Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things

Front Cover
John Wiley & Sons, May 8, 2012 - Social Science - 264 pages
A powerful and innovative argument that explores the complexity of the human relationship with material things, demonstrating how humans and societies are entrapped into the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds

  • Argues that the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture
  • Offers a nuanced argument that values the physical processes of things without succumbing to materialism
  • Discusses historical and modern examples, using evolutionary theory to show how long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time
  • Integrates aspects of a diverse array of contemporary theories in archaeology and related natural and biological sciences
  • Provides a critical review of many of the key contemporary perspectives from materiality, material culture studies and phenomenology to evolutionary theory, behavioral archaeology, cognitive archaeology, human behavioral ecology, Actor Network Theory and complexity theory
 

Selected pages

Contents

Things R
38
Things Depend on Other Things
40
Affordances
48
Behavioral Chains
54
Things Depend on Humans
64
Entanglement
88
Fittingness
113
The Evolution and Persistence of Things
138
Things happen
158
Tracing the Threads
179
17
196
Conclusions
206
Bibliography
223
27
230
Index
245
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things
Ian Hodder
Limited preview - 2012
Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things
Ian Hodder
Limited preview - 2012

Common terms and phrases

4th millennium BC abstractions affordances approaches archaeology argued become Behavioral Ecology burial Çatalhöyük clay balls coherence complex connections constrained context cooking costs depend on humans dependence and dependency dependence on things described domestic domestic sheep dominant Dual Inheritance Theory entrapment environment evolution example explore factors Figure fire fitting fittingness focus forms function global ground stone heterogeneous Hodder houses Human Behavioral Ecology human dependence human-thing entanglements humans and things hunter-gatherers Ian Hodder ideas increased increasingly interactions investment involved labor landscape Latour Level VII linked material culture midden Middle East Natufian Neolithic networks niche construction object organization particular plants and animals plaster pots pottery PPNA PPNB Pre-Pottery Neolithic processes produced relation relationships resonances Schiffer sedentism seen sequences shift skulls smectite social society specific symbolic tanglegram technologies temporalities things and humans things depend tion traits types walls wheel wild cattle

About the author (2012)

Ian Hodder is Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Previously he was Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge. His main large-scale excavation projects have been at Haddenham in the east of England and at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He has been awarded several awards and honorary degrees. His books include The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük, The Archaeological Process (Blackwell), The Domestication of Europe (Blackwell), Symbols in Action and Reading the Past.

Bibliographic information

TitleEntangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things
AuthorIan Hodder
Editionillustrated
PublisherJohn Wiley & Sons, 2012
ISBN0470672110, 9780470672112
Length264 pages
Subjects › 

History / General
Social Science / Archaeology
  
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