This article examines how the materiality of art operates as a periphery in art-historical interpretation. Taking as a case study the Palette of King Narmer (c. 3100 bc), a famous monument of Egyptian culture, the author explores how it has been interpreted while isolating the role of materiality in writings on it. It begins with a discussion of the palette found in a widely used art-historical survey text, Gardner’s History of Art, before turning to a methodological authority for much American art-historical writing, Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968). The article analyzes a sophisticated interpretation of the palette by Whitney Davis (b. 1958), which is both a complication of earlier approaches and a confirmation of their tenets when concerning materiality. It then treats recent archaeological approaches to the palette, arguing that they have done more to credit materiality as part of the object’s importance, before turning to the work of Alice Stevenson as an exemplification of how much an emphasis on materiality can bring to light. The article concludes by pondering disciplinary divisions and arguing for a layered, de-centralized critical approach to object analysis.

中文翻译：

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作为外围的物质性

本文考察了艺术的物质性如何作为艺术史解释的外围。作者以埃及文化的著名纪念碑纳尔迈王的调色板（约公元前 3100 年）为例，探讨了它是如何被解释的，同时隔离了物质在其著作中的作用。它首先讨论了广泛使用的艺术史调查文本加德纳的艺术史中发现的调色板，然后转向了许多美国艺术史著作的方法论权威欧文·帕诺夫斯基（Erwin Panofsky，1892-1968）。这篇文章分析了惠特尼·戴维斯 (Whitney Davis，生于 1958 年) 对调色板的复杂解释，这既是早期方法的复杂化，又是对它们在重要性方面原则的确认。然后它处理最近的考古方法对调色板，争辩说，在转向爱丽丝史蒂文森的作品之前，他们已经做了更多的工作来将物质性视为对象重要性的一部分，作为对物质性的重视程度的一个例证。文章最后对学科划分进行了思考，并主张对对象分析采用分层、分散的批判方法。