Many of us accept as uncontroversial the belief that the world is comprised of detached and disparate products, all of which are reducible to certain substances. Of those things that are alive, we acknowledge that some have agency while others, such as humans, have more advanced qualities such as consciousness, reason and intentionality. So deeply-seated is this metaphysical belief, along with the related distinctions we draw between subject/object, mind/body and nature/culture that many of us tacitly assume past groups approached and apprehended the world in a similar fashion. Relational Archaeologies questions how such a view of human beings, ‘other-than-human’ creatures and things affects our reconstruction of past beliefs and practices. It proceeds from the position that, in many cases, past societies understood their place in the world as positional rather than categorical, as persons bound up in reticular arrangements with similar and not so similar forms regardless of their substantive qualities. Relational Archaeologies explores this idea by emphasizing how humans, animals and things come to exist by virtue of the dynamic and fluid processes of connection and transaction. In highlighting various counter-Modern notions of what it means ‘to be’ and how these can be teased apart using archaeological materials, contributors provide a range of approaches from primarily theoretical/historicized treatments of the topic to practical applications or case studies from the Americas, the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Many of us accept as uncontroversial the belief that the world is comprised of detached and disparate products, all of which are reducible to certain substances. Of those things that are alive, we acknowledge that some have agency while others, such as humans, have more advanced qualities such as consciousness, reason and intentionality. Relational Archaeologies questions how such a view of human beings, 'other-than-human' creatures and things affects our reconstruction of past beliefs and practices, and emphasizes how humans, animals and things come to exist by virtue of the dynamic and fluid processes of connection and transaction.

Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology explores the benefits and consequences of archaeological theorizing on and interpretation of the social agency of nonhumans as relational beings capable of producing change in the world. The volume cross-examines traditional understanding of agency and personhood, presenting a globally diverse set of case studies that cover a range of cultural, geographical, and historical contexts. Agency (the ability to act) and personhood (the reciprocal qualities of relational beings) have traditionally been strictly assigned to humans. In case studies from Ghana to Australia to the British Isles and Mesoamerica, contributors to this volume demonstrate that objects, animals, locations, and other nonhuman actors also potentially share this ontological status and are capable of instigating events and enacting change. This kind of other-than-human agency is not a one-way transaction of cause to effect but requires an appropriate form of reciprocal engagement indicative of relational personhood, which in these cases, left material traces detectable in the archaeological record. Modern dualist ontologies separating objects from subjects and the animate from the inanimate obscure our understanding of the roles that other-than-human agents played in past societies. Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology challenges this essentialist binary perspective. Contributors in this volume show that intersubjective (inherently social) ways of being are a fundamental and indispensable condition of all personhood and move the debate in posthumanist scholarship beyond the polarizing dichotomies of relational versus bounded types of persons. In this way, the book makes a significant contribution to theory and interpretation of personhood and other-than-human agency in archaeology. Contributors: Susan M. Alt, Joanna Brück, Kaitlyn Chandler, Erica Hill, Meghan C. L. Howey, Andrew Meirion Jones, Matthew Looper, Ian J. McNiven, Wendi Field Murray, Timothy R. Pauketat, Ann B. Stahl, Maria Nieves Zedeño

Introduction : northern exposure -- Stone-worlds -- Houses, land and soil -- Forests and hunting -- Coastal landscapes and the sea -- Boats and waterways -- River mouths and central places -- Birds and cosmology -- The sun, light and fire -- Epilogue.

"This is a substantial revision of the first edition. Perhaps most importantly I have now included a chapter on human to human entanglements and have pulled human relations more into the center of entanglements. This results from my critique of the notion of symmetry between humans and things that has widely been touted in recent years in archaeology and related disciplines but has raised ethical issues with which I concur and discuss in this volume. Another important change is that I have, after further thought, retreated from the notion of 'things-in-themselves' and from the object nature of things. I was wrong in the first edition to argue that things can exist outside their relations. The result is a more fully relational stance. I have also paid greater attention to flows and temporality. The greater focus on relationality is underpinned by a recognition that all things and humans are in flux. Change through time undermines notions of the fixed spatial extension of things. There is thus greater attention paid to the forces that generate flows, and an overall shift from being to becoming"--

Of all avian groups, birds of prey in particular have long been a prominent subject of fascination in many human societies. This book demonstrates that the art and materiality of human engagements with raptors has been significant through deep time and across the world, from earliest prehistory to Indigenous thinking in the present day. Drawing on a wide range of global case studies and a plurality of complementary perspectives, it explores the varied and fluid dynamics between humans and birds of prey as evidenced in this diverse art-historical and archaeological record. From their depictions as powerful beings in visual art and their important roles in Indigenous mythologies, to the significance of their body parts as active agents in religious rituals, the intentional deposition of their faunal remains and the display of their preserved bodies in museums, there is no doubt that birds of prey have been figures of great import for the shaping of human society and culture. However, several of the chapters in this volume are particularly concerned with looking beyond the culture–nature dichotomy and human-centred accounts to explore perspectival and other post-humanist thinking on human–raptor ontologies and epistemologies. The contributors recognize that human–raptor relationships are not driven exclusively by human intentionality, and that when these species meet they relate-to and become-with one another. This 'raptor-with-human'-focused approach allows for a productive re-framing of questions about human–raptor interstices, enables fresh thinking about established evidence and offers signposts for present and future intra-actions with birds of prey.

New insights into how and why social identities formed and changed in the prehistoric past--Provided by publisher.