ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how semiotics – the study of signs – might shed light on these feedback loops of cultural reproduction and human–thing entanglement. It focuses on the role of dualisms in archaeological theory, while investigating a relatively new set of approaches to these problems. Peirce understood signs as operating within both the materially and culturally constituted world. Unlike Ferdinand de Saussure and his structural semiotics, Peirce offers archaeology a theory that accounts for signs and semiotic mediation well beyond representation, while also providing a framework for understanding the multivalent and dynamic nature of signs in society. Living things that have the ability to interpret signs are key parts of the semiotic process according to a Peircian approach. As evinced in the broader literature concerning biosemiotics, humans are far from the only living things that interpret signs.
