Earthy Matters - Exploring Human Interactions With Earth, Soil and Clay

Earthy Matters is a lively collection of theoretically informed chapters that introduce the reader to the notion that matter is a creative agent, and that it plays a key role in the formation of our material and social worlds. The focus of the book is sediments, soils, clay and earth - materials that surround us and have shaped people's interactions with the environment since even before the first farmers settled in the Near East tilling the earth, building houses from mud and plaster, and making vessels and figurines from clay. This collection questions orthodox understandings that these substances are inert and an infinite resource for humanity, rather to foreground earthy substances in their relationships with humans, and to show how these materials have co-created our social and material worlds. It is a novel and timely reminder for the reader that our lives have always been embedded within the matter of the E(e)arth.

About the author

Louise Steel lectures in archaeology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, specializing in archaeological theory and the Bronze Age in the East Mediterranean. Luci Attala is associate professor of anthropology and the director of UNESCO-BRIDGES Hub. She is also one of the directors of the Educere Alliance at Oxford University and a board member of the Tairona Heritage Trust. Both are series editors in New Materialities for the University of Wales Press.

Product details

• Authors: Louise Attala Steel
• Assisted by: Luci Attala (Editor), Attala Luci (Editor), Louise Steel (Editor), Steel Louise (Editor)
• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.06.2024
• EAN: 9781837721351
• ISBN: 978-1-83772-135-1
• No. of pages: 242
• Series: Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; with, Human, NATURE / Essays, Earth, Exploring, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Physical, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, natural history, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Steel, The environment, Louise, Social and cultural anthropology, Matters, Clay, Nature and the natural world: general interest, Soil, Luci, Attala, Interactions, Earthy