9781837721351
Distributed for University of Wales Press
Earthy Matters
Exploring Human Interactions with Earth, Soil and Clay
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.
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.
242 pages | 28 halftones | 5.43 x 8.5 | © 2024
Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology
Anthropology: Physical Anthropology
Earth Sciences: Environment, General Earth Sciences
Table of Contents
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
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