ArcheoLogica Data 3/2023

In our houses, there are thousands of objects and objects within objects. The analysis of a present-day domestic assemblage inside a kitchen cupboard composed of mugs, coffee cups, teacups, and breakfast bowls, performed by the owners themselves, is the opportunity to reflect on the role and agency of the objects in ordinary life and more in general of the archaeology of the present age. The study is addressed both through a quantitative, analytical approach based on building a systematic catalogue and a qualitative one based on ethnographic observations and informal conversations. The paper stresses the concepts of proximity and familiarity to their extreme. It investigates the entanglement and entrapment between humans and non-humans created by the dependence/dependency built by memory and care. The density of the objects, as well as the endowment effect, are taken into consideration to address the multiple relationships between things and things, things and humans, and humans and humans. The stories that personal and family memories can attribute to objects could become a parameter capable of making us prefer the oldness instead of the newness, stimulating a sense of responsibility towards the role we play concerning all the non-human and within what we could foresee as a necessary post-anthropocentric revolution process. Here the impelling necessity to drive Italian archaeology and anthropology to work together to improve the understanding of the present.