ABSTRACT
I begin with a puzzle. It is that the ever-growing literature in anthropology and archaeology that deals explicitly with the subjects of materiality and material culture seems to have hardly anything to say about materials.1 I mean by materials the stuff that things are made of, and a rough inventory might begin with something like the following, taken from the list of contents from Henry Hodges’ excellent little book, Artefacts: pottery; glazes; glass and enamels; copper and copper alloys; iron and steel; gold, silver, lead and mercury; stone; wood; fibres and threads; textiles and baskets; hides and leather; antler, bone, horn and ivory; dyes, pigments and paints; adhesives; some other materials (Hodges 1964: 9).
