3.5: Conclusions
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Through the discussion and exploration of these three objects, I have argued for text objects acting as a type of material technology, carrying out orientational work in a variety of cultural and experiential landscapes for the people who viewed and used them. Texts are thus intertwined with the material world through the impacts they have on individuals’ practices (especially in relation to how they operate in sociopolitical planes, as determined by their relative location and identity), and through the ways in which their material form channels certain types of interactions and interpretations.
Far from being reified in their material form (a common contrast drawn between oral and literate traditions, Ong 1982: 90), we see that the text objects discussed here are changeable in both their material forms and contexts (McGann 1991: 182–186; van Peer 1997). As artifacts, these objects have life histories (Holtorf 2002) and can change in their form and in their place and manner of use. As text objects, the written record becomes implicated with these changes, and may be seen as dynamic, transforming and transformative.
Changeability of these text objects is also important to consider as we imagine their reception among ancient viewers, who would have varied widely in their knowledge, background, and identity. Not all viewers would have perceived all of the orientational directions I have suggested above. Nonetheless, these text objects encode information that potentially provides locational instructions in a material form that is particularly effective due to their combining of multiple communicative channels, and the distinctively evocative and vividly imaginable characteristics of the objects themselves. Understanding these texts in their material forms, and embedding their important content within the physical format that transmitted them, highlights the experience and actions of textual consumption, and allows us to better understand content and form in a synthesized fashion.
Returning to the opening premise of orientational technologies, the carved stone panel, ceramic vessel, and incised weaving bones discussed here all act as markers in experiential landscapes through the ways in which they were used and perceived, and through the work that their textual components do. They are shifting, in form and in perception, a quality that corresponds with the constructed and reconstructed (and thus transforming) nature of cultural landscapes. And, when their material forms are not immediately present or accessible, these text objects may be powerfully evoked, continuing orientational work and uniting both the experiential and imagined aspects of ancient sociopolitical landscapes.