![Stone labret. (Photo by G. O. Rollefson.)](https://publications.acorjordan.org/wp-content/uploads/rowan-insights-2023-may-fig-7-labret-360x218.jpg)
by Yorke Rowan Material culture provides a glimpse into the important objects that people created, exchanged, and carried with them for functional and symbolic purposes. The study of archaeology requires a suite of specializations and perspectives, but material culture remains a fundamental source of information. In his pioneering volume In Small Things Forgotten (1977), James Deetz…