Introduction: A Relational Retrospective
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 14/05/2019

In  the past decade, archaeological studies of hunter-gatherers have increasingly challenged the applicability of modern Western worldviews within interpretive frameworks,  and  examined the role interactions and relationships with ‘nonhuman’ elements of their worlds may have played in structuring daily life. Studies have examined the potentially active roles animals, plants, landscape, materials and objects  may  have  had  in  in  hunter-gatherer  lives,  and  how  meaningful  relationships  with  specific ‘nonhuman’ agents  had  the  potential to greatly shape  human  actions,  and  the  archaeological  record. However, these studies have emerged under a number of different banners, including Anthrozoology, Symmetrical  Archaeology,  Relational  Ecology,  Social  Zooarchaeology,  Multispecies  Archaeologies and Relational Archaeologies. This introduction will review these approaches, before turning to consider the potential for established a united banner under which hunter-gatherer interactions with nonhuman elements of their world can be examined through a ‘relational toolkit’, and some of the challenges such a project may face.

Amy Gray Jones (University  of  Chester), Nick Overton (University  of Manchester) and Barry Taylor (University of Chester)

TAG Deva 2018
Session: Relational Approaches to Past Hunter-Gatherer Worlds