ABSTRACT

Archaeology has not, thus far, featured very much in multispecies anthropology, and is entirely absent from most of its prominent contemporary writings (e.g. Haraway 2016; Kirksey 2014, 2015; Tsing 2015; Van Dooren et al. 2016). Given that the object of archaeological inquiry is the study of evidence for practices involving humans, animals, plants and materials, from the beginnings of humanity to the present day, and on a global scale, this oversight is notable. Archaeologists routinely carry out collaborative interdisciplinary research on multiple lines of human and nonhuman evidence, studying how communities of people, animals, plants, and materials came together in different (pre)historical contexts, and encountered each other in different networks and ecologies. But, despite recent acknowledgment that “organisms are situated within deep, entangled histories”, and have “a shared heritage” (van Dooren et al. 2016: 2), there is relatively little historical depth to multispecies studies as currently formulated. “Deep history” is not and should not be confined to the study of the past few centuries of colonialism and capitalism; though this timespan may constitute deep history for sociocultural anthropology and human-animal studies as currently formulated, this timescale is not sufficient for long-term analysis of human-nonhuman relations. Archaeology is the discipline par excellence of the deep historical perspective, dealing with the contemporary, the pre-modern, and prehistoric worlds, including humanity’s multi-millennia hunter-gatherer past. This endeavor involves study of the relationships between modern humans, other human species, nonhuman species, and material things, across tens of thousands of years and across vast geographical areas: “No other discipline can claim to work so great a canvas” (Barrett 1995: 3).