Explores the connections between humans, the earth, and the matter that comprises them both.
Humans are made of the earth itself, but how does this impact everyday life and experiences? Earthy Matters: Exploring Human Interactions with Earth, Soil and Clay explores humans' relationships with the earthly matter under their feet—sediments, soils, and clay—while examining how these relationships are embedded within, and responsible for, eco-cultural practices. It draws attention to the importance of understanding how humans are connected to the earth by highlighting our profound and physical entanglement with all earthy materials. It seeks to situate humans in relationship with a wider landscape of materials emerging underfoot. Through the distinct capacities of these substances, which both provoke and constrain how we interact and engage with them, the authors show how the substances we walk on have co-produced our daily activities and experiences of being in the world and continue to do so.
Edited by:
Louise Steel,
Luci Attala
Imprint: University of Wales Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
Spine: 17mm
ISBN: 9781837721351
ISBN 10: 1837721351
Series: Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology
Pages: 242
Publication Date: 11 September 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: No Longer Our Product
List of figures Acknowledgements List of contributors Preface Chapter 1: Introduction: The quivering potential of earthy matter Louise Steel and Luci Attala Chapter 2: In the red: Earthy humans and the generative qualities of ochre Louise Steel Chapter 3: Hard core, soft touches: A story of affect between caves, rocks and humans Simone Sambento Chapter 4: Plastered: People-plaster relationships in the Neolithic Near East Joanne Clarke and Alex Wasse Chapter 5: A melding of models: A New Materialisms approach to the earthy constituents in the ‘Ceremonial’ Hoard from Kissonerga Mosphilia Natalie Boyd Chapter 6: ‘Corbusian piggeries’ and ‘toytown cottages’: The social lives of concrete and brick in twentieth-century Liverpool Alex Scott Chapter 7: Plastic earth: Somatic correspondences with legacy contaminants in archaeology and anthropology Eloise Govier Chapter 8: Biomorphic ceramics Bejamin Alberti Chapter 9: Bodies and soils, re-placing not rewilding: The art of making compost and becoming places. Luci Attala Index
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.
