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Accepted Paper:

Matter theory and material culture: exploring science, society and archaeology  
Zena Kamash (Oxford University)

Paper short abstract:

This paper will look at how different ways of thinking about the nature of the universe and its fundamental components relate to materials and technologies in the wider social world.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will look at the relationships between different ways of thinking about the nature of the universe and its fundamental components and how people use and manipulate materials and technologies in the wider social world. The aim is to explore how the impact of such ways of thinking, from, for example, Aristotle's theory of the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) to alchemical theories of transforming matter, might be assessed archaeologically. Using a set of short examples drawn from Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the modern world, the paper will propose a methodology for using technological analyses of material culture to look at the ideas and world views that might lie behind these technologies, or, equally, that might be generated from them. In so doing, it is hoped that it might be possible to get closer to understandings of how science and society are related in material ways.

Panel S01
People-things-places: analysing technologies in an indivisible past
  Session 1