The Future's Past

Abstract

T HE LIFE OF THINGS is in reality many lives. A warrior's sword, known to him by its feel and balance, by its sound as it cuts the air, known or seen by his community when the sight of the sword strapped on for battle is the sign-we go to war tomorrow. The sight of it is one of the signs of war, terror, possible defeat, and yet being his sword, a sign of the barrier still between themselves and defeat. His as property, but kept sharp and ready by a younger warrior whose right to touch the sword is a sign of his social place. The sword after the warrior's death becomes a sacred object, no longer enters battle, but is controlled by the priests of the society. Now it is more often heard of in legends than seen, for it is kept hidden except for ceremonial uses to summon and transmit the spirit of the warrior. Used for the initiation of young warriors, and, like many sacred objects, used medically-one touch being enough to heal wounds, cure disease, drive off dejection. The priests, their ceremonies, those who touch or use the sword under what rules and limits-these make up a second life, a second system of access. In time the society suffers defeat. The sword along with all valued objects whether sacred, monetary, or human (the attractive women of the conquered group) is seized as loot, converted to treasure by the victors for whom it is a souvenir that reminds them of a victory. It is an object of wealth. A third system of access-that of wealth, inheritance, treasure and loot, the permissible displays, self-glorification and a new community of objects that interdefine one another, like the military objects, the sacred objects (potions, chants, relics, etc.) comes into being. The community of objects that make up treasure shares social access and, of course, the withholding of access. Finally, all groups of this culture are destroyed by a higher civilization whose anthropologists take the sword to a museum, classifying it along with cooking implements, canoes, clothing, statues, and toys as an example of a cultural style by contrast to the artifacts of other cultures or earlier or later stages of this style. In this new community of objects, which the sword could never have joined had it not been

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