Res Naturae. Archaeology in a posthuman Anthropocene and the archaeology of nature: a preliminary attempt

Abstract

With the advent of the Anthropocene, and post-humanism as a consequence, it is no longer possible to draw a rigid line between the human and the natural. As archaeology is traditionally a study of humans and their past, the aim of this article is to discuss the new position of archaeology in the Anthropocene. We believe that the true paradigm that post-humanism has established, de-territorialising the human as the ruler of the Earth and inserting it into the web of dependencies of all historical agents, regardless of being human, non-human or objects, profoundly transforms archaeological practice, which can no longer deal exclusively with the human past. So, using two examples that show that an archaeology of the natural is possible – the uncultivated natural (archaeology of ants) and the cultivated natural (archaeology of forests) – we will take a tour on this posthuman archaeology, duly framed in the multiple works already done on posthumanism, both in philosophy and in archaeology.