Personal take on Mind in Matter

  Both Prown and Keightley seem to agree with the general basis that cultures are inherently man-made and were built to define man’s conception of itself. However, Prown decides to diverge and hone in his analytical focus on the idea of materialistic culture itself and the weight of importance that we as a species have decided to maim certain physical entities with. He alludes to the general synopsis of culture when analyzing archaeological artifacts and choosing to categorize them into the labels of utilitarian value, aesthetic value, spiritual value, and expressive value projected upon one’s own community. He stresses the idea that cultural expression is an unconscious human instinct that verges on freeness, our natural tendency to find beauty in the mundane. I thought it was quite interesting how he referenced Arnold Hauser (I have read his entire “Social History of Art” series) and the idea of how our self-awareness and self-critique of cultural relativism is a blessing in disguise; like Camus theorizes, the beauty is in the struggle, and our battle against subjectivity when it comes to viewing archaeology and cultural art is the last step into transcendence within greater objectivity. When viewing an object Prown emphasizes shedding all the surface motifs and physical representations of the object and strips it down to the singular intent of man’s desire to interpret the physical reality surrounding him with the formation of expressive art. Instead of looking down upon materialism and “material culture” Prown believes that it is a fundamental quest for one’s mind and a direct source of primary cultural evidence. An intellectual observer is actually aware that the artifact being analyzed is completely self-sufficient; Instead of the inanimate entity being dependent on us to explicate it, Prown argues that it is actually us who are dependent on its degrees of identity between its birth of origin and our own physical reality.