The View from the Cheap Seats. An Archaeologist Grappling with Multispecies Entanglements

Abstract

Moving beyond entanglement as a generic cue for human-animal relationships requires intellectual enquiry and an engagement with various approaches and different strands of evidence. Christina Fredengren has produced a stimulating text that enfolds these factors. It is rich in theoretical discussions and brings out important nuances in approaches to relationships between humans and more-than-humans, and she explores ways of pushing the boundaries for how close we can get to past multispecies lifeways – and deathways. Throughout the text she raises a number of interesting questions that can help us push our horizons further. I will address some of these.