Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture

Front Cover
Routledge, Apr 12, 2013 - Social Science - 176 pages

Making creates knowledge, builds environments and transforms lives. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture are all ways of making, and all are dedicated to exploring the conditions and potentials of human life. In this exciting book, Tim Ingold ties the four disciplines together in a way that has never been attempted before. In a radical departure from conventional studies that treat art and architecture as compendia of objects for analysis, Ingold proposes an anthropology and archaeology not of but with art and architecture. He advocates a way of thinking through making in which sentient practitioners and active materials continually answer to, or ‘correspond’, with one another in the generation of form.

Making offers a series of profound reflections on what it means to create things, on materials and form, the meaning of design, landscape perception, animate life, personal knowledge and the work of the hand. It draws on examples and experiments ranging from prehistoric stone tool-making to the building of medieval cathedrals, from round mounds to monuments, from flying kites to winding string, from drawing to writing. The book will appeal to students and practitioners alike, with interests in social and cultural anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art and design, visual studies and material culture.

 

Contents

List of figures
Preface and acknowledgements
Knowing from the Inside
The Materials of Life
On Making a Handaxe
On Building a House
The Sighted Watchmaker
Round Mound and Earth
Bodies on the
Telling by Hand
Drawing the Line
Notes
References
Index
Copyright

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About the author (2013)

Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, UK. His books include Lines, The Perception of the Environment and Being Alive.

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