Multispecies Pasts and the Possibilities of Multispecies Futures in the Age of the Anthropocene
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21301/eap.v16i3.2Keywords:
Anthropocene, Nature–Culture, assemblages, ontological turn, relational ontologies, multispecies pastsAbstract
The Anthropocene emerges as an aftermath of the long-held, pervasive belief in human exceptionalism, and a wake-up call to reconsider our being in the world as entangled with a plethora of other living selves. Along with ecological and social challenges facing all life on Earth, the very boundaries between Nature and Culture, biological and social, human and nonhuman are being destabilized. From an archaeological perspective, particularly relevant is the understanding of diachronic change through shifting webs of interspecies relations (sensu Tsing). By engaging with various strands of thought within archaeology, anthropology, ecology and ethology, this paper aims to offer a more inclusive, multispecies view of the past. Ultimately, a consideration of human and nonhuman histories as entangled, bears important implications for multispecies futures.
Downloads
References
Albarella, Umberto. 2021. „Attacks on archaeology will harm efforts to restore the natural world”. Inkcap Jo-urnal, August 4, 2021. https://www.inkcapjournal.co.uk/attacks-on-archaeology-will-harm-efforts-to-restore-the-natural-world/?fbclid=IwAR2T_bRp5TATor6gybhKiU-XFtMg6WpMegyXvZQjusTB0t4ZUp23OKX5D0Y
Argent, Gala. 2010. „Do the clothes make the horse? Relationality, roles and statuses in Iron Age Inner A-sia”. World Archaeology 42 (2): 157–174. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438241003672633
Argent, Gala. 2016. „Killing (constructed) horses – interspecies elders, empathy and emotion, and the Pazyryk horse sacrifices“. In People with Animals: Perspectives & Studies in Ethnozooarchaeology, edited by Lee G. Broderick, 19–32. Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow Books.
Armstrong Oma, Kristin. 2010. „Between trust and domination: social contracts between humans and animals”. World Archaeology 42 (2): 175–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438241003672724
Barnosky, Anthony D., Nicholas Matzke, Susumu Tomiya, Guinevere O. U. Wogan, Brian Swartz, Tiago B. Quental, Charles Marshall, Jenny L. McGuire, Emily L. Lindsey, Kaitlin C. Maguire, Ben Mersey and Eli-zabeth A. Ferrer. 2011. „Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?”. Nature 471 (7336): 51–57. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09678
Bird Rose, Deborah. 2017. „Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed”. In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, edited by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, G51–G63. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Bird Rose, Deborah, Thom van Dooren, Matthew Churelew, Stuart Cooke, Matthew Kearnes and Emily O’Gorman. 2012. „Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities”. Environmental Huma-nities 1 (1): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919–3609940
Bradley, Richard. 1984. The Social Foundations of Prehistoric Britain: Themes and Variations in the Archaeo-logy of Power. London: Addison-Wesley Longman Limited.
Braje, Todd J., Jon M. Erlandson, C. Melvin Aikens, Tim Beach, Scott Fitzpatrick, Sara Gonzalez, Douglas J. Kennett, Patrick V. Kirch, Gyoung-Ah Lee, Kent G. Lightfoot, Sarah B. McClure, Lee M. Panich, Torben C. Rick, Anna C. Roosevelt, Tsim D. Schneider, Bruce Smith and Melinda A. Zeder. 2014. „An Anthropocene Without Archaeology – Should We Care?”. The SAA Archaeological Record 14 (1): 26–29.
Campbell, Peter B. 2021. „The Anthropocene, hyperobjects and the archaeology of the future past”. Antiquity, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.116
Candea, Matei. 2010. „“I fell in love with Carlos the meerkat”: Engagement and detachment in human–animal relations”. American Ethnologist 37 (2): 241–258. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548–1425.2010.01253.x
Carlsson, Tom. 2008. Where the River Bends Under the Boughs of Trees: Strandvägen – a Late Mesolithic Settlement in Eastern Middle Sweden. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet.
Carrington, Damian. 2020. „Microplastics revealed in the placentas of unborn babies.” The Guardian, Decem-ber 22, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/22/microplastics-revealed-in-placentas-unborn-babies
Ceballos, Gerardo, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andrés García, Robert M. Pringle and Todd M. Pal-mer. 2015. „Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extincti-on”. Science Advances 1 (5): e1400253. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1400253
Chisham, Catherine. 2004. Early Mesolithic Human Activity and Environmental Change: A Case Study of the Kennet Valley. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Reading.
Conneller, Chantal. 2004. „Becoming deer. Corporeal transformations at Star Carr”. Archaeological Dialogu-es 11 (1): 37–56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203804001357
Crate, Susan A. and Mark Nuttall. 2009. „Introduction: Anthropology and Climate Change”. In Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, edited by Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall, 9–36. Wal-nut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Crossland, Zoe. 2014. „Anthropocene: Locating Agency, Imagining the Future”. Journal of Contemporary Ar-chaeology 1 (1): 123–128.
Crutzen, Paul J. 2002. „The “anthropocene””. Journal de Physique IV 12 (10): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1051/jp4:20020447
Crutzen, Paul J. and Eugene F. Stoermer. 2000. „The “Anthropocene””. IGBP Newsletter 41: 17–18.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Edgeworth, Matt. 2014. „Archaeology of the Anthropocene: Introduction”. Journal of Contemporary Archaeo-logy 1 (1): 73–77.
Edgeworth, Matt. 2016. „Humans – part of dynamic assemblages (of species, niches, forces) that are changing Earth”. Social Evolution Forum, March 14, 2016. https://evolution-institute.org/focus-article/humans-the-species-that-changed-earth/?source=sef
Emmet, Robert S. and David E. Nye. 2017. The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge (MA) and London: MIT Press.
Erlandson, Jon M. and Todd J. Braje. 2013. „Archaeology and the Anthropocene”. Anthropocene 4: 1–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2014.05.003
Gan, Elaine, Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson and Nils Bubandt. 2017. „Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene”. In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, edited by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, G1–G14. Minneapolis and London: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press.
Gorman, Alice. 2014. „The Anthropocene in the Solar System”. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1 (1): 87–91.
Graves-Brown, Paul. 2014. „When was the Anthropocene? (and Why?)”. Journal of Contemporary Archaeo-logy 1 (1): 77–81.
Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York and London: Routledge.
Haraway, Donna. 2003. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Haraway, Donna. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Haraway, Donna. 2015. „Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationcene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”. Environ-mental Humanities 6 (1): 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919–3615934
Holbraad, Martin and Morten Axel Pedersen. 2017. The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hudson, Mark J., Mami Aoyama, Kara C. Hoover and Junzō Uchiyama. 2012. „Prospects and challenges for an archaeology of global climate change”. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3 (4): 313–328. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.174
Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. New York: Routledge.
Jensen, Theis Z. T., Jonas Niemann, Katrine Højholt Iversen, Anna K. Fotakis, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Åshild J. Vågene, Mikkel Winther Pedersen, Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding, Martin R. Ellegaard, Morten E. Allentoft, Liam T. Lanigan, Alberto J. Taurozzi, Sofie Holtsmark Nielsen, Michael W. Dee, Martin N. Mortensen, Mads C. Christensen, Søren A. Sørensen, Matthew J. Collins, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Martin Sikora, Simon Rasmussen and Hannes Schroeder. 2019. „A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch”. Nature Communications 10: 5520. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467–019–13549–9
Kirksey, Eben S. and Stefan Helmreich. 2010. „The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography”. Cultural An-thropology 25 (4): 545–576. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548–1360.2010.01069.x
Kristiansen, Kristian. 2014. „Toward a New Paradigm? The Third Science Revolution and its Possible Consequences in Archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology 22: 11–34. https://doi.org/10.37718/CSA.2014.01
Kohn, Eduardo. 2007. „How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement”. American Ethnologist 34 (1): 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.3
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Lane, Paul J. 2015. „Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and socie-tal contributions”. Journal of Field Archaeology 40 (5): 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1179/2042458215Y.0000000022
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press.
Mannermaa, Kristiina, Dimitri Gerasimov, Evgeny Girya and Mikhail V. Sablin. 2017. „Wild Boar (Sus scro-fa) Teeth from a Female Burial in Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, Northwestern Russia (c. 6200 cal BC) – Local Rarities or Transported Goods?”. Environmental Archaeology 24 (1): 79–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2017.1393139
Mitchell, Piers D. 2017. „Human parasites in the Roman World: health consequences of conquering an empi-re”. Parasitology 144 (1): 48–58. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031182015001651
Monbiot, George. 2013. „For more wonder, rewild the world”. TED Talk presented at an official TED confe-rence, July 2013. https://www.ted.com/talks/george_monbiot_for_more_wonder_rewild_the_world
Morton, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Nilsson Stutz, Liv. 2018. „A Future for Archaeology: In Defense of an Intellectually Engaged, Collaborative and Confident Archaeology”. Norwegian Archaeological Review 51 (1–2): 48–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2018.1544168
Olsen, Bjørnar, Michael Shanks, Timothy Webmoor and Christopher Witmore. 2012. Archaeology: The Dis-cipline of Things. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Overton, Nick J. 2018. „ Rhythm of Life. Exploring the role of daily and seasonal rhythms in the development of human-nonhuman relationships in the British Early Mesolithic”. In Multispecies Archaeology edited by Suzanne Pilaar Birch, 295–309. London and New York: Routledge.
Overton, Nick J. 2019. „Can hunter-gatherers ever ‘get to know’ their prey? The role of environmental experi-ences and daily interactions in the formation of human-nonhuman relationships in the British Mesolithic and beyond”. Hunter Gatherer Research 4 (2): 193–226. https://doi.org/10.3828/hgr.2018.10
Overton, Nick J. and Yannis Hamilakis. 2013. „A manifesto for a social zooarchaeology. Swans and other be-ings in the Mesolithic”. Archaeological Dialogues 20 (2): 111–136. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203813000159
Pétursdóttir, Þora. 2017. „Climate change? Archaeology and Anthropocene”. Archaeological Dialogues 24 (2): 175–205. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203817000216
Pétursdóttir, Þora. 2018. „Drift.” In Multispecies Archaeology, edited by Suzanne Pilaar Birch, 85–101. London and New York: Routledge.
Pilaar Birch, Suzanne, ed. 2018. Multispecies Archaeology. London and New York: Routledge.
Ragusa, Antonio, Alessandro Svelato, Criselda Santacroce, Piera Catalano, Valentina Notarstefano, Oliana Carnevali, Fabrizio Papa, Mauro Ciro, Antonio Rongioletti, Federico Baiocco, Simonetta Draghi, Elisabetta D’Amore, Denise Rinaldo, Maria Matta and Elisabetta Giorgini. 2021. „Plasticenta: First evidence of mic-roplastics in human placenta”. Environment International 146: 106274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.106274
Rainio, Riita, Dmitry V. Gerasimov, Evgeny Yu. Girya and Kristiina Mannermaa. 2021. „Prehistoric Pendants as Instigators of Sound and Body Movements: A Traceological Case Study from Northeastern Europe, c. 8200 cal. bp”. Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2021): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774321000275
Rawlence, Nicolas J., David J. Lowe, Jamie R. Wood, Jennifer M. Young, Jock Churchman, Yu-Tuan Huang and Alan Cooper. 2014. „Using paleoenvironmental DNA to reconstruct past environments: progress and prospects”. Journal of Quaternary Science 29 (7): 610–626. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.2740
Ripple, William J. and Robert L. Beschta. 2012. „Trophic cascades in Yellowstone: The first 15 years after wolf reintroduction”. Biological Conservation 145 (1): 205–213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2011.11.005
Ritvo, Harriet. 2007. „On the animal turn”. Dædalus 136 (4): 118–122.
Roffet-Salque, Mélanie, Julie Dunne, David T. Altoft, Emmanuelle Casanova, Lucy J. E. Cramp, Jessica Smyth, Helen L. Whelton and Richard P. Evershed. 2017. „From the inside out: Upscaling organic residue analyses of archaeological ceramics”. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 16: 627–640. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.04.005
Rosengren, Erika, Arina Acatrinei, Nicolae Cruceru, Marianne Dehasque, Aritina Haliuc, Edana Lord, Cristina I. Mircea, Ioana Rusu, Emilio Mármol‐Sánchez, Beatrice S. Kelemen and Ioana N. Meleg. 2021. „Ancient Faunal History Revealed by Interdisciplinary Biomolecular Approaches”. Diversity 13 (8): 370. https://doi.org/10.3390/d13080370
Ruddiman, William F. 2003. „The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era Began Thousands of Years Ago”. Climatic Change 61 (3): 261–293.
Smith, Bruce D. and Melinda A. Zeder. 2013. „The onset of the Anthropocene”. Anthropocene 4: 8–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2013.05.001
Sofaer, Joanna R. 2006. The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.
Svenning, Jens-Christian. 2017. „Future Megafaunas: A Historical Perspective on the Potential for a Wilder Anthropocene”. In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, edited by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, G67–G86. Minneapolis and London: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press.
Taylor, Barry. 2020. „Plants as persons: perception of the natural world in the North European Mesolithic”. Time and Mind 13 (3): 307–330. https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2020.1815292
Terborgh, John and James Estes, eds. 2013. Trophic Cascades: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature. Washington, Covelo and London: Island Press.
Tsing, Anna. 2012. „Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species: For Donna Haraway”. Environmental Humanities 1 (1): 141–154. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919–3610012
Tsing, Anna. 2015a. „Feral Biologies”. In Inaugural Conference: Anthropological Visions of Sustainable Futu-res. Organized by Marc Brightman, and Jerome Lewis. London: Centre for Anthropology of Sustainability (CAOS), University College London. February 13, 2015.
Tsing, Anna. 2015b. The Mushroom at the End of the World: The Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Prince-ton: Princeton University Press.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1998. „Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4(3): 469–488. https://doi.org/10.2307/3034157
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2015. „Who is afraid of the ontological wolf?: Some comments on an ongoing anthropological debate”. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33 (1): 2–17. https://doi:10.3167/ca.2015.330102
Waters, Colin N., Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Clément Poirier, Agnieszka Gałuszka, Alejandro Cearreta, Matt Edgeworth, Erle C. Ellis, Michael Ellis, Catherine Jeandei, Reinhold Leinfelder, J. R. McNeill, Daniel deB. Richter, Will Steffen, James Syvitski, Davor Vidas, Michael Wagreich, Mark Williams, An Zhisheng, Jacques Grinevald, Eric Odada, Naomi Oreskes and Alexander P. Wolfe. 2016. „The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene”. Science 351 (6269): aad2622. https://doi:10.1126/science.aad2622
Zalasiewicz, Jan, Colin N. Waters, Mark Williams, Anthony D. Barnosky, Alejandro Cearreta, Paul Crutzen, Erle Ellis, Michael A. Ellis, Ian J. Fairchild, Jacques Grinevald, Peter K. Haff, Irka Hajdas, Reinhold Lein-felder, John McNeill, Eric O. Odada, Clément Poirier, Daniel Richter, Will Steffen, Colin Summerhayes, James P. M. Syvitski, Davor Vidas, Michael Wagreich, Scott L. Wing, Alexander P. Wolfe, An Zhisheng and Naomi Oreskes. 2015. „When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal”. Quaternary International 383: 196–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Ivana Živaljević
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
ERIH PLUS - European Reference Index for the Humanities
World Cat
AnthroSerbia
