Kopytoff object biography of michael

In this next section I shift focus to consider how the concept of biography has been used to explore how objects change. The concept of the cultural biography of objects came to archaeology from the work of Igor Kopytoff (1986) in an edited volume exploring commodities and exchange practices (Appadurai, 1986).

Kopytoffs (1986) argument suggested that things (and commodities specifically) are subject to change so their meaning cannot only be understood at a single point in time. They move through production, exchange, and consumption processes, all of which change their function, meaning, and relationship with people; Kopytoff parallels this changing history with how the lives of people change.

He argues, therefore, that just as we employ biography as a tool to narrate the histories of people, so too, we can employ it to narrate the lives of things: “in doing the biography of a thing, one would ask questions similar to those one asks about people” (Kopytoff, 198