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This article
describes the transmission of cultural norms
and ideological and ritual values in primitive
societies of ancient times and those existing
today, assessing the status of ethnic crafts
in this transmission. The following subjects
are developed:
1- Culture is conceived as a set of signs and
symbols by means of which the members of past
and present illiterate primitive societies of
the world have established material and
spiritual relationships within and without the
society.
2- Writing was not used in primitive
societies, cultural communication between the
people taking place by oral imitation. In
those societies, yet unspoiled by the advent
of machines, tools and utensils were
hand-made, and the present-day appellation of
"sanaye-e dasti" (literally
"manual industries") therefore seems
to hardly befit their products.
3- In this type of societies, crafts, just as
myths and fables, bore an ensemble of cultural
and religious-ritual codes and connotations,
assuming such important social functions as
visualizing the ethnic culture and sublimating
religious and ritual precepts in the mind of
the members of the society, preserving concord
and unity among the people, encouraging them
to retain social constraints and rituals, and
transmitting cultural, economic and religious
messages.
4- The adornment of tools and utensils was
inspired by the prevalent intellectual and
spiritual outlook of the people. Each pattern
or motif represented on such items was a
symbol, a sign in the expression of the divine
universe, or of social behavior.
5- Ethnic crafts, in the sense of hand-made or
hand-woven goods crafted within the material
culture and the literature of the ethnic
group, in the sense of myths, tales, fables...
originating in the spiritual culture, were
closely linked, with either one also
expressing the other's particularity.
6- Following the developments, which modified
the social and cultural structure of primitive
societies and gradually brought forth new
institutions with various social groups of
their own, each of these societies was divided
in two large parts. One part continued living,
while retaining the system of ethnic values
and reproducing the mores and rituals of past
generations, whereas the other, severing all
links with old traditional values and adopting
modern culture, turned to a new lifestyle. The
knowledge, the literature, the oral arts and
the ancient crafts of an ethnic group, to
which now refer as "folklore",
"handicrafts", or "traditional
arts", owe their survival to the
traditional part of the society.
7- Finally, although present-day handicrafts
and the patterns, which adorn them, have
retained their ancient quality, nevertheless
their ancient symbolic meanings, concepts and
functions are lacking, having been replaced by
new, different meanings and functions.
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