ABSTRACT
The opening chapter introduces the scope of the book and frames the key concepts, including the methodological and theoretical tools utilized throughout the book. A key goal of this chapter is outlining and overcoming the perceived schism between material and discursive culture. To this end, the materiality of numbers is explored as a viable case study. The bifurcation between the material and the discursive has paralleled the nature-culture divide in the humanities and social science for the preceding centuries. This chapter argues that just as denaturalizing oppression and discrimination has been critical to emancipatory efforts, so too must be “rematerialization.” The concept temperature is presented as the artifact for pursuing this rematerialization. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the role of temperature in ongoing climate crises and the genealogy of the archaeological theory employed throughout the book.
