material culture

noun

Sociology.

1. the aggregate of physical objects or artifacts used by a society.

Word History and Origins

Origin of material culture¹

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

The burials had scanty grave goods—a bead and a dog paw—so it’s hard to connect them to any particular material culture.

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Music becomes sacred partly through the material culture it inspires.

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That, quite by accident, is what Juli Lynne Charlot did in late 1947, in the process creating a totem of midcentury material culture as evocative as the saddle shoe, the Hula-Hoop and the pink plastic lawn flamingo.

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“Even in that early moment, Americans kind of conflated consumerism with patriotic memory,” said Bruggeman, whose books include “Here, George Washington Was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History of a National Monument.”

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"When we overlay the mobility maps with the social network, we see a strong correlation between routes for subsistence-oriented mobility and strong ties in material culture between regional communities, suggesting the emergence of 'mobility highways' over centuries of use," Frachetti said.

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