material culture

American  

noun

Sociology.

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

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Etymology

Origin of material culture

First recorded in 1925–30

Compare meaning

How does material-culture compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• material culture vs. nonmaterial culture

Example Sentences

That emphasis on empathy shapes Meredith's broader goal of bringing attention back to the laborers behind ancient material culture.

From Science Daily

Vaill, a historian and former executive editor at Viking Penguin, has had a lifelong interest in stuff—material culture—that she dates back to her first glimpse as a child of a facsimile of a letter, complete with bloodstains, that the French lawyer and statesman Maximilien Robespierre was writing when he was shot in the jaw.

From Slate

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

From Science Magazine

Music becomes sacred partly through the material culture it inspires.

From New York Times

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.

From New York Times