Offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory of material entanglement and entrapment, enriched with vivid examples from everyday life Entangled explores how archaeological evidence can help provide a better understanding of the direction of human social and technological change, demonstrating how the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture. Using examples drawn from both the early farming settlements of the Middle East and daily life in the modern world, Ian Hodder highlights the complex co-dependencies of humans and things—arguing that the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds are the unseen drivers of human development. Updated and expanded, Entangled offers new perspectives on the study of the relationality between things and humans. In this edition, the author reframes relationality in terms of various forms of dependence to better explore inequality, injustice, and the ways people get entrapped in detrimental social and economic situations. An entirely new chapter focuses on human dependence on other humans, such as between colonial powers and colonized people. Increased focus is placed on object-oriented ontologies and assemblages, symmetrical archaeology, and indigenous and radical approaches in archaeology that critique relationality and posthumanism. A wide range of new examples, references, and literature are presented throughout the book. Argues that dependence on things forces humans down particular evolutionary pathways and social trends Demonstrates how long-standing entanglements can be irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time Integrates archaeology, natural and biological sciences, and the social sciences Presents a critical review of key contemporary perspectives, including material culture studies, phenomenology, evolutionary theory, cognitive archaeology, human ecology, and complexity theory Entangled: A New Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things, Second Edition is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers, researchers, and scholars in the fields of archeology, anthropology, material culture studies, and related fields across the social sciences and humanities.

Table of Contents:
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