictate observance of sacred handling rituals (Kreps ).…”

“Leapin’ Lizards, Mr. Science”: Old Reflections on the New Archaeology (and Musings on Anthropology, Art, Bioethics, and Medicine)

“…(Boas eventually departed from such museum-based work to focus instead on anthropology as an academic discipline and the study of behaviour, ideology, etc., in context [see, e.g., Cruikshank 1992].) 3 And then, of course, there was the rise of the "New Archaeology" in the mid-twentieth century and the intensive incorporation of scientific technologies and techniques, a logical-positivist pursuit of understanding peoples through their material remains.…”

Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage Using Advance Digital Technology: Issues and Challenges

“…Moving on to the tangible heritage and intangible heritage where both had been considered as related to each other (Gorman & Sydney, 2006). According to Cruikshank (1992) although tangible and intangible heritage have been treated as separate fields of study, but both are related in the aspects of representing as well as denoting a strong cultural symbol and identities in their own context through things and also words. Tangible heritage such as artifacts and natural environment and intangibles heritage such as myths, folklores, ancestral line and cultural manifestations including their language, food, traditional dances plus everyday ritual and norms (Boamah et al, 2012;Hennessy, 2012;Sun, 2010;Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, 2003;Cultural Property Convention, 1954).…”