Earth and World: Interactions with Clay

<p>Professor Louise Steel examines the history of clay and how the cultural and technological knowledges of the earliest settled farming and urban communities were informed by people’s engagements with clay.    <br />  <br /> As one of the first mineral substance to be transformed from a malleable to a durable state. Many societies perceive it as an animate substance permeated with "a spiritual energy and life-force" that retains a "thing-power", allowing it to be shaped into various forms.<span style= "font-size: 8pt;">[1] [2]</span> <br />   <br /> Building on her ongoing research Steel looks at the agency of matter to illustrate how the distinct capacities of clay (in relationship with water and fire) shaped and facilitated, but equally constrained, people’s behaviour, resulting in distinctive social and material worlds. Focusing on the vitality of matter, Steel considers how “the materials themselves are determining—even actively responsible—for the final shape and manner by which the finished article can manifest”. <span style= "font-size: 8pt;">[3] </span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size: 8pt;"> [1]</span> Boivin, N. 2012. From veneration to exploitation: Human engagement with the mineral world. In Soils, Stones and Symbols: Cultural Perceptions of the Mineral World; Boivin, N., Owoc, M.A., (Eds). London: Routledge, pp. 1–29.  <span style="font-size: 8pt;">[2] </span>Bennett, J. 2010.Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.  <span style= "font-size: 8pt;">[3] </span>Attala, L. and Steel, L. 2019.Body Matters: Exploring the Materiality of the Human Body> Cardiff: Wales University Press. </p> <p><strong>Louise Steel</strong> is Professor in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter. Her research focuses on materiality and the interaction of objects in people's social worlds. She is series editor of Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Wales Press, and is currently editing a volume on Earthy Matters: Ex