Earthy Matters: Exploring Human Interactions with Earth, Soil and Clay

Explores the connections between humans, the earth, and the matter that comprises them both.

Humans are made of the earth itself, but how does this impact everyday life and experiences? Earthy Matters: Exploring Human Interactions with Earth, Soil and Clay explores humans’ relationships with the earthly matter under their feet—sediments, soils, and clay—while examining how these relationships are embedded within, and responsible for, eco-cultural practices. It draws attention to the importance of understanding how humans are connected to the earth by highlighting our profound and physical entanglement with all earthy materials. It seeks to situate humans in relationship with a wider landscape of materials emerging underfoot. Through the distinct capacities of these substances, which both provoke and constrain how we interact and engage with them, the authors show how the substances we walk on have co-produced our daily activities and experiences of being in the world and continue to do so.

Louise Steel lectures in archaeology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, specializing in archaeological theory and the Bronze Age in the East Mediterranean.