Enrico GiannicheddaPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"
<p>This contribution opens with a brief reflection on theoretical archaeology and practical material classification activities. Following this, the various questions that can be asked of artefacts to be classified will be briefly addressed. Questions on chronology and technology; questions on the techno-anthropological context of use that force us to raise our gaze from the single artefact to the surrounding universe; questions on social use of artefacts (for distinctions of rank, gender, age, etc., but also for interactions aimed at establishing, or overcoming, limits and boundaries); questions on artefacts as means of exchange (of goods, but also of information or values); questions on what people thought of the artefacts they had (importance, but also indifference or rejection). An example, resulting from an archaeological excavation, will show that everything also holds in the attempt to move from our ethical classification to emic classification closer to the thinking of the ancients.<br>In conclusion, a brief reflection is proposed on the importance of distinguishining not only types but variants and special cases; on the usefulness of moving from reflections on agency to reflections extended to habitus; on the definition of material culture as a complex objects of investigation.</p>
