Turns, tropes and terminology. Toward an interspecies ‘(inter)social’

Abstract

All living creatures exist with others in relationships – networks of ecological, biological, psychological and social interactions – that are ongoing and meaningful, and at some level affect their animate neighbours. This point seems so self-evident that it should not need stating. Yet in many instances both archaeologists and scholars within other disciplines remain mired within an anthropocentric metanarrative which serves the purpose of limiting the study of these relationships either to the human use, or to the (human) cultural construction, of non-human animals. That is changing. In arguing that a ‘shift . . . of emphasis to the live animal as an autonomous being with its own agency and even its known perspective on other species is long overdue’ (p. 116), Nick Overton and Yannis Hamiliakis offer a valuable contribution toward refining the ongoing archaeological re-examination of the potential gestalt of the human–animal social interface.