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Exploring Materiality in the Bronze Age

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Tourism, Culture, and Heritage".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 August 2020) | Viewed by 10117

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Humanities and Performing Arts, Univeristy of Wales Trinity Saint David, Ceredigion SA48 7ED, UK
Interests: archaeology of Cyprus; Near Eastern archaeology; archaeological theory; New Materialisms; materiality; artefact studies; ceramics; representations

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Bronze Age is typically characterised as a period of technological and cultural innovation, culture contact, the development of long-distance trading links and increasingly sophisticated maritime technologies. These are typically associated with greater human engagement with, and manipulation of, the material world. Traditional narratives have focused on the emergence of complex societies (chiefdoms, palaces, urbanisation), monumentality, the concentration of wealth in the hands of an emergent elite and the development of power strategies situated in ideological control of economic resources. The proposed issue focuses on materiality, recognising the agency of matter and exploring diverse ways in which cultural knowledge developed from material engagements within the creative communities of the Bronze Age.

This Special Issue aims to explore human interactions with the environment during the Bronze Age through the lens of the New Materialisms, specifically to reassess how people and materials co-produced the material world. This approach encourages a move away from Enlightenment ontologies that view the matter of the world (water, land, minerals, etc.) as an inert resource waiting to be exploited by people. Instead, it draws attention to the very materiality of being human, highlighting how people and other materials are in relationship. It aims to interrogate how the distinct capacities of diverse substances (metals, clay, water) provoked, enabled and constrained human behaviour and how the daily encounters between these substances and people in the Bronze Age created and shaped new social and material worlds. The New Materialisms emphasise relationality between entities/matter through the concept of Deleuzian assemblages (or agencement): “ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts” (Bennett 2010, 23), constantly “in a state of becoming” (Harris 2014, 90). A related approach focuses on the materiality of Bronze Age societies, looking at human–object entanglements. This draws upon the notion that objects have agency, beyond the distributed agency of human actors, and thus, the ability to shape the thoughts and actions of the people that created and used them. People and objects are situated within a recursive relationship.

This Special Issue welcomes theoretical contributions that aim to enhance our understanding of human interactions with material world during the Bronze Age. It invites papers addressing ceramic and metallurgical production, resource management (water, land, minerals) and the representation of ideological worlds in clay, metal or stone, taking account of how the capacities of these materials shaped and informed human praxis. At the core of this issue is an interrogation of human relationships and interactions with the physical world, challenging human exceptionalist ideologies that continue to imagine that materials play an incidental role in the construction of social lives.

References:

Attala, L. and Steel, L. (eds) Body Matters: Exploring the Materiality of the Human Body. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, UK; 2019.

Bennett J. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, Durham, NC; 2010.

Boivin N. Material Cultures, Material Minds: The Impact of Things on Human Thought, Society, and Evolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK; 2008.

Conneller C. An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe. New York, NY, Routledge; 2011.

Coole, D. and Frost, S. (eds) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Duke University Press, Durham, NC; 2010.

Drazin, A. and Küchler, S. (eds) The Social Life of Materials. Bloomsbury, London; 2015.

Harris O.J.T. Revealing our vibrant past: Science, materiality and the Neolithic. In Early Farmers: The View from Archaeology and Science. Whittle, A. and Bickle, P. Eds.; Oxford: Oxford University Press/British Academy, 2014; pp. 327-45.

Steel, L. Watery Entanglements in the Cypriot Hinterland During the Bronze Age. Land. 7(3); 2018.

Dr. Louise Steel
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • New Materialisms
  • materiality
  • Bronze Age
  • objects
  • entanglement
  • assemblages

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 2831 KiB  
Article
Material Entanglements of Writing Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus
by Philippa M. Steele
Sustainability 2020, 12(24), 10671; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410671 - 21 Dec 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3430
Abstract
The present paper explores theoretical aspects of the study of writing systems and practices. It approaches the mesh that constitutes writing practice through one type of agent: the writing instrument used to write clay documents in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus. On [...] Read more.
The present paper explores theoretical aspects of the study of writing systems and practices. It approaches the mesh that constitutes writing practice through one type of agent: the writing instrument used to write clay documents in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus. On the one hand, this investigation will use types of writing implements and their distribution to think through wider issues concerning the development of writing practices across the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus. On the other, it will attempt to establish the place of writing implements within a broader conceptual framework of the people, things and actions that constitute writing practices in this area and period. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Materiality in the Bronze Age)
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15 pages, 4031 KiB  
Article
How Rocks Die: Changing Patterns of Discard and Re-Use of Ground Stone Tools in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus
by Andrew McCarthy
Sustainability 2020, 12(21), 8869; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12218869 - 26 Oct 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2806
Abstract
Cultural objects are thought to have a lifespan. From selection, through construction, use, destruction, and discard, materials do not normally last forever, transforming through stages of life, eventually leading to their death. The materiality of stone objects, however, can defy the inevitable demise [...] Read more.
Cultural objects are thought to have a lifespan. From selection, through construction, use, destruction, and discard, materials do not normally last forever, transforming through stages of life, eventually leading to their death. The materiality of stone objects, however, can defy the inevitable demise of an object, especially durable ground stone tools that can outlive generations of human lifespans. How groups of people deal with the relative permanence of stone tools depends on their own relationship with the past, and whether they venerate it or reject its influence on the present. A case study from the long-lived site of Prasteio-Mesorotsos in Cyprus demonstrates a shifting attitude toward ground stone objects, from the socially conservative habit of ritually killing of objects and burying them, to one of more casual re-use and reinterpretation of ground stone. This shift in attitude coincides with a socio-political change that eventually led to the ultimate rejection of the past: complete abandonment of the settlement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Materiality in the Bronze Age)
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10 pages, 1230 KiB  
Article
Feats of Clay: Considering the Materiality of Late Bronze Age Cyprus
by Louise Steel
Sustainability 2020, 12(17), 6942; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176942 - 26 Aug 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3188
Abstract
This paper examines the materiality of the Cypriot Base Ring ware through the lens of the new materialisms. Specifically, it draws upon Bennett’s vibrant matter and thing-power, to explore how cultural and technological knowledges of Late Bronze Age Cyprus were informed through material [...] Read more.
This paper examines the materiality of the Cypriot Base Ring ware through the lens of the new materialisms. Specifically, it draws upon Bennett’s vibrant matter and thing-power, to explore how cultural and technological knowledges of Late Bronze Age Cyprus were informed through material engagements with clay. This approach highlights the agency of matter and illustrates how the distinct capacities of clay (working with water and fire) provoked, enabled and constrained potters’ behaviour, resulting in a distinctive pottery style that was central to the Late Cypriot social and material world. The aim is to demonstrate how people, materials and objects are all matter in relationship, drawing attention to the fluidity, porosity and relationality of the material world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Materiality in the Bronze Age)
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