The Indian behind the Artefact or Things behind the Process?: Humanism, Post-humanism and the Transition to the Neolithic
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37718/CSA.2013.09Keywords:
Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, humanism, post-humanism, human/non-human, entanglement theory, lived experience, scales of analysis, symmetrical archaeology, transformation, directionalityAbstract
In recent years, traditional models produced to ac- count for the transition to the Neolithic have been challenged with the creation of narratives that seek to portray the character of this change in specific socio- historical milieus. At the other end of the spectrum, approaches influenced by the material turn have read- dressed this context, defining the Neolithic as a spe- cific horizon within an ever-increasing entanglement. Whilst these interpretive frameworks have yet not been challenged, they might gradually give rise to a new polarization in the debate about the Mesolithic- Neolithic transition. These approaches differ not only in that they operate at different scales of analysis (lived experience, macro-scale). They ultimately echo the humanist/post-humanist debate currently held in theoretical archaeology.
In this article, I argue that neither of these ap- proaches is successful in revealing the complex set of forces that triggered the transition to the Neolithic. Drawing from this discussion, I suggest that a more comprehensive review of this context of change re- quires the fusion of elements discussed by these mod- els. This situation hastens new challenges to archaeo- logical practice, and it raises a series of questions on the current state of archaeological theory.
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