Archaeology and folklore of material culture, ritual, and everyday life

Archaeologists often make distinctions between ritual material culture and everyday or utilitarian material culture. I examine this differentiation model for understanding the complex relationships among material culture, ritual, and everyday life. Using folklore recorded in Scotland in the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, I suggest another, continuum-based model, and suggest how this model can enrich archaeological understanding of the meanings and beliefs that form the cultural contexts for the artifacts, features, sites, and landscapes we study.