Stanford Archaeology Center Graduate Student Conference

April 16, 2011

While entanglement theory has taken several forms since its initial use in the mid-1950’s, this conference
focuses on the utility of the concept in relation to the interactions between communities, as well as the
manner in which practices create enduring connections between people, environments, and object worlds.
The idea of entanglement, as used here, firstly explores how relationships between communities are
mitigated by subtle or unacknowledged connections with historically contingent ideologies. Additionally, it
helps us to consider how these entanglements influence the creation of new forms of social discourse,
creolization, and hybridity.

Secondly, as applied to material culture, we use the concept of entanglement to examine how the
production and consumption of particular objects leads to unintended connections with other facets of
the material world. How do people become bound up in the material culture they are surrounded by? How
do people and communities become possessed by the very objects they utilize, and how do such
possessions create new forms of social practice? What are the particular attributes of objects which
promote such entanglements?

Call for Abstracts - Submission Deadline: January 14, 2011

We invite 250 word abstracts, along with 3-5 keywords, to be submitted

via email to sac_conference@stanford.edu by January 14th, 2011.
Selected participants will be asked to present a fifteen minute presentation at the conference.

The twin themes of entanglement between people and objects, as well as amongst communities, challenge
us to consider how social life becomes increasingly irreducible to simple monocausal explanations. Possible
topics for presentation include, but are not limited to:

 How entanglements structure social discourse in colonial and post-colonial contexts, and aid in the
promulgation of creolization in such contexts  The ways in which archaeological evidence can be used to
observe the entanglements between material culture and past societies, and how these connections influenced
social change or promoted forms of continuity  How socio-economic practices witnessed in the archaeological
record tied people to particular environments in unexpected and intriguing ways