ABSTRACT
As a discipline, archaeology constructs historical narratives based on things. Because archaeology tends to work with long stretches of time, those narratives are framed by big historical questions. Think ‘collapse of states’, ‘the rise of inequality’, or, another classic, ‘the formation of empires’. There is thus a long disciplinary legacy of using material culture as evidence for past trajectories, as history-teller. The last couple of decades saw the development and maturation of so-called material culture studies across the humanities and social sciences. 1 This label covers various approaches, but they all share the conviction that material culture does not just tell us about processes, events, and associations, it also actively does things. It enables, constrains, shapes, affects, acts, or forces. But different parameters have been suggested for describing and interpreting this ‘material agency’.
