Abstract

There is no shortage of highly stimulating writings that argue for the profound place of material culture in the constitution of humanity. From entanglement to material engagement theory, material agency to process archaeology, the idea at the forefront of these frameworks is that human cultures are embedded in and derived from the material world. Intellectually stimulating as these New Materialisms may be, they are lacking in methodological clarity. What on earth does it mean “to follow stuff wherever it may lead?” (Witmore 2014, 205). Moreover, if these approaches make of archaeology “a discipline of things” (ibid., 223) than what can we bring to the sustainability debate, which is essentially about human-material relationships? My aim is to link these two issues. To do so we will move from Bronze Age metalworking skills to making fruit-leather, all within the space of a 30-minute presentation. Buckle up!