Center for Early Cultures Springtime Lunch talk with:
Christopher Lowman
Department of Anthropology at UCI.
Ainu Skeuomorphs: Museums and Material Culture from Northern Japan
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Friday, April 17, 2026
Humanities Gateway, Rm. 1010
Ainu Skeuomorphs
The Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, have a distinct material culture recognizable across centuries and both maintained and revived today. This talk will examine Ainu museum collections, especially lacquer objects and their long connection to cross-cultural exchange, poetry, and religious practice. The multiple sources of this material culture reveal new ways to think about the concept of skeuomorphs - objects that echo the material properties and designs of other, often older, objects of another material - and how this blurs discrete categories of culture, place, and time.
Bio
Christopher Lowman is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in UC Irvine's Anthropology Department. Professor Lowman specializes in historical archaeology, material culture, and museums. His most recent research includes the study of classical reception on the 19th century United States frontier and public archaeology education through video games.