New assemblages of material prerequisites, including systems such as writing, clocks or mechanised printing were necessary for each of the great settlement size transitions over the past 10-15,000 years. We know these transitions in familiar terms as the formation of sedentary communities (beyond settlement areas of 1 ha) , the development of urbanism (beyond settlement areas of 1 sq km) and the growth of industrial urbanism (beyond settlement areas of 100 sq km). The key implication of the material prerequisites concept is that a given form of material entity can occur with a variety of different specific social conditions because the components of new material prerequisite assemblages develop long before the transitions in which they are consequential. Materiality interacts with sociality but is not reduceable to being an index of sociality or an epi-phenomenon derived from it. Non-correspondence therefore can occur between materiality and sociality. And material prerequisites necessary for a future transition will already be in existence in a nascent form. This has some implications for our present and our future.