There's an old Ry Cooder song – written by Bobby Miller – entitled ‘If walls could talk’ (not the Celine Dion song), whose refrain is ‘Ain't you glad that things don't talk’. Archaeologists clearly wish things could talk because we, more than most, appreciate the power of things and the close relationships that exist between humans and things and their shared histories. I was struck by this one day sitting reading a book in my bedroom. I glanced up, looked around me and realized that everything in that room would be there the day after I died – everything. In fact my things would clearly outlive me, and regardless of what attachment or lack of attachment I might have to any of those things, I would not be the ultimate arbiter of their fate. That would be left to others who for a whole host of reasons might not share the same relationship with these things that I had. Most would probably be discarded while others might be kept. Those choices are just one example of the kinds of emotions and calculations that surround human–thing (HT) and human–human (HH) relations.

By focusing on the symmetries and asymmetries of HH and HT relations, Ian Hodder and Gavin Lucas focus squarely on arguably the most fundamental issue that runs through the various threads of symmetrical archaeology and thing theory more generally. It is not surprising they find themselves spending much of their time trying to imagine symmetries in HT and HH relations as compared to the asymmetries that have cast such a long shadow over much of human history. Along with their consideration of entanglement theory and notions of dependencies (see Hodder Reference Hodder2012), this timely exchange generated an interesting set of questions that fuelled their dialogue. There are several points they raise that I would like to amplify and a few that I think need to be considered more deeply.

I want to start with one omission on the part of the authors. In their well-crafted opening section they note that Olsen and Witmore (Reference Olsen and Witmore2015; see also Olsen Reference Olsen2010) see the need for HT symmetry as a starting point. In the process of discussing the issues surrounding HT and HH relations the authors do not return to this point, but it is a point worth remembering. Archaeologists have a tendency to focus much less on HT relations than on HH relations, despite the fact that things are often our primary data set. Things often share long and rich histories with humans that are to be celebrated. Hodder and Lucas evoke the vibrancy of matter outlined by Jane Bennett (Reference Bennett2010) as an obvious framework for examining potentially symmetrical HT relations. Through the lens of entanglement they also note the affordances (see Gibson Reference Gibson1979; Ingold Reference Ingold2015) that things and materials provide humans, and I want to second this point. These affordances are both practical and spiritual and as such they speak to the depth of HT relations. Over the past decade archaeologists working with local indigenous groups in New England have found that quartz – long used for stone tool production – played a multidimensional role on colonial-era farmsteads (see Bagley et al. Reference Bagley, Mrozowski, Law-Pezzarossi and Steinberg2015; Cipolla and Quinn Reference Cipolla and Quinn2016; Mrozowski Reference Mrozowski, Schmidt and Mrozowski2013; Mrozowski et al. Reference Mrozowski, Herbster, Brown and Priddy2009). There is evidence that quartz cobbles were being purposely heated to expedite the removal of crystals that were then buried and spread in and around the foundations of meeting houses and residences. It is equally possible that indigenous families may have chosen to locate their homes in areas where quartz debitage was present because of their known connection to ancestral populations (Bagley et al. Reference Bagley, Mrozowski, Law-Pezzarossi and Steinberg2015).

The significance attached to quartz, and quartz crystals in particular, is not unique to New England. It has been an important medium of HT relations for thousands of years (Mrozowski Reference Mrozowski, Schmidt and Mrozowski2013). And it highlights the depth of the intersection of HT and HH relations – that a material appreciated for its crystalline structure would play such an important role in the religious life of a people because of its deep historical association with indigenous society. Is it any wonder that quartz helped them in maintaining identities throughout the vagaries of European colonization and their continuing political struggles today?

The intersection of humans and things is an interesting and important topic, especially for archaeologists. But I also understand why Hodder and Lucas find themselves having the hardest time imagining symmetrical HH relations versus the asymmetrical relations that are all too easy to envision. Their discussion of the assumed differences in the affordances wealth would provide for elites and non-elites in a place such as war-torn Syria is a challenging context in which to examine asymmetries in HH relations. Here I have a question – if the wealth they discuss is embedded and represented by real estate in Damascus or Aleppo, just how liquid has this wealth been? The poor, on the other hand, have much less to lose and so their mobility may have provided them with equal freedom. Perhaps this is a naive point, because I personally would assume that the elites would have more opportunity to escape. But when I think about the entanglement between people and the places they live in, I am struck by just how fickle such entanglements can be. Unemployed workers in Youngstown, Ohio cited their connections to their families as a major reason they wanted to remain there rather than migrate to find employment. In this instance, symmetries of care and support stand as impediments to the affordances offered by a neo-liberal economy characterized, ironically, by the very economic asymmetries that resulted in the loss of their jobs in the first place (Rushe Reference Rushe2017).

The experience of Youngstown (ibid.) is just one example of what I have labeled ‘historical gravities’ (Mrozowski Reference Mrozowski, Der and Fernandini2016). In Youngstown the gravity that keeps people comprises the shared histories and memories that are entangled with a landscape comprising in turn a rich assemblage of surfaces, weather and atmospheres (see Ingold Reference Ingold2015) – some shaped by natural forces, some shaped by human hands – that had, until recently, provided many of the affordances needed to sustain a community. Other, much earlier examples of historical gravity can be found in notable landscape features such as Stonehenge in Britain or Gamla Uppsala in Sweden that represent attempts to implicate particular histories by purposefully constructing landscapes designed by their builders to entangle their followers and their descendants. The effort involved in the cutting, moving and orienting of the megalithic stones of Stonehenge (Bender Reference Bender1999; Parker-Pearson Reference Parker Pearson2012), or the construction of burial complexes such as Gamla Uppsala (Ljungkvist Reference Ljungkvist2006; Ljungkvist and Frölund Reference Ljungkvist and Frölund2015), often involved changes and shifts in visual perspective carried out over hundreds of years. While we may never know the cultural context in which decisions were made, the resources and energy needed to construct such landscapes most likely involved attempts to entangle the histories of particular families or groups with a self-identified place of memorialization. Were such landscapes constructed to maintain symmetries or asymmetries in HH relations?

If landscapes are viewed as the transformation of spaces into places, then how should such spaces be conceptualized? Deleuze and Guattari (Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987) and more recently DeLanda (Reference DeLanda2016) have argued for the conceptual superiority of assemblage theory, and Hodder and Lucas seem to endorse these ideas. From this perspective, space comprises a multiplicity of assemblages rather than a series of oppositions such as elite/non-elite, rich/poor, man/woman. I would argue that it is perhaps better to conceive of the symmetries and asymmetries that characterize HT, HH and thing–thing (TT) relations as a continuum rather than as oppositions. The reason is that binaries tend to dichotomize life, helping to mask broader and deeper connections. In the case of Youngstown the asymmetries inherent in neo-liberal economics ignore and devalue the historical gravities that bind its residents, thereby challenging the sustainability of such a community.

The examples above and those discussed by Hodder and Lucas reinforce the importance of examining the symmetries and asymmetries of HH dependencies. Part of what feeds the asymmetries of the kinds they examine is the binaries that are such a nagging feature of our disciplinary discourse. Binaries feed division and difference, and they are only real in the sense that human perception tends to categorize the world in this manner. Yet outside human experience such binaries are quite artificial. Overcoming the false divide between HH and HT relations is one of the more productive facets of symmetrical archaeology. I understand that binaries remain a necessary, but nevertheless problematic, part of intellectual inquiry. There are instances, however, when I think they contribute to abstract boundaries that distract our focus from processes that have resulted in the transformation of things and spaces into instruments of asymmetry, and this is where the real issues lie. Spaces constructed of oppositions tend to reinforce the notion that communities that inhabit the same space are in fact disconnected, resulting in the polarization of views concerning a common future. And in this regard Hodder and Lucas are correct to highlight the dependencies characteristic of HH and HT entanglements. Yet I would also argue that their reliance on binaries to construct their discourse runs the risk of limiting the potential of archaeology as an instrument of engagement. They contribute, for example, to false temporalities such as history and prehistory that reinforce notions of ruptures with the past that often deny the dignity of colonized peoples (see Rajagopal Reference Rajagopal2011; Schmidt and Mrozowski Reference Schmidt and Mrozowski2013). Ultimately Hodder and Lucas's choice to focus much of their attention of the issue of asymmetries in HH and HT relations reinforces the idea in my mind that divides such as past and present need to be transcended (see González‐Ruibal Reference González-Ruibal2006; Horning Reference Horning2011; Lucas Reference Lucas2015a; Mrozowski Reference Mrozowski2014; Wurst and Mrozowski Reference Wurst and Mrozowski2014) so that archaeologists can apply themselves to the larger project of building a more symmetrical future.