Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book first emerged from Ian Hodder's 'Things' seminar at Stanford University. The course was a welcome forum to discuss how people and things interact and the repercussions of this interaction. Thi book builds on intersections between science, humanities, and ecology to provide a more fine-grained, multiscalar treatment those benefits from the long-term perspective that characterizes archaeological research. The chapters in this book are organized around three main themes with the objective of highlighting the breadth, both in terms of various topical and regional areas, with which entanglement can engage. The chapter by Hodder is a deeper examination of dependences and dependencies, using a case study of pottery at Middle Eastern site of Catalhoylik. This chapter provides a satisfying end to the case studies presented here as it gathers together many of the conceptual threads woven through other chapters in a theoretical way.