Entangled - A New Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things

Offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory of material entanglement and entrapment, enriched with vivid examples from everyday life
 
Entangled explores how archaeological evidence can help provide a better understanding of the direction of human social and technological change, demonstrating how the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture. Using examples drawn from both the early farming settlements of the Middle East and daily life in the modern world, Ian Hodder highlights the complex co-dependencies of humans and things--arguing that the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds are the unseen drivers of human development.
 
Updated and expanded, Entangled offers new perspectives on the study of the relationality between things and humans. In this edition, the author reframes relationality in terms of various forms of dependence to better explore inequality, injustice, and the ways people get entrapped in detrimental social and economic situations. An entirely new chapter focuses on human dependence on other humans, such as between colonial powers and colonized people. Increased focus is placed on object-oriented ontologies and assemblages, symmetrical archaeology, and indigenous and radical approaches in archaeology that critique relationality and posthumanism. A wide range of new examples, references, and literature are presented throughout the book.
* Argues that dependence on things forces humans down particular evolutionary pathways and social trends
* Demonstrates how long-standing entanglements can be irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time
* Integrates archaeology, natural and biological sciences, and the social sciences
* Presents a critical review of key contemporary perspectives, including material culture studies, phenomenology, evolutionary theory, cognitive archaeology, human ecology, and complexity theory
 
Entangled: A New Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things, Second Edition is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers, researchers, and scholars in the fields of archeology, anthropology, material culture studies, and related fields across the social sciences and humanities.

List of contents

Contents
 
Epigraph viii
 
List of Figures ix
 
Preface and Acknowledgements for First Edition xii
 
Preface and Acknowledgements for Second Edition xiii
 
1Thinking About Things Differently (from Things to Flows) 1
 
What Is a Thing? 1
 
Things-in-Themselves? 3
 
Changing Definitions of Entanglement 8
 
From Things to Strings 12
 
Weaker and Stronger Entanglements 14
 
Conclusion - (a) Why Process Matters 15
 
Conclusion - (b) Are We at One with Things? 16
 
2 Humans Depend on Things 19
 
Dependence: Some Introductory Concepts 20
 
Forms of Dependence 21
 
Reflective and Non-reflective Relationships with Things 22
 
Going Toward and Away from Things 24
 
Identification and Ownership 26
 
Some Previous Accounts of the Human Dependence on Things 29
 
Being There with Things 29
 
Material Culture and Materiality 32
 
Cognition and the Extended Mind 36
 
Conclusion: Things R Us 39
 
3 Things Depend on Other Things 41
 
Forms of Connection Between Things 43
 
Production and Reproduction 43
 
Exchange 43
 
Use 44
 
Consumption 44
 
Discard 44
 
Post-deposition 44
 
Affordances 49
 
From Affordance to Dependence 51
 
The French School - Operational Chains 52
 
Behavioral Chains 54
 
Things Depend on Past Things and on Future Things 58
 
Entangled Ideas 58
 
Conclusion 59
 
4 Things Depend on Humans 65
 
Things Fall Apart 68
 
Behavioral Archaeology and Material Behavior 70
 
Behavioral Ecology 74
 
Human Behavioral Ecology 79
 
The Temporalities of Things 83
 
Conclusion: The Unruliness of Things 84
 
5 Human-Human Entanglement 86
 
Inequality, Power and Entanglement 87
 
Poverty Traps 90
 
Emotional Bonds 92
 
Conclusion 93
 
6 Exploring Entanglement 95
 
The Physical Processes of Things 95
 
Temporalities 98
 
Forgetness 101
 
The Tautness of Entanglements and Path Dependency 103
 
Types and Degrees of Entanglement 105
 
Cores and Peripheries of Entanglements 108
 
Contingency 109
 
Conclusion 111
 
7 Entangled Abstractions and Bodily Engagements 113
 
Abstraction, Metaphor and Mimesis 114
 
From Granola to Beethoven 117
 
Abstract Entanglements at Çatalhöyük 123
 
Conclusion 126
 
8 Two Examples Regarding the Onset of Domestication and Sedentary Village Life: China and the Middle East 128
 
China 128
 
Middle East 130
 
Conclusion 138
 
9 Method 139
 
Tanglegrams 140
 
Formal Network Approaches 144
 
Sequencing Entanglements 147
 
Diachronic Entanglements 152
 
Interpretation 156
 
Conclusion 159
 
10 Toward an Entangled String Theory and Comparison with Other Approaches 160
 
Things Do Not Have Agency 161
 
There Is No Present, Only a Flow from Past to Future 163
 
Toward an Entangled String Theory 164
 
Other Contemporary Approaches 171
 
Latour and Actor Network Theory 172
 
Assemblage Theory 175
 
Containment and Enchainment 176
 
Ontologies 177
 
Material Engagement Theory 178
 
Agential Realism 179
 
Conclusion 180
 
11 Conclusion: From Things to Flows 182
 
Aquatic Culture? 182
 
Some Final Examples 183
 
Some Loose Ends 186
 
Bib

About the author

Ian Hodder is Dunlevie Family Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and Professor of Archaeology at Koç University, Istanbul. He led a large-scale excavation project at the Neolithic site of çatalhöyük in Turkey between 1993 and 2018. His books include Symbols in Action, Reading the Past, The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of çatalhöyük, The Domestication of Europe, The Archaeological Process: An Introduction, and Archaeological Theory Today.

Product details

• Authors: Ian Hodder, Ian (Stanford University Hodder, Hodder Ian
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 02.11.2023
• EAN: 9781119855866
• ISBN: 978-1-119-85586-6
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Anthropologie, Archäologie, Anthropology, Social & cultural anthropology, Archaeology, Soziale u. kulturelle Anthropologie, Methoden u. Theorie der Archäologie, Archaeological Methods & Theory, Social Archaeology, Sozialarchäologie