Comparative Materialities

No material exists in a vacuum. Instead, our understanding of any material is connected to our broader understanding of a whole world of materials. Asphalt gets hot in the summer, plastic turns orange if you store tomato sauce in it, cotton gets really cold when it gets wet. You wouldn't put your tomato sauce in a cotton bowl and you would not drive on Tupperware. As we think about objects in the past, we need to also think about the broader world of materials they existed in. Why did people make the choices the did? What properties were they thinking about? Why did these properties matter?

Vessel 10 from Doonfort modeled in various materialities of ceramic

Vessel 10 from Doonfort modeled in various non-perishable Bronze Age materials (gold, polished copper, corroded bronze, stone, and ivory).

Vessel 10 from Doonfort modeled in various perishable Bronze Age materials (baskets and wood).

Vessel 10 from Doonfort modeled in the various materialities of archeological study

Vessel 10 from Doonfort modeled in several impossible materialities.

Simpson's Vessel 27 modeled according to the material changes of its chaîne opératoire (production sequence).

Simpson's Vessel 27 modeled in matte black, matte brown, pearl, gold, and neutral model blue