Beyond Entanglement

Fredengren, Christina

doi:10.37718/csa.2021.01

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Armstrong Oma and Goldhahn, 2020;Brusgaard et al, 2019;Harris and Cipolla, 2017;Hill, 2013;Hussain, 2019;Løvschal, 2022;Mannermaa, 2013;Marciniak, 2020;Oma Armstrong, 2018;Overton, 2016;Russell, 2012;Sykes, 2015). Just as animal historians have proposed to employ a dedicated 'animal lens' (Specht, 2016) to disclose new perspectives, insights and understandings of the past, multispecies archaeologists are now beginning to draw attention to the often-underestimated involvement of animal others in the making of prehistory (Fredengren, 2021;Hamilakis and Overton, 2013;Kost and Hussain, 2019;Pilaar, 2017). As Eitler (2014) reminds us, however, the role of animals cannot simply be cast as invariant and hence as a priori given -that is, as a mere consequence of supposedly essential species-level qualities (see also Haraway, 2003;Howell, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human-beaver cohabitation in the Early and Mid-Holocene of Northern Europe: Re-visiting Mesolithic material culture and ecology through a multispecies lens

Hussain,

Brusgaard

2023

The Holocene

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The Eurasian beaver ( Castor fiber) was an important member of Early and Mid-Holocene landscapes and animal communities in Northern Europe. Previous zooarchaeological research has established the alimentary roles of beavers for Mesolithic societies and their importance for fur procurement. In this paper, we develop an integrated biocultural approach to human-beaver interactions, examining the position of humans and beavers in Mesolithic and Early Neolithic multispecies systems. We contextualize beaver landscape agency in hydroactive environments with human behaviour, synthesizing currently available data on mammalian assemblages, ichtyofauna and beaver-related material culture across Northern Europe. This cross-cultural, diachronic analysis reveals previously overlooked facilitations of human behaviour by beaver practices and ecological legacies. We show that long-term trajectories of human-beaver cohabitation differed between northern European regions. While in Southern Scandinavia, human-beaver intersections witnessed major re-organizations during the Mid-Holocene, beavers retained a key role for human societies across Northeastern Europe throughout much of the Holocene and played an important part at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Dutch wetlands. Divergent pathways are also evidenced by Mesolithic beaver-related material culture, highlighting the cultural keystone status of Castor fiber in higher latitude European landscapes. We argue that this keystone status is grounded in the supply of human hunting, fishing, and gathering affordances by the animals, pointing to the generative commensality between Mesolithic foragers and their beaver neighbours. Taken together, our findings demonstrate the importance of the beaver in the making of Early and Mid-Holocene forager societies in Northern Europe and illustrate the fruitfulness of deploying an integrated multispecies approach.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human-beaver cohabitation in the Early and Mid-Holocene of Northern Europe: Re-visiting Mesolithic material culture and ecology through a multispecies lens

Hussain,

Brusgaard

2023

The Holocene

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“…Finally, it is encouraging to find several recent contributions built on different outlines of materiality and practice studies. This is also the reason why they are fruitful and, not least, more operative in further analyses of intersections (e.g., Conneller, 2011; Fowler, 2013; Conkey, 2017; Fredengren, 2021).…”

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confidence: 97%

Marcia-Anne Dobres. Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000, xiii and 300pp, 25 figures, hbk, ISBN 1577181239)

Hjørungdal

2022

Eur. j. archaeol

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2008. Nowadays, one would probably have called this chapter, 'Archaeology in the Neoliberal Age', as the impact of the Bologna process on the curricula of archaeology in the German-speaking regions is discussed, with its new emphasis on employability of archaeology students in relation to the aims of the academic discipline, ending with a rather bleak discussion of the difficulties of archaeologists in the job market.Eggert's textbook was, at the time of its publication, a highly valuable tool to systematize the way in which prehistoric archaeology was taught and practiced in the German-speaking countries. It did fill a gap, but at the same time suffered from a too strong orientation towards its predecessor, Eggers' long-outdated introductory book from 1959. Without such a strong emphasis on research history, the categories of archaeological materials, typology, and even the outdated discussion on historical vs. scientific dating, there might have been more room to fill a number of glaring gaps, such as a more extensive discussion of the role of archaeological sciences, beyond radiocarbon dating, or a broader discussion of (then) current theoretical debates. A more critical evaluation of other fundamental premises of archaeological reasoning, for example from a gender or postcolonial perspective is largely missing-at least, one could argue, from the later editions. Source criticism-What can we actually say?-gets a lot of space, often stifling student`s curiosity and creativity, as the answer offered by this text is largely negative. A critical evaluation not only of our material, but also our own conceptual biases and a discussion of alternatives would probably have been a good opportunity to motivate students to ask more probing questions and search for their own ways of making sense of the past.

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Feral ecologies of the human deep past: multispecies archaeology and palaeo‐synanthropy

Hussain

2024

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article articulates recent advances in palaeo‐ecology with the goals and ambitions of multispecies archaeology. It centres the synanthropic nexus as a key context for the study of early human‐animal relationships and argues that its evolution yields important yet currently overlooked dynamics shaping the structure of the archaeological record. I first show how the dominant heuristic of wild versus domesticated nonhuman animals obfuscates the inherent variability and creativity of past animal agency. I then illustrate how such agency is caught up with human behaviour and ecosystem impacts from relatively early on in human history, navigating historically shifting configurations of autonomy and control. Drawing on deep‐historical examples of synanthropic niches co‐assembled by human foragers and nonhuman animals, I argue that such interspecies configurations require careful attention to concepts of liminality and ferality and challenge species‐level approaches. I finally highlight potential human behavioural, material, and cosmological consequences of the synanthropic nexus, including integrative foraging patterns and notions of the giving animal, which play an important role in many Indigenous and ethnographic forager societies and illustrate the value of attending to this nexus as a focus of comparative multispecies research.

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Beyond Entanglement

Cited by 3 publications

References 24 publications

Human-beaver cohabitation in the Early and Mid-Holocene of Northern Europe: Re-visiting Mesolithic material culture and ecology through a multispecies lens

Human-beaver cohabitation in the Early and Mid-Holocene of Northern Europe: Re-visiting Mesolithic material culture and ecology through a multispecies lens

Marcia-Anne Dobres. Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000, xiii and 300pp, 25 figures, hbk, ISBN 1577181239)

Feral ecologies of the human deep past: multispecies archaeology and palaeo‐synanthropy

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