Prologue: Archaeology, Animism and Non-Human Agents

Abstract

This special issue explores the archaeology of "animism" with attention placed on the material correlates of interactions with potent non-human agents. The topic of animism an ontology in which objects and other non-human beings possess souls, life-force and qualities of personhood (Tylor 1958 [1871]) has reemerged in the social sciences with the blurring of formerly taken-for-granted boundaries separating subject/object, seh7 world, and person/thing (e.g., Bird-Davis 1999; Gell 1998; Latour 1993; Ingold 2006; Viveiros de Castro 2004). Animate objects and non-human beings are active members of many societies today, and presumably were so in the past. Who are these social actors? What do they do? How might we recognize them in an archaeological context? The contributors to this issue explore these questions. Why should archaeologists take animistic religious practices seriously? First, over 150 years of ethnographic literature documents the significance of animated material objects cross-culturally. Yet archaeologists have not developed methods and theories that embrace these perspectives. Recognizing that objects can and do possess purposeful agency for many peoples can move us closer to developing social models that reflect the primacy others placed on interactions with these important community members. Second, serious consideration of animism and non-human agency challenges inherited cultural categories that limit the questions and interpretations we bring to our research. Western intellectual tradition constructs a series of dualisms that slice apart animistic, relational, and indigenous perspectives, and, in the process, devalues peoples' lived experiences. In using terms such as "ascribed," "beliefs," or "symbolic