Earthy Matters: Exploring Human Interactions with Earth, Soil and Clay (Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology) - Hardcover

 
9781837721351: Earthy Matters: Exploring Human Interactions with Earth, Soil and Clay (Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1837721351 ISBN 13: 9781837721351
Publisher: University of Wales Press, 2024

Synopsis

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.

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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.

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Publisher
University of Wales Press
Publication date
2024
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1837721351
ISBN 13 
9781837721351
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
242
Editor
Steel Louise, Attala Luci