5 ideas
Culture is invisible, but objects are culture made material, so a pot, a barn or a house can be read as a document of the values, skills and social order of its maker. Most people in history left no writing, so reading their made things is the only way to write a history that includes them rather than just the literate elite.
An object's meaning is not fixed in its form. It has to be studied in three distinct contexts. In creation, it records the maker's intentions, skill and choices. In communication, it carries messages between people. In consumption, users take it up and reinterpret it in ways the maker may never have intended. Reading only one context, such as the collector's or art historian's view of form, misses most of what the thing means.
Art is not a separate class of objects kept in museums. It is a quality of skill, care and aesthetic intention that can be present in utilitarian things like storage jars, roof thatch or barn joinery. The line between 'fine art' and 'craft' tracks the social class of makers and patrons, not any real difference in artistic achievement.
After the days of worship, the images are carried to the river and immersed until they dissolve. The case shows that an artwork's value can lie wholly in its making and ritual use rather than in permanence, preservation or display.
Tradition is not the passive survival of old forms. It is an active, volitional process in which people select from the past the resources they need to build their future. Makers who work in tradition are continually choosing, adapting and innovating. Change and continuity are therefore not opposites but two aspects of the same creative act.