器物對社會文化記憶的承載,是在其儀式意義的連續性中實現的。首先,中國早期文學的樂舞儀式借助于器物搬演,實現了人與神、人與人之和,開辟、支撐和鞏固了禮樂文化記憶;其次,軸心時代社會思想領域的制名活動取法于器物制作技藝,形成了政治、倫理和文學等方面的規范性話語,確立了中國早期文化的基本命題;最后,漢代以來的字書收集器物作為其系統性歸類的一個分支,以達到對天、地、人、事和物此一整體文化秩序的建構。上述三種歷史形態呈現、敘述和歸納了器物之社會文化功能。古代人類社會生活遺留下來的器物遺存并非靜止的存在,在其"物態"之中潛伏著一定的社會意識形態和歷史敘事范式。

Artifacts bear the memories of social culture through the continuity of their ritual meanings.Firstly,the music and dance rituals in early Chinese literature invoked performance using artifacts to realize harmony between the human and the divine and between people,initiating,supporting and strengthening memories of ritual music and culture;secondly,naming activities in the field of social thought in the Axial Age acquired techniques from the making of artifacts that were used in normative discourse in politics,ethics,literature and so on,establishing the basic propositions of early Chinese culture;and thirdly,from the Han Dynasty on,the collection of inscribed artifacts was a branch of the systemic classification employed in construction of the whole cultural order of Heaven,Earth,man,events and objects.The three above-mentioned historical forms exhibit,narrate and sum up the social and cultural functions of artifacts.The artifacts left by ancient society have a nonstatic existence;their physical states bear within them certain latent forms of social ideology and paradigms of historical narration.