Animal culture in debate: contributions from multispecies studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8034.2025.e108678Keywords:
Culture, Archaeology, Animals, MultispeciesAbstract
This article analyzes, from the perspective of multispecies studies and multispecies archaeology, the question of culture and the material culture of non-human animals, a central theme of my Master’s dissertation in Archaeology (2011). The original research developed ethical, ontological, and epistemological reflections on the recognition of animals’ cultural and symbolic capacities, considering materiality and its discursivity in relational and multitemporal contexts, as well as the multivocality of the animal world. It was grounded in a post-processualist approach that understands landscape as material culture and in ecological-political and relational approaches from anthropology and animal studies, combining bibliographic research and ethnography with ethologists and capuchin monkeys (Sapajus) in Brazil. The article aims to update this theoretical debate, overcoming previous limitations and incorporating perspectives that recognize animals as historical and archaeological agents in hybrid or multispecies communities, conceiving culture as a relational, historical, and collective field produced through interspecific interactions.
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