African Material Culture Information Network

Abstract

The African material culture network—if indeed one can posit a network—is multidimensional, consisting of scholars, objects, and information. The linkage between scholars and objects of material culture that are the focus of their study is information, in particular, the ways in which that information is collected, codified, and communicated. Documentation is the process that generates and orders the information about objects, relates objects one to another, and channels appropriate information into scholarly inquiry.The primary network is one of people: the scholars who are engaged in the study of the object—the mask, the ritual vessel, the woven textile, the dwelling. Information about the object; its use and function; its esthetic and formal qualities; the technique of its manufacture; and its social, economic, and historical context comes from many sources: from examination of the object itself; from contextual, collection, and associated data, including oral data; and from the published literature, unpublished written records, and visual images. These three kinds of data, in turn, constitute secondary networks: information which is generated, processed, and utilized by scholars or other specialists (curators, librarians, archivists, bibliographers). These secondary networks correlate roughly to the institutional settings of museums, archives, and libraries. Information does not exist in a vacuum; it serves a purpose, even if one not always apparent. Thus, the process of creating and manipulating information about African material culture objects, or simply documentation, has as its goal to match in perfect overlay the information about objects with scholarly inquiry.