Introduction: Style among Visual Anthropologists

The study of style has had a checkered past in the annals of anthropology. The 19th- and 20th-century prehistorians in Europe found it an essential conceptual tool, and the Boasians in North America contributed much to its understanding too. But after Tylor, British anthropology was unconcerned with material culture or with style, which is one minor aspect of it. Earlier German anthropology did not make a notable contribution on this subject either. French colleagues, on the other hand, from the time of Mauss onwards, have shown a steady effort to study material culture and its associated techniques, including the features of style in a wide variety of arts and crafts.