Louise Steel | University of Wales Trinity Saint David (original) (raw)

Books by Louise Steel

University of Wales Press, 2024

Earthy Matters is a lively collection of theoretically informed chapters that introduce the reade... more Earthy Matters is a lively collection of theoretically informed chapters that introduce the reader to the notion that matter is a creative agent, and that it plays a key role in the formation of our material and social worlds. The focus of the book is sediments, soils, clay and earth ‒ materials that surround us and have shaped people’s interactions with the environment since even before the first farmers settled in the Near East tilling the earth, building houses from mud and plaster, and making vessels and figurines from clay. This collection questions orthodox understandings that these substances are inert and an infinite resource for humanity, rather to foreground earthy substances in their relationships with humans, and to show how these materials have co-created our social and material worlds. It is a novel and timely reminder for the reader that our lives have always been embedded within the matter of the E(e)arth.

Plants Matter explores how plants and people live together. This is not only a book about the imp... more Plants Matter explores how plants and people live together. This is not only a book about the importance of plants and how people use them, but it argues also that knowing the world is achieved-with plants. In addition to populating the landscape, plants alter human physiology in multiple material ways, through gatherings or through sensorial conversations using the chemistry of taste, perfume, colour, sound and textures. The chapters gathered in this volume offer a range of interdisciplinary perspectives that use ethnographic and ethnobotanical information to explore how the behaviours and capacities of certain plants around the world have enticed, excited and even seduced people to pay attention.

Body Matters approaches the material world directly; it seeks to remind people that they are the ... more Body Matters approaches the material world directly; it seeks to remind people that they are the matter of their bodies. This volume offers an assortment of contributions from Anthropology, Archaeology and Medieval Studies, with case studies from northern Europe, the Near East, East Africa and Amazonia, which variously draw attention to the multiple shifting materials that comprise, impact upon and co-create human bodies. This lively collection foregrounds myriad material influences interacting with and shaping the human body. Govier, Feyers-Kerr and Steel examine how minerals such as carbon (smoke), cinnabar, mud and plaster co-mingle with human bodies in Çatalhöyük, Kenya and the Near East respectively whiles Walsh highlights the ways in which bodies are shaped through handling pottery, drawing upon Bronze Age Kerma. Attala explores the bodily consequences of ingesting hallucinogens (Ayahusca) and Rahmen considers how substances such as water and tobacco combine with bodily flesh to produce the intangible and invisible aspects of a person for the Amazonian Warakena. Burton and Webster draw our attention back to the very flesh, blood and bones constituting the matter of the body in Medieval Europe, while Coard examines its disintegration into dust. All these papers come together then to illustrate the fundamental fleshy, bony, suppurating, leaky and oozing physicality of being human. Ultimately, by reminding the reader of their indisputable materiality, Body Matters seeks to draw people and the rest of the material world together to illustrate not just that bodies seep into (and are part of) the landscape but equally that people and the material world are inextricably co-constitutive.

People’s embodied engagement with food and the material culture of food are central to their dail... more People’s embodied engagement with food and the material culture of food are central to their daily experiences and their sense of identity. Within anthropological literature (and the related field of food studies) there has been considerable focus on the materiality of foodstuffs. This book builds upon the existing dialogue of the materiality of food by the novel addition of the material culture of food (objects used in packaging, storing, processing and consuming food). Material objects are, and have been since the remote past, central to the production, distribution and consumption of food and drink; people mediate their social worlds through their embodied encounters with these artefacts, as much as with the substance of food.
In this book we explore the sensory experiences of consumption of food and the objects through which these are mediated. Three key themes are identified:
a) Transformations: not only how foodstuffs are transformed into consumables but also changes in material practices surrounding the production and consumption of food;
b) Embodied Encounters: exploring the agencies of production and consumption and the materiality of the consumed, and how these shape social and material worlds;
c) Social and Symbolic Consumption: socialised and ritualised behaviours surrounding interactions with food and drink, including magical substitutes for food, non-consumption, specialised equipments.
The contributors go beyond the materiality of food itself as the object of study, to also incorporate the objects through which food realistically and symbolically comes to life. The articles in this edited volume focus on the material culture, its participation of application of meaning, the encounters with food or ideas of food, and embodied experiences. By looking at cultures spanning from ancient Egypt to 20th century Netherlands, from modern Kenya to ancient China, the interdisciplinary chapters explore the multiple interplays between foods, bodies, material worlds, rituals, and embodied knowledge that emerge from these material encounters and how this knowledge, in turn, shape the material culture of food.

The importance of cultural contacts in the East Mediterranean has long been recognized and is the... more The importance of cultural contacts in the East Mediterranean has long been recognized and is the focus of ongoing international research. Fieldwork in the Aegean, Egypt, Cyprus, and the Levant continues to add to our understanding of the nature of this contact and its social and economic significance, particularly to the cultures of the Aegean. Despite sophisticated discussion of the archaeological evidence, in particular on the part of Aegean and Mediterranean archaeologists, there has been little systematic attempt to incorporate anthropological perspectives on materiality and exchange into archaeological narratives of this material. This book addresses that gap and integrates anthropological discourse on contact, examining exchange systems, the gift, notions of geographical distance and power, colonization, and hybridization. Furthermore, it develops a social narrative of culture contact in the Mediterranean context, illustrating the reasons communities chose to engage in international exchange, and how this impacted the construction of identities throughout the region.

While traditional archaeologies in the East Mediterranean have tended to be reductive in their approach to material culture and how it was produced, used, and exchanged, this book reviews current research on material culture, focusing on issues such as the biography of objects, inalienable possessions, and hybridization – exploring how these issues can further illuminate the material world of the communities of the Bronze Age Mediterranean.

Papers by Louise Steel

Near Eastern Archaeology 86(3): 186-95., 2023

This paper explores the social lives of gaming stones, a significant number of which have been fo... more This paper explores the social lives of gaming stones, a significant number of which have been found at the Late Bronze Age farming settlement of Aredhiou Vouppes, Cyprus. The number of gaming stones found at the site is unprecedented within a Late Cypriot context. Comparatively few are found in the contemporary urban centers, and in general they appear to be more typical of the Middle Cypriot social world. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the agency of these gaming stones, and to consider them as social mediators within the community of Aredhiou. It explores the social and cognitive lives of these objects, examining how they might be transformed and re-imagined as they moved through myriad states of existence throughout their object-life, and thus the various ways in which they were entangled in the social life of the settlement.

In A.-L. d’Agata and P. Pavúk (eds) 179-205, The Lady of Pottery: Ceramic Studies Presented to Penelope A. Mountjoy in Acknowledgement of Her Outstanding Scholarship. SMEA NS, Supplement 3,, 2023

Mycenaean decorated pottery has been found in significant quantities on Cyprus and was clearly th... more Mycenaean decorated pottery has been found in significant quantities on Cyprus and was clearly the focus of a sustained trading endeavour between the island and the Aegean, particularly during the 14th and 13th centuries BC (LH IIIA2-LH IIIB). The bulk of these imports have been found at the urban centres that fringe the island’s coastline, these being the primary mediators of maritime trade; rather less has been found in the hinterland, at the primary production centres ‒ farming, mining and pottery production ‒ although there are concentrations at some of the specialised religious or ceremonial centres such as Myrtou Pigadhes and Athienou. I have previously argued that this apparent disjuncture in the distribution of Mycenaean pottery in part reflects the greater emphasis of excavation at the coastal sites, rather than necessarily a Late Bronze Age reality. Certainly, recent excavations at the inland settlement of Aredhiou have demonstrated that the smaller inland production sites did have sustained access to imported pottery from the Aegean, Egypt and the Levant. This paper reviews the consumption of Mycenaean imported pottery in Late Bronze Age Cyprus, focusing specifically on the hinterland. It provides a comparison between the better-known religious sites of Athienou and Myrtou Pigadhes and the small farming community at Aredhiou Vouppes to allow for a better understanding of the integration of the imported commodities within ritualised practice in the smaller communities situated away from the hustle and bustle of international mercantile trade.

Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, 2023

This paper explores Egyptian influence in Late Bronze Age Cyprus through the lens of cultural hyb... more This paper explores Egyptian influence in Late Bronze Age Cyprus through the lens of cultural hybridity. It draws specifically on Bhabha’s concept of the third space, identified here as an in-between space where two (or more) cultural identities mix and become materially entangled. Key for such an analysis of Cypro-Egyptian contacts is the understanding that this place need not have any direct political dimensions but instead could be a fluid space characterized by diverse contact situations. The focus is Egyptian(izing) objects from Enkomi, which highlight the cultural impact of New Kingdom Cypro-Egyptian cultural contacts. .

The Annual of the British School at Athens, 1996

Two cemeteries associated with the early iron age occupation of Kourion have been excavated at th... more Two cemeteries associated with the early iron age occupation of Kourion have been excavated at the localities of Bamboula and Kaloriziki. In his publications of these cemeteries Benson attempted to demonstrate continuity of occupation at Kourion in the transitional bronze–iron age. A reanalysis of the pottery from both cemeteries has instead shown that the supposed continuity of occupation at Kourion is a result of Benson's erroneous identification of the final Late Cypriot and Initial Cypro-Geometric wares.

The Antiquaries Journal, 2004

In 1996 the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, Gaza, identified a previously unknown site dat... more In 1996 the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, Gaza, identified a previously unknown site dating to the second millennium BC, in the area of el-Moghraqa, some joom north of the Wadi Gaza. The cultural remains recovered from the surface included a series of terracotta cones stamped with the cartouches of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut. These artefacts are unique amongst the cultural assemblages of the Levant and are most closely paralleled by Egyptian funerary cones of the Eighteenth Dynasty from Thebes. Fieldwork conducted by the Gaza Research Project (GRP) in 1999 and 2000 examined the archaeological context of the cones, with the purpose of identifying their function and assessing the symbolic significance of this Egyptianizing material within a Levantine context.

Levant 36: 31-6., 2004

This article presents results of the first season of fieldwork conducted by the Gaza Research Pro... more This article presents results of the first season of fieldwork conducted by the Gaza Research Project in 1998. Fieldwork comprised small-scale topographic survey around the old city of Gaza and reconnaissance of other second millennium tell sites in the region, namely Tell Ali Muntar. The primary aims were to examine the chronological and topographical relationship of two proximate tell sites lying at the southern limits of the Levantine coastal plain, between the Wadi al-Hasi and the Wadi Gaza, and to assess the feasibility of excavation of ancient Gaza.

Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World, eds. S. Autiero and M. Cobb , 2021

This chapter focuses on the overlapping networks of exchange in the East Mediterranean during the... more This chapter focuses on the overlapping networks of exchange in the East Mediterranean during the later second millennium BCE, focusing on the Late Bronze Age (LBA) rural community at Aredhiou Vouppes in central Cyprus to explore a new materialism understanding of the flow of materials throughout the region. Traditionally, the development of LBA exchange networks has been attributed to the development of the metals trade (copper and tin in particular), but likewise to the demand for imported luxuries (raw materials and finished products) to sustain the ideologies of the region's elites, using models of core-periphery and more recently, globalization, glocalization and bronzization. This chapter, however, examines the matter flows implicit in these narratives through the lens of the new materialisms, emphasising human-object entanglements integral to the materiality of Bronze Age societies: It uses the concept of Deleuzian agencement (assemblages) to examine how people and other materials/things are in relationship, in a constant state of becoming, and considers how these matter flows created and shaped the "globalized" material and social worlds of the East Mediterranean and more specifically how this material connectedness incorporated peripheral production sites.

Journal of Material Culture, 2021

This paper considers the application of the New Materialisms within archaeology, primarily in res... more This paper considers the application of the New Materialisms within archaeology, primarily in response to Witmore’s influential discussion paper: Archaeology and the New Materialisms (2014), specifically his emphasis on things. This we demonstrate is peripheral to the main thrust of the New Materialisms discourse. We unravel complexities in the terminology and consider the etymological and epistemological framework of concepts such as matter and thing. This leads us to consider some important issues that arise applying Deleuzian assemblages to the archaeological record and the potential of employing Barad’s agential realist theory instead. Barad’s concept of phenomena moves beyond the notion of things as separate, bounded entities, emphasizing entanglements of matter, and illustrates how matter (including humans) co-create the material world. Our aim is to demonstrate how engaging with matter rather than things, enables us to better make sense of the material world and our place within it.

in N. Laneri (ed.) The Sacred Body: Materializing the Divine through Human Remains in Antiquity. Material Religion in Antiquity, Oxford: Oxbow Books., 2021

The human body is increasingly the focus of intellectual enquiry within archaeology. This paper d... more The human body is increasingly the focus of intellectual enquiry within archaeology. This paper draws upon the understanding that the body is ‘as much a cultural phenomenon as it is a biological entity’. It also recognises the materiality of the body and how it interacts with other materials to co-produce material and social worlds, enabling us to examine how the body becomes entangled within a web of connections. Drawing upon representations of the human form and associated material assemblages, it explores how the body was shaped, moulded and inscribed in Bronze Age Cyprus, creating what Csordas describes as ‘a performing self of appearance, display, and impression management’. These diverse interactions with the human body included altering the actual surface of the body by tattooing, scarification, and piercings, as well as less permanent, practices, such as cosmetics, adornment, clothing, hairstyles. These practices created a social skin: ‘the surface of the body…becomes the symbolic stage upon which the drama of socialization is enacted’. This paper considers how such bodily practices were incorporated within Early-Middle Cypriot society.

Pp. 105-18 in Z. Chovanec and W. Crist (eds) All Things Cypriot: Studies on Ancient Environment, Technology, and Society in Honor of Stuart Swiny. ASOR publications, Boston., 2021

Sustainability, 2020

This paper examines the materiality of the Cypriot Base Ring ware through the lens of the new mat... more This paper examines the materiality of the Cypriot Base Ring ware through the lens of the new materialisms. Specifically, it draws upon Bennett's vibrant matter and thing-power, to explore how cultural and technological knowledges of Late Bronze Age Cyprus were informed through material engagements with clay. This approach highlights the agency of matter and illustrates how the distinct capacities of clay (working with water and fire) provoked, enabled and constrained potters' behaviour, resulting in a distinctive pottery style that was central to the Late Cypriot social and material world. The aim is to demonstrate how people, materials and objects are all matter in relationship, drawing attention to the fluidity, porosity and relationality of the material world.

Encyclopaedia of Global Archaeology

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2020

This paper examines Mycenaean female figurines, focusing on their gesture, posture, and dress as... more This paper examines Mycenaean female figurines, focusing on their gesture, posture, and dress as evidence for somatic messages of Mycenaean female personhood and identity and what this might tell us about women’s lives in Late Bronze Age Greece. The primary focus is on the corporeal messages encoded in the figurines, with reference to Butler’s understanding of gender performativity and Connerton’s notion of incorporated body knowledges, to better understand how the figurines were embedded in Mycenaean habitus. This includes an experiential study of the gestures and posture of the figurines, to explore ancient embodied experiences, and analysis of the painted and applied details of clothing of the three main female types. The aim of the paper is to
explore becoming a Mycenaean woman through the medium of sculpted clay.

University of Wales Press, 2024

Near Eastern Archaeology 86(3): 186-95., 2023

In A.-L. d’Agata and P. Pavúk (eds) 179-205, The Lady of Pottery: Ceramic Studies Presented to Penelope A. Mountjoy in Acknowledgement of Her Outstanding Scholarship. SMEA NS, Supplement 3,, 2023

Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, 2023

The Annual of the British School at Athens, 1996

The Antiquaries Journal, 2004

Levant 36: 31-6., 2004

Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World, eds. S. Autiero and M. Cobb , 2021

Journal of Material Culture, 2021

in N. Laneri (ed.) The Sacred Body: Materializing the Divine through Human Remains in Antiquity. Material Religion in Antiquity, Oxford: Oxbow Books., 2021

Pp. 105-18 in Z. Chovanec and W. Crist (eds) All Things Cypriot: Studies on Ancient Environment, Technology, and Society in Honor of Stuart Swiny. ASOR publications, Boston., 2021

Sustainability, 2020

Encyclopaedia of Global Archaeology

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2020

In G.F. Chiai and R. Hauessler (eds) Sacred Landscapes: Creation, Manipulation, Transformation. Oxford: Oxbow, 2020

Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2018

This article explores how material culture is used to shape, mediate and transform social relati... more This article explores how material culture is used to shape, mediate and transform social relations within contact zones. The aim is to highlight cultural hybridity, namely the material expression of new social practices within a colonial third space. It focuses on the Gaza region of the southern Levant during the later 2nd millennium BCE, a cosmopolitan period, illustrated by large-scale movement of goods, raw materials, and exotic luxuries over vast distances around the East Mediterranean resulting in cultural connectivity. The Late Bronze Age in the Gaza region is also characterized by Egyptian colonial activity. Consequently, this article examines material evidence for the development of new social practices in the region and in particular the adoption of Egyptian(izing) exotica in the creation and mediation of new hybrid identities. Specifically, it explores the social life of objects at two important Late Bronze Age sites in the region: el-Moghraqa and Deir el-Balah.

Structures of Inequality on Bronze Age Cyprus. Studies in honour of Alison K. South. SIMA PB 187, eds. L. Crewe, L. Hulin and J. Webb)., 2018

This paper focuses on Red Lustrous Wheelmade (RLW) arm-vessels from Cyprus, central Anatolia and ... more This paper focuses on Red Lustrous Wheelmade (RLW) arm-vessels from Cyprus, central Anatolia and Cilicia, with the aim of examining how these objects were handled, used and embedded in social and cultural practices in the three regions. The approach taken draws upon the materiality of objects – both the physical properties, as well as human-object entanglements – as well as theoretical approaches exploring embodiment and material habitus. Examining the material qualities of the arm vessels should help us to better understand how people physically interacted with these and incorporated them within distinct social practices. This paper also explores the social messages encoded within the visual vocabulary of the arm-vessels, situating this within a wider understanding of drinking scenes from the Cypro-Levantine social worlds, specifically to throw light upon embodied practices and material habitus. Through this discussion I hope to highlight that these objects should not simply be considered as museum pieces or catalogue entries; but instead we should attempt to understand how they were integrated within social and material worlds. were items that were handled,

Land: Special Issue Central Places and Un-Central Landscapes: Political Economies and Natural Resources in the Longue Durée, 2018

This paper examines how water shaped people's interaction with the landscape in Cyprus during the... more This paper examines how water shaped people's interaction with the landscape in Cyprus during the Bronze Age. The theoretical approach is drawn from the new materialisms, effectively a 'turn to matter', which emphasises the very materiality of the world and challenges the privileged position of human agents over the rest of the environment. The paper specifically moves away from more traditional approaches to landscape archaeology, such as central place theory and more recently network theory, which serve to separate and distance people from the physical world they live in, and indeed are a part of; instead, it focuses on an approach that embeds humans, and the social/material worlds they create, as part of the environment, exploring human interactions within the landscape as assemblages, or entanglements of matter. It specifically emphasises the materiality and agency of water and how this shaped people's engagement with, and movement through, their landscape. The aim is to encourage archaeologists to engage with the materiality of things, to better understand how people and other matter co-create the material (including social) world.

In Body Matters: Exploring the Materiality of the Human Body, L. Attala and L. Steel (eds). Cardiff: UWP., 2019

In Body Matters: Exploring the Materiality of the Human Body, Luci Attala and Louise Steel (eds). Cardiff: University of Wales Press., 2019

ASA 2023 An Unwell World? Anthropology in a Speculative Mode. Bridging Knowledges: Responding to a Trouble Planet Panel, 2023

This presentation examines people's changing relationship with a post-industrial landscape in Sou... more This presentation examines people's changing relationship with a post-industrial landscape in South Wales. It explores creative methodologies, working with earthy matter, to show how re-engaging with these might enable conversations about the social and physical impact of the Anthropocene.

Everyday Life in Prehistoric Cyprus (ca. 10000-1700 BC). International Digital Conference on Cypriot Prehistory, Athens: NCCP., 2021

There is a rich body of three-dimensional art from Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus made in the Red ... more There is a rich body of three-dimensional art from Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus made in the Red Polished ware; this comprises plank figurines, pottery (bowls and jugs) adorned around the rim or shoulder with miniature animals, pots and people, and other modelled scenes placed on flat slabs of clay. The more elaborate of the decorated vessels comprise scenic compositions, characterised by groups of people apparently engaged in a variety of activities generally assumed to be meaningful for the Bronze Age Cypriot observer. These have typically been interpreted as dioramas of daily life, perhaps used to mark major lifecycle events or possibly integrated within an ancestor cult.

EAA 2021: v‘TOUCHING OBJECTS, FEELING MATERIALS’: MATERIAL TRANSFORMATIONS, TECHNOLOGY AND SENSORIALITY IN ANCIENT MATERIAL CULTURE

This paper explores people's daily sensorial engagement with pottery in LBA Cyprus, both producti... more This paper explores people's daily sensorial engagement with pottery in LBA Cyprus, both production and consumption. The focus is on embodied encounters with kitchen equipmentthe Plain ware pots, pans, basins and pithoi-used on a daily basis in the production and consumption of food and drink. Although Plain ware typically comprises the greater part of a Late Cypriot ceramic assemblage, this class of pottery tends to be overshadowed by the more visually appealing tableware-White Slip and Base Ringeven though these have a more restricted distribution within settlement contexts. Nonetheless, I would argue that for most Cypriots in the LBA, daily material engagements with pottery were primarily mediated through Plain ware. The focus on this paper is a discrete group of vessels excavated in storerooms in Building 1 at Arediou, a space apparently associated with processing and consumption of foodstuffs at an extra-household level. This paper considers the capacities (agency and vitality) of the clays used to make these vessels and how these enabled or constrained the actions of the potters who created them; similarly, it examines the interaction and the experiences of people working with pottery on a daily basis within the settlement. Focusing on material engagements and the myriad intersections between human and nonhuman; allows us to think about the materiality of the Late Cypriot social world and specifically the tactile experiences involved in working with pottery.

ASOR Meeting: Gender in the ANE, 2021

ASOR meeting: Gender in the Near East, 2019

One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. Butler, drawing upon this famous quote from Simone d... more One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. Butler, drawing upon this famous quote from Simone de Beauvoir, distinguishes between a person's biological sex and their culturally-informed gender roles. She argues that a woman's gender was not simply culturally imposed upon her but was actively performed, being mediated through language, gesture, actions and material culture. Gender is continually (re-)produced through material engagements and the repeated corporeal performance of acts; it is grounded in lived, embodied experiences and it is how people choose to situate their identities and social roles within accepted cultural rules. Instead of simply being the biological female this approach highlights performativity, the agency of doing and thus becoming a woman. I will combine Butler's performativity perspective with Knappett's notion of the material layering of the body-effectively the creation of a second skin and the extension of the body's boundary through manipulation of material culture: namely body modification, cosmetics, hairstyles, apparel and ornamentation. To explore how being a woman was performed materially in Late Bronze Age Cyprus I will draw upon two key areas of archaeological evidence: a) The rare examples of local iconography depicting the female form; b) Evidence for personal adornment and treatment of the body (for the most part furnished by funerary evidence. The aim is to establish different ways in which female gendered identities were created, expressed and performed in Late Bronze Age Cyprus.

This paper explores the materiality of clay and how this substance has been used to craft miniatu... more This paper explores the materiality of clay and how this substance has been used to craft miniature people since the Neolithic in the Near East. The focal point of the presentation is physically engaging with clay and using this material to shape the human form. It engages specifically with developments in the New Materialities, an approach which foregrounds the agency of matter. Through haptic engagement with clay, students are encourage to think about the agency of this material and how its physical properties provoke specific human reactions. Other questions addressed in this paper:  Why people feel the need to create representations of the human form?  Miniturisation: why various cultures of the ancient Near East and Aegean chose to make images of peple in miniature and specifically from clay?  Making: the physical sensations of working with clay and how replication embodied practices in the present allows us to engage with and better understand ancient " makings ". This paper and the associated crafting/handling activity aim to help us explore who we are and our sense of self or identity; how ancient figurines (and their modern replicas) represent a very personal and emotive crafting tradition; and how the final product has agency and excites a response from the viewer.

People's relationship with place plays a significant role in shaping, contesting and (renegotiati... more People's relationship with place plays a significant role in shaping, contesting and (renegotiating g identities. This paper considers place as an active agent in the mediation of modern Cypriot identity against a backdrop of centuries of colonial occupation. The focus is Arediou, south of the Green Line. Here, I explore how experiences of the past are embedded spatially but are also experienced differently according to their relationship to current narratives of being (Greek-)Cypriot and memories of occupation by the colonial other. The slipperiness of Cypriot history, how certain spaces are remembered and memorialised while others are ignored or actively forgotten, demonstrates the intangibility of the past. Different narratives are attached to different phases of the Cypriot past: antiquity is concealed within a cloak of Hellenism, while the more recent Orthodox past is revered with great pride, and the turbulent recent past is proclaimed through the very name of the local kafeneio, the Parthenon. Drawing upon local stories passed down over the generations, I explore how places within and around the village (local archaeological sites, copper mines, residues of British colonial activity, EOKA hideouts, abandoned villages) are variously remembered, forgotten, understood and represented, to actively create a sense of being Cypriot.

Aredhiou Vouppes is located in the rural hinterland of LBA Cyprus. Current understanding indicate... more Aredhiou Vouppes is located in the rural hinterland of LBA Cyprus. Current understanding indicates this to be a farming site and a key nodal point within the island's economic network, supporting copper extraction in the hilly flank zones. Large-scale agricultural production is illustrated by the material culture, which includes large numbers of ground stone tools as well as significant quantities of pithos sherds, alongside impressive storage facilities and workrooms. Room 103, however, stands out from the other buildings at Aredhiou, as well as those identified at other contemporary sites for its architectural features: a large open floor space (c.7.5 x 5 m), the sunken floor cut into the bedrock and the massive rubble construction. The special nature of this room is further indicated by the objects recovered within it, which are distinct from the more usual utilitarian objects found elsewhere on the site. This paper will focus on how this space was used and incorporated within social action at Aredhiou, drawing upon spatial distribution and discard analysis, but also exploring peoples' embodied experiences of this space and likewise examining the material entanglements of the objects used (and abandoned) in Room 103. Through these analyses, this paper aims to demonstrate that Room 103 room was a place for gatherings and played an important role in ceremonial action at the site, where esoteric knowledge was revealed, shared and enhanced through manipulation of the senses; and as such it played a significant role in social reproduction at

Bronze Age Cyprus " We never know the worth of water till the well is dry " (Thomas Fuller, Gnomo... more Bronze Age Cyprus " We never know the worth of water till the well is dry " (Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732) This paper examines the materiality of water, interrogating how this substance, the essential stuff of life, shaped people's social and material worlds in LBA Cyprus. While water was a daily concern for the LC communities it remains hidden in archaeological narratives, which have tended instead to focus on other aspects of the environment and their role within the island's economy. My theoretical approach is drawn from the New Materialisms (Bennett 2010, Coole and Frost 2010) and develops the notion of entangled agencies of matter/substance, which seeks to unseat notions that privilege human action. As such I emphasise the agency of water and how this created LC communities.

BANEA 2016: Lampeter 6th-8th January

Paper to be given at ASOR 2015, Atlanta. Object Biographies

Paper given at ASA 2015: Symbiotic anthropologies, theoretical commensalities and methodological ... more Paper given at ASA 2015: Symbiotic anthropologies, theoretical commensalities and methodological mutualisms.

The transitional Middle-Late Bronze Age on Cyprus (c.1700-1600 BC) was a period of seemingly viol... more The transitional Middle-Late Bronze Age on Cyprus (c.1700-1600 BC) was a period of seemingly violent social upheaval, characterised by widespread destructions and the abandonment of long-occupied villages and burial grounds. Alongside this backdrop of change there was increasing competition over social and economic capital: agricultural land, control over land routes, access to new maritime trading markets, and above all control over the island's rich copper resources -all of which were vigorously manipulated by newly emergent elite groups within the small communities on the island.

The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2010

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Press, Cambridge, 2013). By A. Bernard Knapp. 254 × 178 mm. 660 pp. 134 b/w illustrations. 5 maps... more Press, Cambridge, 2013). By A. Bernard Knapp. 254 × 178 mm. 660 pp. 134 b/w illustrations. 5 maps. 3 tables. ISBN 978 0 5217 2347 3. Price £19.99.

Is it Time for an Anthro-Materiality?

This paper examines the prehistory of human interactions with the environment, during the formati... more This paper examines the prehistory of human interactions with the environment, during the formative stages of the Anthropocene. It explores how the comingling of humans and earthy matter forged a new material world in which humans increasingly viewed themselves as masters over matter. Long Abstract This paper interrogates some of the earliest documented evidence for intra-actions between human bodies and earthy matters and how this shaped and transformed the material world during what might be described as the formative stages of the Anthropocene. Looking at the Neolithic in the Near East it explores how daily entanglements of humans and earthy 2 0 1 2 materials anchored people to place (particular points in the landscape) effectively describing a process in which people become (as described by Kate Feyers-Kerr 2019, 114) consubstantial: "cultivating a confederacy between communities and the earthy substances of place". This paper focuses on the vitality of earthy matter from a New Materialities perspective; it interrogates how the distinct capacities of clay/earth/mud provoked, enabled and constrained human behaviour and how the daily encounters between these substances and people created a new material world in which we became human. Pottery, figurines and houses were all crafted from mud, fire and water and these "phenomena" (Barad 2003) persist in the environment millennia after humans shaped them. Thus, this paper also argues that understanding early material entanglements and their impact upon ancient landscapes is of relevance to our current preoccupation with the detritus of the Anthropocene and the mark that humans leave/have left upon the world.

Sci Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pRTmbDnzUg, 2024

The role of Egyptian or Egyptian-inspired artefacts found in the East Mediterranean has long been... more The role of Egyptian or Egyptian-inspired artefacts found in the East Mediterranean has long been considered by archaeologists. Some have highlighted how these objects may have conferred elite authority on their owners. More recently, analysis has been grounded in postcolonial thought, which emphasises the agency of the native population involved in the exchange of artefacts. In a recent paper, Professor Louise Steel explores the Egyptian influence in the Late Bronze Age town of Enkomi in Cyprus.

Earth and World, 2021

This podcast examines the history of clay and how the cultural and technological knowledges of th... more This podcast examines the history of clay and how the cultural and technological knowledges of the earliest settled farming and urban communities were informed by people’s engagements with clay.

As one of the first mineral substance to be transformed from a malleable to a durable state. Many societies perceive it as an animate substance permeated with “a spiritual energy and life-force” that retains a “thing-power”, allowing it to be shaped into various forms.[1] [2]

Building on her ongoing research Steel looks at the agency of matter to illustrate how the distinct capacities of clay (in relationship with water and fire) shaped and facilitated, but equally constrained, people’s behaviour, resulting in distinctive social and material worlds. Focusing on the vitality of matter, Steel considers how “the materials themselves are determining—even actively responsible—for the final shape and manner by which the finished article can manifest”. [3]

[1] Boivin, N. 2012. From veneration to exploitation: Human engagement with the mineral world. In Soils, Stones and Symbols: Cultural Perceptions of the Mineral World; Boivin, N., Owoc, M.A., (Eds). London: Routledge, pp. 1–29. [2] Bennett, J. 2010.Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [3] Attala, L. and Steel, L. 2019.Body Matters: Exploring the Materiality of the Human Body> Cardiff: Wales University Press.