Staff
Penny Dransart
Main Research Interests:
- Landscape and Environment: Relationships between human and herd animals
- Material Culture: Divine matter
- Cultural Politics: Textiles, dress and gender
The main geographical areas of this research are:
The Andes (northern Chile, highland Bolivia and southern Peru)
North-eastern Scotland
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1. Landscape and environment:
Relationships between human and herd animals
On the basis of sustained ethnographic and archaeological research in the Andes since the 1980s, I have been exploring how, during the last 4000 years, human beings and their herd animals have transformed the land they inhabit into culturally viable landscapes. A book entitled Earth, water, fleece and fabric: an ethnography and archaeology of camelid herding (Routledge, 2002) examines notions of domestication with reference to the South American camelids (a group including llamas and alpacas), the spinning of fleece, and the importance of landscape for the production of fleece as a renewable resource. For a web page containing colour versions of the black and white images in the book, click here.
Most archaeological approaches to animal domestication begin by studying animal bones. In contrast, my work concentrates on the fleece of the camelids. By focusing on the signs of domestication that can be observed in the fleece itself, unique insights are gained into the cultural processes of domestication. This research investigates the relationships maintained between human owners and their herd animals in a present day Andean herding society. It contributes to Lampeter’s interests in Anthrozoology.
This study of the collective endeavour between human beings and their herd animals in transforming place and time into landscape inspired a geographically wider project, based on a Wenner-Gren supported symposium, held in Lampeter in 1998. Invited speakers from countries in South America, North America and Europe examined the cultivation of earth and water in the Andes from different disciplinary perspectives. The focus on the nurturing and tending aspects of cultivation and cultural processes in the past and in the present resulted in a book edited by myself entitled Kay pacha: cultivating earth and water in the Andes (Archaeopress, 2006).
The study of landscapes also forms part of the Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project, which I have directed since 1995. It addresses the architectural relationships between bishops’ palaces and castles, in the context of seeking to understand the physical and allegorical aspects of bishop's palaces in their landscape setting.
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2. Material culture:
Divine matter
My research on material culture is informed by methodological and theoretical frameworks that intersect cultural anthropology, art history and archaeology. These frameworks enable me to explore not only the relationships between people and the things they make and use, but also how people use matter to make culture material. The book Earth, water, fleece and fabric: an ethnography and archaeology of camelid herding (Routledge, 2002) examines how people convert camelid fleece into yarn and textiles. Chapter 4 addresses a ceremonial context involving the ritual investiture of the herd animals. Another aspect of these rites includes the use of rosaries, as explored in an article entitled ‘Concepts of spiritual nourishment in the Andes and Europe: rosaries in cross-cultural contexts’ (2002). The connotations of visual imagery connected with the Christian rosary convey(ed) related but different social and moral messages to European and Andean and people. In Christian art sheep can represent human beings but, for llama and alpaca herders in northern Chile, they cannot stand in for human beings, because Isluga people recognize that both human and herd animals require spiritual nourishment.
Textiles spun and woven from the fleece of llamas, alpacas and sheep involve both symbolic and physiological aspects of colour perception. Sensory knowledge of colour, which people experience through the practical activity of weaving, is explored with reference to Isluga, northern Chile in an article entitled ‘Coloured knowledges: vision and the dissemination of knowledge in Isluga, northern Chile’.
My current research on material culture examines the theme of colour experience in the Andes and Europe. The award of a Visiting Fellowship at the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, contributed to the preparation of a book manuscript on colours and their cultural values. An SRU workshop was organized by George Lau and myself on Light, water and colours in the Americas on 20 June 2007 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.
The Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project studies the multi-functional roles of medieval bishops' palaces. It investigates the material basis of the places where bishops conducted their pastoral and temporal work, taking into account their need for defence on spiritual as well as on physical levels. The study of material culture of bishops and other clerics involved in this research is complemented by another Lampeter project, which focuses on the study of medieval church vestments: Celebrating the Eucharist and religious festivals in medieval Wales: church vestments.
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3. Cultural Politics:
Textiles, dress and gender
Issues of cultural difference form part of my investigations into dress, identity and representation. Dress and gender hierarchies are involved in human and cultural reproduction. They also communicate culturally specific views on human-animal relationships as explored in an article entitled ‘Mysteries of the cloaked body: analogy and metaphor in concepts of weaving and body tissues’, The Nature and Culture of the Human Body: Lampeter Multidisciplinary Essays. Trivium 37, 161-187.