What's Popular? Various Thoughts From Deetz, Kniffen, and Glassie

In the interest of being as open as possible, I read Kniffen and Glassie’s Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective (1986) before delving into Deetz’s In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (1977). I make this note initially because after completing the later, the second half of Deetz’s book informs adds an additional layer of information to Kniffen and Glassie’s article. Both provide multiple examples (via housing, tools, food, and tombstones among others) of archeology informing material culture studies. In the briefest of summaries, Kniffen and Glassie followed the expansion of people from the eastern seaboard of America toward the Great Plains. For their purposes, the authors were most interested in which housing structures, or housing styles, followed the early settlers of the westward expansion. Deetz begins by focusing on cultural influencers during pre- and early American life as communicated through ceramics, houses, and gravestones. The first half concludes that material culture is only applicable to single cultural traditions, before moving on to an examination of African or African-American material culture.

The second half of Deetz’s work supplemented the Kniffen and Glassie article through further identifying the origins of some elements of particular housing structures in specific regions. This said, Deetz’s conclusion about single cultural traditions sparks additional questions about the article. Aside from identifying the approach as Scotch-Irish or German, I wonder if there was there a dominant culture using building these popular housing structures? Deetz’s warnings suggest there could be.

The collective readings raised a few questions for me as an American material culture neophyte. For example, in terms of fashion and clothing, in general, the section about folk culture verses popular culture struck me as interesting. Would clothing fall into a particular category, or does it depend on the article of clothing? For instance jeans have a long-standing place in contemporary culture, thus making them part of folk culture, or something that experiences infrequent change. However, jean style (flares, baggy, etc.) experience frequent change, thus making it a product of popular culture. I’m interested in discussing this further in class and, maybe, getting some feedback on this in the comment section.

Finally, in completing these readings, I’ve thought about how each may apply to my object, the men’s waistcoat. Deetz, in particular, warns against drawing macro level conclusions based on micro level findings. That is to say, any findings I uncover about this waistcoat and its owner doesn’t communicate anything about everyone who owned a similar waistcoat. Additionally, supporting the recommendations of earlier readings, it appears something as simple as measure length and width or counting buttons can narrow the scope of the period during which the object created. Lastly, Deetz’s mentioning of “sociotechnic” function immediately brought my waistcoat to mind. According to the author’s definition, this type of function adds to the owner’s social makeup. Perhaps I will find my waistcoat was such an object.

Thank for reading and feel free to comment below!