Entangled (eBook)

Ian Hodder is Dunlevie Family Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and Professor of Archaeology at Koç University, Istanbul. He led a large-scale excavation project at the Neolithic site of çatalhöyük in Turkey between 1993 and 2018. His books include Symbols in Action, Reading the Past, The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of çatalhöyük, The Domestication of Europe, The Archaeological Process: An Introduction, and Archaeological Theory Today.

Contents

Epigraph viii

List of Figures ix

Preface and Acknowledgements for First Edition xii

Preface and Acknowledgements for Second Edition xiii

1Thinking About Things Differently (from Things to Flows) 1

What Is a Thing? 1

Things-in-Themselves? 3

Changing Definitions of Entanglement 8

From Things to Strings 12

Weaker and Stronger Entanglements 14

Conclusion - (a) Why Process Matters 15

Conclusion - (b) Are We at One with Things? 16

2 Humans Depend on Things 19

Dependence: Some Introductory Concepts 20

Forms of Dependence 21

Reflective and Non-reflective Relationships with Things 22

Going Toward and Away from Things 24

Identification and Ownership 26

Some Previous Accounts of the Human Dependence on Things 29

Being There with Things 29

Material Culture and Materiality 32

Cognition and the Extended Mind 36

Conclusion: Things R Us 39

3 Things Depend on Other Things 41

Forms of Connection Between Things 43

Production and Reproduction 43

Exchange 43

Use 44

Consumption 44

Discard 44

Post-deposition 44

Affordances 49

From Affordance to Dependence 51

The French School - Operational Chains 52

Behavioral Chains 54

Things Depend on Past Things and on Future Things 58

Entangled Ideas 58

Conclusion 59

4 Things Depend on Humans 65

Things Fall Apart 68

Behavioral Archaeology and Material Behavior 70

Behavioral Ecology 74

Human Behavioral Ecology 79

The Temporalities of Things 83

Conclusion: The Unruliness of Things 84

5 Human-Human Entanglement 86

Inequality, Power and Entanglement 87

Poverty Traps 90

Emotional Bonds 92

Conclusion 93

6 Exploring Entanglement 95

The Physical Processes of Things 95

Temporalities 98

Forgetness 101

The Tautness of Entanglements and Path Dependency 103

Types and Degrees of Entanglement 105

Cores and Peripheries of Entanglements 108

Contingency 109

Conclusion 111

7 Entangled Abstractions and Bodily Engagements 113

Abstraction, Metaphor and Mimesis 114

From Granola to Beethoven 117

Abstract Entanglements at Çatalhöyük 123

Conclusion 126

8 Two Examples Regarding the Onset of Domestication and Sedentary Village Life: China and the Middle East 128

China 128

Middle East 130

Conclusion 138

9 Method 139

Tanglegrams 140

Formal Network Approaches 144

Sequencing Entanglements 147

Diachronic Entanglements 152

Interpretation 156

Conclusion 159

10 Toward an Entangled String Theory and Comparison with Other Approaches 160

Things Do Not Have Agency 161

There Is No Present, Only a Flow from Past to Future 163

Toward an Entangled String Theory 164

Other Contemporary Approaches 171

Latour and Actor Network Theory 172

Assemblage Theory 175

Containment and Enchainment 176

Ontologies 177

Material Engagement Theory 178

Agential Realism 179

Conclusion 180

11 Conclusion: From Things to Flows 182

Aquatic Culture? 182

Some Final Examples 183

Some Loose Ends 186

Bibliography 189

Index 209