caa a22 4500 388110732 CHVBK 20180307125352.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199912 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S1380203800001422 doi S1380203800001422 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S1380203800001422 Vellinga Marcel Merits and limits of the biographic approach [Elektronische Daten] [Marcel Vellinga] In a well-known paper on ‘the cultural biography of things', Kopytoff (1986) shows that the application of meaning to ‘things' is of a processual rather than a fixed nature. Mainly focusing his attention on commodities, Kopytoff demonstrates that, like people, ‘objects' such as slaves, cars, huts and paintings have a social life of their own. The biographies that may be drawn up of the lives of these objects may provide insight into the complex whole of political, economic, moral and aesthetic practices, values and relationships prevalent in the societies in which they are produced, used and discarded. Copyright © The Author(s) 1999 Archaeological Dialogues Cambridge University Press 6/2(1999-12), 98-101 1380-2038 6:2<98 1999 6 ARD https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203800001422 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203800001422 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Vellinga Marcel NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Archaeological Dialogues Cambridge University Press 6/2(1999-12), 98-101 1380-2038 6:2<98 1999 6 ARD CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge