61
Book Reviews
Symmetry Comes of Age: The Role of Pattern in
Culture. Dorothy K. Washburn and Donald W.
Crowe, eds. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2004. 354 pp.
SCARLETT CHIU
Perceived as a specific way through which people
‘‘see’’ their world, symmetry is also often viewed as a
method originating in mathematics that is used to
both describe and investigate the formation of crys-
tals in nature and to investigate the seemingly
boundless variations that humans create in their
representational arts.1 The first reaction of most ar-
chaeologists, when asked about the use of symmetry
analysis for analyzing their materials, is that it is not
very applicable. Social rules are made to be broken.
Therefore, it seems that by comparing a crystal,
which has a clearly defined boundary and which fol-
lows natural laws in formation without any ability to
break them, with a craft design which, in theory,
may break free in formation according to its creator’s
free will, at first seems a poor analogy for the study of
art. However, by arguing that ‘‘[c]ultures use sym-
metrical relationships to structure activities and
that cultures reinforce these relationships by using
the same symmetries to structure patterns on their
material culture’’ (pp. xiii–xix), papers in Symmetry
Comes of Age demonstrate how powerful this method
may be in terms of studying the relationships be-
tween representational artifacts and the social
relationships of craftsmen in a given society.
As stated in both Symmetry Comes of Age and
the editors’ earlier volume Symmetries of Culture
(University of Washington Press, 1988), these
works were written to introduce both the procedure
and the analytical value of symmetry studies for
cultural studies more generally. The editors have
sought to develop a descriptive classification
system that will allow anthropologists to ‘‘system-
atically observe phenomena and describe their
regulations’’ (Symmetries of Culture, University of
Washington Press, 1988, p. 37) in order to define
the most basic, universal properties of examined
& 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1379.2009.01025.x
styles. Focusing on the underlying structural,
symmetrical patterns instead of representational
preference of individual design elements, it is ar-
gued that the symmetric approach will provide
researchers with a powerful tool to compare sym-
bols materialized in various media, such as pottery,
painting, and textiles on a higher level of classifica-
tion. While in Symmetries of Culture the foundation
of defining, illustrating, and classifying both one-
and two-dimensional patterns was laid out in detail,
in Symmetry Comes of Age, great efforts have been
made to demonstrate how these principles may be
used to analyze various materials from different
parts of the world. Aiming to demonstrate how one
may ‘‘decode’’ the ways in which cultures generate
and present meanings through symmetrical pat-
terns as a means by which to regulate certain social
relationships (p. xii), this book serves as an exem-
plary achievement in this field. A third volume,
Embedded Symmetries (Dorothy K. Washburn, ed.,
University of New Mexico Press, 2004) emphasizes
how human beings are limited by nature in their
abilities to recognize and create symmetry in a
broad array of social contexts.
In a continued effort to make the definition and
classification of symmetries clearer, the first two
chapters of the present work articulate the method-
ological ground for the analyses to follow. The authors
emphasize the importance of understanding the lim-
itations that technological, environmental, and
cultural factors impose on each material that is used
to generate symmetries in any given society. What
media is considered a suitable means to carry certain
types of information? How is information encoded
properly in the materialized symbols? How has this
form of signifier been perceived by observersFcon-
sciously or not? These are among important and
interesting subjects framed for further exploration.
Through examining the way that a floor loom
may be created, Carrie Brezine demonstrates that,
given the lack of definite technical difficulties in
creating nonhexagonal symmetry with a floor
loom, the possible reasons for certain symmetrical
patterns being generated and circulated in any
given group must reside in the realm of cultural
62 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 32 NUMBER 1
preferences rather than being simply a result of
technical difficulties. Paulus Gerdes highlights how
Yombe mat weavers used various weaving patterns
to make the twills look, at first sight, as if they were
created according to the desired pattern, while on
closer examination, through symmetry analysis,
one is able to identify the significant differences.
The underlying cultural reasons of such an effort to
mask the real symmetrical pattern are yet to be
studied. Again, by studying how Chinchero weavers
of Peru use complicated weaving techniques to con-
vey certain patterns, E. M. and C. R. Franquemont
illustrate how technological constrains are not a
factor that limits Chinchero weavers’ ability to
generate symmetric patterns. The weaving of the
textiles, they argue, should be conceived as ‘‘instru-
ments of cognition and communication,’’ as it is
through physical participation that weavers ‘‘orga-
nize themselves symmetrically, and the process of
weaving depends upon engaging in symmetrical
and reciprocal activity’’ (p. 208). Thus symmetry
does not only exist in the final product but also in
the social lives of manufacturers.
Once limitations that are imposed by manufac-
turing techniques and/or the procuring of raw
materials are shown to be minor or unessential in
the production of particular desired crafts, one may
then proceed to discuss what cultural factors may
govern the use of symmetries in representational
arts. For example, Frank Jolles illustrates how so-
cial and political changes from the 1920s to the
1960s were reflected on Zulu women’s colorful bea-
ded belts by exploring how symmetry interacts
with color in a contextual way. Through study of
Nasca textiles from the Paracas Necropolis site,
Mary Frame demonstrates how cosmic structure
and the conceptual ordering of various creatures is
presented through a complex system of symmetries
that describe the various patterns of motion char-
acteristic of each creature illustrated. Frame is
then able to argue for the importance of directional
oppositions in the symmetrical patterns used by
Andean textile weavers to distinguish ‘‘categories
of animals, their typical modes of locomotion, and
their place in the cosmos’’ (p. 164).
By examining the same group of ceramic sam-
ples, Dorothy Washburn devotes great effort to
illustrating how different kinds of information may
be gained by using symmetry analysis. While a
more traditional ‘‘features and themes’’ analysis of
Ica pottery demonstrated how the powerful Inca
had brought in preferential motifs that were later
borrowed by local Ica potters, symmetry analysis
reveals the continuity of local design structure.
What is fundamental was kept the same, while the
superficial appearance may have been modified ac-
cording to various political interests.
In an ethnographic study of Shipibo-Conibo de-
signs, Peter G. Roe explores how one may be able to
trace the cosmological principles of a culture, and
how one may use the symmetry observed in the fi-
nal work to actually identify individual artists as
well as characterizing the relationships found
among nearby groups. Likewise, Patricia Daugh-
erty examines how the cultural concerns and social
experiences of the Yörük women of southern Tur-
key are evident in their arrangement and execution
of motifs in textiles, bringing forward a possibility
for future researchers to persuade a better under-
standing of the underlying reasons that move the
artists to reinforce their desires in the design
structure of their work.
In short, this book illustrates how one may orga-
nize the structures of design using symmetry as the
baseline for classifying art structures in ‘‘their con-
textual relationships with their larger cultural
whole’’ (Dorothy K. Washburn, Structure and Cog-
nition in Art, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p.
7). Yet, without strong ethnographic data to provide
the contexts within which a particular symmetry is
used, it seems very unlikely that one may achieve
such a rich interpretation by merely investigating
the forms of symmetrical structure utilized. By ex-
ploring the techniques required to produce a certain
design and by identifying the culturally preferred
symmetric rules, archaeologists may further gener-
ate interpretations by looking for more general and
universal properties of design styles. Yet, what may
be the contributing factors that caused and rein-
forced the choice of such a symmetrical structure,
and eventually, which might promote the change or
abandonment of such designs in any given society,
will still need to be researched with other realms of
data and techniques of analysis. A more ambitious
goal of the symmetry analysis approach may be to
further investigate whether the same set of sym-
metric rules of a given group are applied to various
art designs made of different raw materials, or if, in
particular instances, there are different symmetri-
cal design structures used in different social

occasions of the group. Such a goal may only be
achieved after long-term investigations, and the re-
sult is eagerly waited.
Note
1. See Dorothy K. Washburn (1999) Perceptual Anthropol-
ogy: The Cultural Salience of Symmetry. American
Anthropologist 101(3):543–562, 547.
Scarlett Chiu is an assistant research fellow of the
Center for Archaeological Studies at the Research
Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of the
Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Her doctoral studies in
archaeology were undertaken at the University of
California at Berkeley, where her dissertation focused
on Lapita pottery production and exchange in New
Caledonia. She is interested in questions related to
ways of constructing social complexity through means
of material expressions, such as Lapita decorative
motifs, among the early populations of the Pacific.
Yeenoo dài’ k’è’tr’ijilkai’ ganagwaandaii/Long
Ago Sewing We Will Remember: The Story of the
Gwich’in Traditional Caribou Skin Clothing Pro-
ject. Judy Thompson and Ingrid Kritsch. Ottawa:
Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2005. 61 pp.
SHEPARD KRECH III
This short 60-page monograph reports on the
revival among the Canadian Gwich’in of the
knowledge and technique of sewing ‘‘tradi-
tional’’Fpre-20th centuryFmen’s caribou-skin
summer clothing. It is divided into two parts: his-
tory and revival. Because of its brevity and the
understandable focus on what is called ‘‘the pro-
ject’’ (the revival effort), which is the unique
contribution of this monograph, the first part is
surely not meant to be (and is not) an exhaustive
analysis of the wealth of archival and other mate-
rial that bears on the history of Gwich’in clothing
and its inseparable connection with trade beads,
dentalium shells, and other materials used to dec-
orate clothing and other items.
BOOK REVIEWS 63
Up until the last decades of the 19th century, the
Canadian and Alaskan Gwich’in impressed all who
encountered them not only with their explosive lo-
cution, forceful nature, mercantilism, and dancing,
but with their smart, fashion-conscious summer
clothing and with their great desire for the beads
and dentalium shells that decorated clothing and
became, for a short time, general-purpose money.
These people first appeared in the European imag-
ination in the period 1789–1820, when explorers
and traders remarked on their intense desire for
blue and white beads (especially large ones), their
demanding ways, and their refusal, at times, to
trade furs unless traders had beads of the right size
and color in exchange. In 1805 came a report of men
using beads on strings to tie back their long greased
hair and to decorate summertime caribou-skin
moccasin-trousers; some twenty years later, out-
siders noted beads on fringes, chests, and shoulders
of tunics whose lower edges were pointed in front
and behind.
The desire for beads built steadily into a com-
pelling need as the first half of the 19th century
went on. By the 1840s–50s, when they were imaged
unforgettably in lithographs in Sir John Richard-
son’s Arctic Searching Expedition (based on
sketches by the trader Alexander Hunter Murray),
Gwich’in men decorated clothing, hair, headbands,
quivers, guns, and other objects heavily with beads.
The men’s preferred colors had expanded to include
red and black. Men evidently wore more highly
ornamented dress clothing (literally heavy with
beads) when visiting posts and one another and
when dancing. For western bands this period
marked a peak of mercantilist activity when,
through trading, the Gwich’in acquired consider-
able wealth in the form of long strings of beads used
to mark status, pay shamans and other specialists,
gain prestige through distribution, and so on.
The beads arrived with people of European de-
scent in the 18th century, but there is no reason to
doubt that the basic summer clothingFmoccasin-
trousers (in one piece) and tunicsFare more an-
cient. For one thing, in 1789, Alexander Mackenzie
described the clothing (including differences be-
tween men’s and women’s) in some detail.
Nineteenth-century Gwich’in men and women who
were poor and could not afford beads or dentalia
wore it: tunics pointed in front and behind and
moccasin-trousers, with seams colored with red