Open AccessERMi esemekogud ja -analüüs
Author(s) -
Liisi Jääts
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
eesti rahva muuseumi aastaraamat
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2585-450X
pISSN - 1406-0388
DOI - 10.33302/ermar-2019-005
Subject(s) - object (grammar) , artifact (error) , representation (politics) , meaning (existential) , context (archaeology) , ethnography , museology , field (mathematics) , criticism , estonian , sociology , visual arts , history , anthropology , art , epistemology , computer science , literature , archaeology , linguistics , politics , political science , philosophy , law , mathematics , pure mathematics , computer vision
Human artifacts are part of a culture. Whatever aspect we consider—their material, manufacture, ritual use or meaning—the world of human-made objects is closely intertwined with technological, social, economic, religious and other fields.An artifact can be a valuable source of study for a scholar delving into either the past or contemporary culture. Insofar as objects from past cultures are concentrated in museum collections, several questions arise in the mind of a researcher regarding the object as a source material: both at the level of describing and analysing an individual item and more broadly, at the level of the museum collection. A museum’s collection of artifacts is not a neutral and objective representation of real life. Nor is any other ethnographic source preserved in our museum’s collections a neutral and objective representation of life. Field diaries, reports, photographs, descriptions of objects and collections reflect the theoretical views of the times, or the understanding of the mission of ethnography/ethnology and the Estonian National Museum. Source criticism must always take into account the background, which in the case of object research will also involve the museum context.