Earthy Matters: Exploring Human Interactions with Earth, Soil and Clay: 1 (Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology) - Hardcover

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.

About this title

About the Author

Louise Steel is Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at UWTSD, and has worked extensively in Cyprus. She is Associate Director of UNESCO-BRIDGES@UWTSD, and series editor of Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology (UWP).



Dr Luci Attala is Associate Professor in Anthropology at UWTSD, and Deputy Executive Director of UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition and Director of the UNESCO-BRIDGES UK Hub. She is also one of the Directors of Educere Alliance at the University of Oxford, a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, and a Board Member of the Tairona Heritage Trust.

Edition details

• 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