Fear of Ontological Wolves
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-03-07

I frame this paper as a direct response to Viveiros de Castro’s 2014 Cambridge lecture, ‘Who is afraid of the ontological wolf?’. I offer a critical assessment of ontological questions in archaeological theory, particularly as they relate to the practice of collaborative Indigenous archaeology and the archaeology of colonialism in North American contexts. Viveiros de Castro’s lecture provided an up-to-date synthesis of ontological transformations and debates in the discipline of anthropology while emphasizing the importance of Deleuze and Guattari’s writings. Drawing directly on the work of these thinkers and more, I outline the advantages that ontological questions afford archaeologists who work with Indigenous communities and who strive to decolonize our discipline. However, I also place emphasis on my fears and anxieties, what I see as the shortcomings and omissions of the ontological turn in archaeology. These relate directly to certain ontological arguments for dissolving, or in my opinion, glossing over the meta-ontological moorings of the archaeologist in favour of multiple ontologies and novel explorations of alterity (e.g., ‘Other worlds’). As a white middle-class male who works in collaboration with Indigenous communities to rethink colonial histories, I discuss why I find these proposed ontological leaps both challenging and colonial. 

Craig Cipolla (Royal Ontario Museum/University of Toronto)