Cultural Anthropology and Material Culture

The overall objective of this group is to provide an in-depth understanding of cultural traditions, intercultural borrowings and diffusions in various regions in Asia. The focus on matters of transmission as social and cultural processes inevitably lead to a greater awareness of how cultures are highly interwoven and interdependent. While we are spatially concerned with different regions in Asia, our work is methodologically based on field research. Those dealing with material culture look at how artefacts enable cultural knowledge storage the articulation of identity, e.g. of specific cultural communities. Another important part of material culture is looking at the consumer side of objects. Who were the objects made for and what can we learn about the underlying motivations? We have a material culture lab at our disposal where artefacts can be chemically examined, for example, for their composition or regarding their surface morphology and composition.