Routing-out portable antiquities : a biographical study of the contemporary lives of Tamil antiquities
Developing the idea of an âobject biographyâ, as defined by Kopytoff (1986), this thesis challenges a fixed, static concept of antiquities and their present meanings by focusing on the routes they travel through space and time as they circulate through the hands of unauthorised finders, dealers and collectors. The research has been carried out in India, focusing on the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. As a non-Western country with a period of colonial history, India is an ideal location to explore not just the diversity and mutability of these meanings but also the tensions between authorized and divergent viewpoints regarding the value and management of the past. My methodology has drawn on theoretical models from the social sciences that approach the production of meaning in and through material culture as an organic and on-going process of human-object relations. Through a process of qualitative surveying using purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews, two distinct object case studies have been devised and investigated: the circulation of structural and household antiques from the 19th and 20th century houses of the Nagarathar Chettiars, and the excavation of coins, beads, jewellery and figurines
Lowson, Alice Adelaide Booker
Heritage ; antiquities ; India ; object biography ; Tamil Nadu
Routing-out portable antiquities : a biographical study of the contemporary lives of Tamil antiquities. Developing the idea of an âobject biographyâ, as defined by Kopytoff (1986), this thesis challenges a fixed, static concept of antiquities and their present meanings by focusing on the routes they travel through space and time as they circulate through the hands of unauthorised finders, dealers and collectors. The research has been carried out in India, focusing on the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. As a non-Western country with a period of colonial history, India is an ideal location to explore not just the diversity and mutability of these meanings but also the tensions between authorized and divergent viewpoints regarding the value and management of the past. My methodology has drawn on theoretical models from the social sciences that approach the production of meaning in and through material culture as an organic and on-going process of human-object relations. Through a process of qualitative surveying using purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews, two distinct object case studies have been devised and investigated: the circulation of structural and household antiques from the 19th and 20th century houses of the Nagarathar Chettiars, and the excavation of coins, beads, jewellery and figurines
out portable antiquity biographical_study contemporary life tamil antiquity developing idea object_biography define challenge fix static concept antiquity present meaning focus route travel space_time circulate hand collector carry india focus south indian state tamil non_western country period colonial_history india ideal location explore diversity mutability meaning also tension divergent viewpoint regard value management past drawn theoretical_model social_science production mean material_culture organic going process human object relation process qualitative survey use purposive sample semi_structured_interview two_distinct object case_study devise investigate circulation structural household antique house excavation coin bead jewellery figurine