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"Hodder, Ian"
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Religion in the emergence of civilization : Çatalhöyük as a case study
\"This book presents an interdisciplinary study of the role of spirituality and religious ritual in the emergence of complex societies. Involving an eminent group of natural scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and theologians, this volume examines Çatalhöyük as a case study. A nine-thousand-year old town in central Turkey, Çatalhöyük was first excavated in the 1960s and has since become integral to understanding the symbolic and ritual worlds of the early farmers and village-dwellers in the Middle East. It is thus an ideal location for exploring theories about the role of religion in early settled life. This book provides a unique overview of current debates concerning religion and its historical variations. Through exploration of themes including the integration of the spiritual and the material, the role of belief in religion, the cognitive bases for religion, and religion's social roles, this book situates the results from Çatalhöyük within a broader understanding of the Neolithic in the Middle East\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
The Entanglements of Humans and Things: A Long-Term View
This article retreats from an entirely relational treatment of matter, to rediscover the object nature of things. The thingly relations of things include object relations; materials provide affordances or potentialities to humans. The brute matter of things has effects on us that go beyond social networks. We cannot reduce things solely to the relational, to a semiotics of things. To do so undermines the power of things to entrap, and particularly to trap the more vulnerable. In the modern world, we have come to see that we need to use things sustainably and responsibly, to care for things. But this care and sustainability themselves too frequently involve further management and control of animals, plants, landscapes, resources, and humans. A long-term archaeological perspective shows that our attempts to fix things by finding technological solutions have led to an exponential increase in material entanglements. It is in our nature as a species to try and fix our problems now by fiddling and fixing, but such responses may have their limits.
Journal Article
Theory and practice in archaeology
\"This book aims to show through a series of examples that an interpretative archaeology dealing with past meanings can be applied in practice to archaeological data, and that it can also contribute effectively to modern social practice.\" \"Seven of the nineteen papers included have been specifically written for this volume to act as an overview of the way archaeology has developed over the last ten years. Yet Ian Hodder goes beyond this: he aims to break down the separation of theory and practice and to reconcile the division between the intellectual and the 'dirt' archaeologist. Faced with public controversy over the ownership and interpretation of the past, archaeology ungently needs a clear image of itself, able to gain funding, win public confidence and manage the heritage professionally yet sensitively. This image, however, is often clouded by the theory/practice debate, a division all too often encouraged by the separation of universities and heritage management. Hodder emphasises the importance of finding the right balance. Archaeologists, he asserts, cannot afford to ignore general theory in favour of practice any more than they can afford to shut themselves away in intellectual ivory towers. Theoretical debate is important to any discipline, particularly in archaeology if it is not to become complacent, self-interested and uncritical.\" \"Theory and Practice in Archaeology captures and extends the lively debate of the 1980s over symbolic and structural approaches to archaeology. It will be essential reading for students of archaeology and for those involved in and responsible for heritage management.\"--BOOK JACKET.
Book
Things and the Slow Neolithic: the Middle Eastern Transformation
This paper argues that the search for an overarching explanation for the adoption of farming and settled life in the Middle East can be enhanced by a consideration of the dependencies between humans and human-made things from the Late Glacial Maximum onwards. Often not considered in discussions of the origins of agriculture is the long process of human tooth size reduction that started in the Upper Palaeolithic and can reasonably be related to the increased use of grinding stones that created softer and more nutrient-rich plant foods. A consideration of the use of groundstone tools through the Epipalaeolithic and into the Neolithic shows that they were entangled with hearths, ovens, houses and settlements, exchange relations and notions of ownership. The practicalities of processing plants drew humans into pathways that led to intensification, population increase, sedentism and domestication. Much the same can be said for other human-made things such as sickles, storage bins, domestic animal dung and refuse. The dialectical tensions between human-thing dependence and dependency generated the movement towards Neolithicization. Human-thing dependence (involving human dependence on things, thing dependence on humans and thing dependence on other things) afforded opportunities towards which humans (always already in a given state of entanglement) were drawn in order to solve problems. But this dependence also involved dependency, limitation and constraint, leading for example to increases in labour. In order to provide that labour or in other ways to deal with the demands of things and their entanglements with other humans and things, humans made further use of the affordances of things. There was thus a generative spiral leading to sedentism and domestication.
Journal Article
Religion at work in a neolithic society : vital matters
\"This book tackles the topic of religion, a broad subject exciting renewed interest across the social and historical sciences. The volume is tightly focused on the early farming illage, which has generated much interest both within and outside of archaeology, especially for its contributions to the understanding of early religion. The volume discusses contemporary themes such as materiality, animism, object vitality, and material dimensions of spirituality while at the same time exploring broad evolutionary changes in the ways in which religion has influenced society. The volume results from a unique collaboration between an archaeological team and a range of specialists in ritual and religion\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Where are we heading? : the evolution of humans and things
A theory of human evolution and history based on ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on \"entanglement,\" the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. Not only do humans become dependent on things, Hodder asserts, but things become dependent on humans, requiring an endless succession of new innovations. It is this mutual dependency that creates the dominant trend in both cultural and genetic evolution. He selects a small number of cases, ranging in significance from the invention of the wheel down to Christmas tree lights, to show how entanglement has created webs of human-thing dependency that encircle the world and limit our responses to global crises.
eBook
Symbols in action : ethnoarchaeological studies of material culture
First published in 1982, this book presents the results of a series of field investigations carried out in Kenya, Zambia and the Sudan into the 'archaeological' remains and material culture of contemporary small-scale societies.
Book
Staying Egalitarian and the Origins of Agriculture in the Middle East
This article uses results from the recent excavations at Çatalhöyük in Turkey to propose that continuous tensions between egalitarian and hierarchical impulses were dealt with in two principal ways during the Neolithic of the Middle East. A tendency towards overall balance and community (termed molar) is seen as in tension with more particulate and molecular tendencies, with both being brought into play in order to combat inequalities. It is also suggested that tendencies towards more molecular systems increased over time, at different rates and in different ways in different places, partly as a response to constraints associated with more molar articulations. Finally, it is proposed that a shift to molecular autonomy was associated with agricultural intensification. Staying egalitarian can be seen as an active process that contributed to the Neolithic transformations.
Journal Article
Where are we heading? : the evolution of humans and things
\"In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on \"entanglement,\" the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. Not only do humans become dependent on things, Hodder asserts, but things become dependent on humans, requiring an endless succession of new innovations. It is this mutual dependency that creates the dominant trend in both cultural and genetic evolution. He selects a small number of cases, ranging in significance from the invention of the wheel down to Christmas tree lights, to show how entanglement has created webs of human-thing dependency that encircle the world and limit our responses to global crises.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Human-thing entanglement: towards an integrated archaeological perspective
In exploring human-thing entanglement I wish to make five points. (1) Humans depend on things. In much of the new work in the social and human sciences in which humans and things co-constitute each other, there is, oddly, little account of the things themselves. (2) Things depend on other things. All things depend on other things along chains of interdependence. (3) Things depend on humans. Things are not inert. They are always falling apart, transforming, growing, changing, dying, running out. (4) The defining aspect of human entanglement with made things is that humans get caught in a double-bind, depending on things that depend on humans. (5) Traits evolve and persist. When evolutionary archaeologists identify lineages of cultural affinity, they claim to be studying cultural transmission. Transmission may be involved in such lineages, but it is the overall entanglement of humans and things that allows success or failure of traits. Par l'exploration de l'intrication entre humains et choses, l'auteur souhaite soulever cinq points. (1) Les humains dépendent des choses. Pourtant, dans une grande partie des nouveaux travaux en sciences sociales et humaines dans lesquels les humains et les choses sont co-constitutifs, les choses sont, curieusement, peu considérées. (2) Les choses dépendent d'autres choses. Toutes les choses dépendent d'autres choses, au fil de chaînes d'interdépendance. (3) Les choses dépendent des humains. Elles ne sont pas inertes. Elles passent leur temps à tomber en morceaux, à se transformer, à pousser, à changer, à mourir, à s'épuiser. (4) L'aspect définissant l'intrication des humains avec les objets fabriqués est que les humains sont pris dans un double bind, dépendant des choses qui dépendent d'eux. (5) Certains traits apparaissent, évoluent et persistent. Quand les archéologues évolutionnistes identifient des lignées d'affinité culturelle, ils affirment étudier la transmission culturelle. Bien que la transmission puisse être à l'œuvre dans ces lignées, c'est l'intrication globale des hommes et des choses qui permet aux traits de prospérer ou de disparaître.
Journal Article