This article seeks to reverse the emphasis, in current studies of material culture, on the materiality of objects as against the properties of materials. Drawing on James Gibson's tripartite division of the inhabited environment into medium, substances and surfaces, it is argued that the forms of things are not imposed from without upon an inert substrate of matter, but are continually generated and dissolved within the fluxes of materials across the interface between substances and the medium that surrounds them. Thus things are active not because they are imbued with agency but because of ways in which they are caught up in these currents of the lifeworld. The properties of materials, then, are not fixed attributes of matter but are processual and relational. To describe these properties means telling their stories.

I really welcome Tim Ingold's paper because intellectual debates about the meaning and significance of material culture or general attempts to theorize material forms are comparatively rare as opposed to the mass of literature discussing particular categories of things. In the paper he systematically sets out to oppose a concept of materiality (apparently worthless) to the study of materials which, in contrast, he suggests, may lead to many new insights and understandings. I do not find this supposed opposition all that helpful. Indeed I believe that it may have a conservative and reactionary effect in relation to studies of material culture which is no doubt contrary to Ingold's intentions.

Many scholars working in the domain of material culture will welcome this forceful statement from Ingold, sharing his frustration with the seemingly immaterial materiality emergent in the material-culture literature, the singular focus on things already made rather than their processes of becoming, and the apparent lack of contribution from those who do study materials in depth (e.g. archaeologists) to questions of materiality and material culture. His intervention is a timely one, although the message has been expressed before, albeit in more muted tones (e.g. Ingold 2000, 53). But while Ingold may be justified in bemoaning the lack of definition and clarity in ‘materiality’, is there scope for stepping back from the polemic and finding a middle ground? I would argue that materiality may still be a useful way of understanding the conjunction or intersection of the social and the material, without the former swallowing the latter.

Ingold starts his critique with a claim to find recent writing and talking about material culture essentially obscure and orientated to fashion. If one reads Ingold's own writing you will find plenty of references to philosophical figures such as Heidegger and to phenomenology. I find such writing often incomprehensible and obscure, and much of its contemporary use pretentious. I would hope a reader would find that my own recent books, on the cell phone (Horst and Miller 2006), materiality (Miller 2005) and the sari (Banerjee and Miller 2003), are written in just as straightforward a style as those of Ingold, which I much admire, both eschewing unnecessary jargon. Clearly we happen to find very different theories more or less congenial and comprehensible. But I do not think the implication of his opening remarks is a fair one, and I would hope that readers would judge this for themselves.

No matter what kind of archaeologist you think you are, Ingold's text evokes emotional and intellectual reactions concerning a core of archaeology: how to deal scientifically with the material world. It pinpoints some serious problems within today's archaeology, not least field archaeology. Given this, I will try to comment on Ingold's text from a practical archaeological point of view. Before I turn to the tangible fields of sand, clay, stone fragments and almost vanished materials, I will take the opportunity to associate Ingold's point of view with a well-known geographical tradition, since some concepts appear to be quite similar.

I would like to thank all four of my interlocutors for taking the trouble to comment on my text, and for the clarity and cogency of their contributions. They have forced me to think long and hard, and indeed to question my own conclusions. For me at least, and I hope also for readers of Archaeological dialogues, this has been a debate worth having, and it has been going on as much in my own mind as between myself and my critics.

What follows is an account of an interview with Mark P. Leone, Professor in the University of Maryland's Department of Anthropology and Director of the Archaeology in Annapolis project. Leone will be well known to many for his work in historical archaeology, for his use of critical theory in archaeology and for the Archaeology in Annapolis project where these interests come together. In the interview Leone explores the development of his approach, from his early work within the New Archaeology, through his growing interest in Marxist approaches to past and present, to his concerns today. This approach combines a commitment to social responsibility with a belief in scientific method. We discuss the ways in which critical archaeology has worked in practice in Annapolis over the past 25 or more years and how it has disrupted dominant modes of discussion and placed new ones more firmly on the agenda. In concluding, Leone offers some of his thoughts on archaeology and the creation of democratic discourse.

This article examines the politics of ritual space in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru after the conquest of the region by the Chimú Empire (A.D. 1200–1450). Interpretations are based on detailed analysis of ceremonial architecture located in the rural hinterland of urban centres. Despite imperial incorporation, the proliferation of ceremonial sites in the Jequetepeque countryside indicates that ritual production remained the prerogative of local groups. Architectural archaism, syncretism and the emulation of Chimú space in Jequetepeque demonstrate that rural communities adopted diverse ideological strategies to defend indigenous political identities and manipulate imperial authorities. The analysis improves understanding of the effects of Chimú conquest on local populations and suggests that imperial administration relied on indirect rule. Local communities were not passive consumers of state ideology but actively participated in the propagation of both corporate and indigenous religious systems. Ultimately, the article intends to advance archaeological interpretation of the political significance of patterned variability in the construction and experience of ceremonial space.

Since its discovery, Çatalhöyük's iconography has provoked interpretative comment. In a series of writings, Hodder critiqued earlier interpretations of the Çatalhöyük corpus, arguing for asymmetrical gender relations of an enduring and particular type in the European past. While recent research at Çatalhöyük appears to have tempered some of Hodder's interpretative oppositions and scope, it is worthwhile to propose an alternate contextual approach to his original oppositions. This begins with the multiple examples of small carnivores' heads encysted in what may be clay effigies of human breasts and reads the same corpus as involving gender not solely with danger or death, but also with food and fleshly transformation. In this interpretation, the roles and essences of wild and domestic animals, women and men, food and death, are more complex, interpenetrating and mutable. Building on recent work at the site, it is possible to propose the existence of zones of transformation within households.