Material things are not just passive recipients of human categories, meanings and values, nor mere subjects of human agency. Their particular characteristics and behaviours are formative of human–non-human relations. The common material properties of things, and the shared cognitive and phenomenological processes through which people interact with them, generate recurrent ideas and patterns of engagement in diverse cultural and historical contexts. Despite growing instrumentalism in human ‘management’ of the material world, and the emergence of new relational forms, these patterns persist.

Michael Pollan recently published an essay in the New Yorker (December 2013) introducing the notion of ‘plant intelligence’ and how plants have evolved by virtue of their lack of mobility to cultivate and attract the resources they require. Although not using the humanistic language identified with ‘agency’, a widely used term most frequently associated with human motivation, action and accomplishment, Pollan lends his implicit support for the communicative ‘behaviours’ of plants and their own brand of agency in effecting change in the world. Veronica Strang champions this view for the role of the non-human organic world, but moves a step or two further in suggesting that the inorganic has its own sense of agency. And though she and those phenomenologists whom she cites attribute agency to all things, it is difficult for some of us to entirely accept such a premise.

As an archaeologist who ‘works’ with water, my experience has largely focused on the historical ecology of water management within agricultural landscapes (particularly in Eastern Africa) and I have only just begun to think about the broader materiality of water itself, but in this context I find Strang's essay thought-provoking and extremely useful with a great deal to commend. If I read it correctly, Strang's key premise is that water is ‘good to think with’ since it permeates all aspects of human and biophysical processes – thinking through water thus allows us to think across scales, from the molecular to the global, and to explore recursive relations at each level. At the same time, as an element integral to the physical/biological sustenance of all life, and also a core symbolic or cognitive referent, tracing relationalities of water within and between communities therefore also forces us to bridge common disciplinary boundaries and theoretical approaches. Thus at the same time as using water to ‘think through’ human–material relations, Strang also uses water to think through and reconcile different approaches within social theory. Finally, Strang's focus on materiality argues that water's immutable physical properties determine certain ‘universal’ and ‘non-arbitrary’ approaches to water – both physically in the sense of its management (capture, storage, irrigation, drainage) and symbolically and cognitively in terms of water's various positions in ideological regimes and its consequent uses in ceremonial and ritual life. Overall, Strang argues that the immutable physical properties of water induce physical and cognitive responses such that we should think of water as possessing a certain material agency.

Veronica Strang has written an excellent account of the fluid relationships between humans and the non-human materiality of water. The very idea of anthropology of water challenges our commonly held assumptions about water being just a material or economic resource (or, conversely, about anthropology being just the study of people). It holds that water is socially, politically and ritually constituted, while acknowledging at the same time that water also has an existence outside the human domain. There is much to agree with and to be inspired by in the paper, which is especially strong on ‘fluidity and consistency at every level of human–non-human engagement’ (p. 133). By virtue of the emphasis on that specific aspect, however, there are some aspects which are underemphasized, and it is these which I focus on in my comments.

The St Anthony's Day procession was caught in a bitter, driving rainstorm, accompanied by thunder and lightning. We elected to carry on to the church, despite the weather and the sense of threat. By the time we reached our destination we were soaked through. Locals were happy for the rain and all it implied, students and faculty to have shared the powerful experience which appeared to close an affective gap with our hosts.

Veronica Strang's ‘Fluid consistences. Material relationality in human engagements with water’ is a highly welcome theoretical discussion regarding the role of water in society and social theories. As a discussion article, Strang's piece opens up a number of fields of enquiry where water empirically and theoretically challenges current theories, but given the limitations of an article there are still other spheres where water may contest dominant theories, and I will briefly address some of these aspects with an emphasis on holy water.

I am happy to see that my essay has generated a lively discussion, and am most grateful to the respondents for their insightful contributions. Their comments express varying levels of agreement regarding the agency of things. Vernon Scarborough revisits anxieties about whether agency implies intentionality. Using the term ‘agency’ is indeed problematic if we assume that it entails sentience or intentionality (and I do not), but if we define it more precisely as a capacity to act (upon), it is possible to excise intentionality from the equation. This simultaneously allows us to acknowledge the agentive capacities of things without proposing or implying a form of faux animism. Anthropology has indeed drawn imaginatively on specifically cultural beliefs and knowledges, for example in composing more relational visions of human–other interactions than Western science tends to allow (see Strang 2006a), but this is not tantamount to assuming that things contain spiritual presence, or have ‘their own sense of agency’.

Building upon the debate published in volume 19 of Archaeological dialogues, this contribution explores how, rather than seeing deposits as meaningful, we can move to explore the processes through which things and spaces become waste as well as the broader social effects of these processes in relation to elements of identity and sense of place. An extended case study of depositional practice in the early medieval settlement of Hamwic (Southampton, UK) is presented, to demonstrate how depositional practice caused waste, people and spaces to develop particular meaning in the emergence of an urban settlement, and served as a medium for the negotiation of continuity and change in the lives of the settlement and its inhabitants.

Drawing on relational theoretical perspectives in archaeological discourse, this paper considers how we can address the undervaluation of pedagogy and pedagogic research in archaeology. Through examining the relationships between fieldwork, teaching, and research, in light of Ingold's concept of the meshwork and DeLanda's assemblage theory, the division between teaching and research is undermined, and students and pedagogy are recentred as fundamental to the production of archaeological knowledge. This paper provides a theoretical grounding for resituating our current practices, suggests practical means for change, and highlights the benefit to the archaeological discipline arising from a revaluation of archaeological pedagogic research and an enmeshed understanding of archaeological practice.

An increasing number of individual archaeologists, archaeological organizations and institutions are using social media platforms for professional discussion and networking, research, public outreach and community archaeology. Proponents of social media have particularly pointed towards their potential for transforming the means of networking and communication in archaeology, and challenging traditional disciplinary expertise as archaeologists engage with more diverse and active online publics. This article provides a theoretically informed critical discussion, pointing towards the complex barriers to equal Internet access and usage, which challenge the ability of archaeologists to use social media as a tool to democratize the discipline. It concludes that, in many cases, social media appear to have reinforced archaeological authority at the expense of genuinely decentred engagement or collaboration. The article acts as a challenge to encourage further debate and empirically informed research in this emerging area of archaeological practice.