Colonialism and the European Mesolithic

Abstract

This paper heeds the broader societal calls for decolonisation in Britain and Ireland, and seeks to apply various strands of decolonial practice within the context of Mesolithic archaeology; a subfield which has seen little postcolonial reflection to date. We question the historic interactions between Mesolithic archaeology and colonial hegemony, and argue that Mesolithic research continues to reinforce these hegemonies today. This occurs simultaneously within Europe, and on the inter-continental scale. With this in mind, we explore areas of Mesolithic research practice that hold potential to shift this dynamic, and contribute to the deconstruction of colonially rooted power imbalances. In doing so, our focus falls upon the ethics of ethnographic analogy, and the ontological turn within Mesolithic Studies.

SETTING THE SCENE

This paper, and the arguments within it, reflects a conversation around colonialism, decolonisation, and the European Mesolithic that has played out between the authors over the past five years. It emerges from a very specific context, being shaped by events and processes both within and external to Irish and British archaeology and academia. To help readers situate themselves, we begin by setting the scene historically, and detailing the circumstances from which this conversation developed.

Our story starts in Penang, Malaysia, 2018, during the 12th International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies (CHaGS). As Mesolithic archaeologists attending this conference, we were both conscious of the general low representation of European early prehistorians within the delegation, and struck by the visceral strength of research tackling colonial legacies and political activism within hunter-gatherer studies (Elliott and Warren 2022). These were clearly vital themes within contemporary hunter-gatherer research, and are notably absent within research geared towards understanding hunter-gatherer groups in Europe’s past.

Following our experiences in Penang, the widespread and increasingly vocal discourse around the decolonisation of university curricula in Britain and Ireland – often inspirationally driven by student bodies – began to chime for us in different ways than they had before. We were conscious of the context specific nuances of these debates, and their seeming incompatibility with current archaeological research dealing with hunter-gatherers in Europe. Beyond the arguments concerning the colonial roots of prehistoric periodisations (many of which were originally voiced over 40 years ago), there seemed little engagement from Mesolithic studies with these more recent calls to ‘decolonise’ academic teaching, practice and research.

Driven by curiosity around this lack of engagement, and facilitated by the movement towards online conferencing enforced by the travel restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, we organised a free-to-attend, online, discussion-based workshop in May 2021 for Mesolithic researchers, entitled Decolonising the Mesolithic? The event was attended by 38 delegates from 12 different countries, and focused on in-depth discussion of decolonial theory in relation to Mesolithic research themes from across Europe. The discussions themselves were thoughtful and productive, and resulted in the publication of a short summary of the discussion in Mesolithic Miscellany (Elliott et al. 2022).

It is important to stress here that, to our minds, this conversation remains ongoing. This paper therefore represents an early (if not initial) attempt at an engagement between decolonial theory and Mesolithic archaeology; it is also a snapshot of an ongoing conversation between the authors and their colleagues both within and beyond the European Mesolithic research community. This is not our final word, or thought, on this topic, and we are grateful to NAR for giving us the opportunity to continue developing our thinking in conversation with our peers through this invited debate article. Tuck and Yang (2012) argue that decolonisation means asking ‘unsettling’ questions: questions that challenge the primacy of settler colonial perspectives and force critical self-reflection, threatening the stability of familiar practices and institutions. We have developed this paper with this in mind, deliberately emphasising questions rather than solutions. We look forward to the comments and discussions that follow, and hope that this conversation is ‘unsettling’ in a productive way. In this context, it is interesting to note that in the run up to our Decolonising workshop we received several messages from senior Mesolithic researchers discouraging us from pursuing this discourse. We have not experienced similar responses to any other workshops in a shared total of nearly 40 years of academic experience in Mesolithic studies. Perhaps the topic was too ‘unsettling’ for some at the very outset.

Drawing from the wider body of decolonial discourse, our arguments within this paper coalesce around two central themes; identifying the legacies of colonial thought within Mesolithic research practice, and approaches to decolonisation which have particular relevance to these legacies. We will then outline some of the potentially fruitful angles of engagement for decolonial discourse and Mesolithic archaeology. We begin by clarifying some key terminology.

DECOLONISATION

Our argument is prompted by a wide range of ‘decolonising’ efforts across society, by our experiences of living in countries subject to English colonization, and which continue to negotiate the conditions established by that colonization. Here it is important to clarify our focus, and to consider our use of the term ‘decolonising’.

For both of us working within the Higher Education sector, decolonizing carries a wide range of meanings, including considerations of institutional racism, differential student performance, and the colonial history of Higher Education institutions themselves. Decolonisation, in this context, clearly encompasses a broad suite of goals and critical interests, and it is important to note the criticism that a diffuse approach to decolonisation has previously evoked. This focuses on two themes: firstly, where the term loses specificity and becomes ‘a replacement for the alternative and critical, all too often devoid of significance, praxis and struggle’ (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, p. 82); and secondly its use in contexts removed from the direct impacts of settler colonisation. These themes are entwined forcefully in Tuck and Yang’s argument that ‘(d)ecolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 1) and that its broader usage is a mechanism for alleviating settler guilt (Smith 2012, p. 3). Whilst we recognize the dangers of this extended usage, decolonising is already embedded in discourse about the University in Britain (and to a lesser extent Ireland) and in archaeological practice. Therefore, we retain it for this discussion.

In this paper, we shall be following a specific strand of the decolonising debate articulated by Pimblott (2020). She argues that decolonizing the University has included important attempts to ‘render visible the role of universities in the development of race-based science, as well as Eurocentric paradigms for discussing human culture and society’ (Pimblott 2020, p. 213). This links closely to Bruchac’s argument that ‘(d)ecolonizing archaeologists seek to untangle colonial influences by encouraging greater collaboration with Indigenous peoples, reconsidering foundational knowledges, and paying closer attention to the ethics of handling other peoples’ heritage’ (Bruchac 2014, p. 2069). Our primary focus in the discussion that follows will therefore be on epistemology and ethics, although we acknowledge that the discourse around decolonisation has the potential to explore a range of other aspects of Mesolithic research practice.

Much of the decolonising drive has come from communities who have directly experienced settler colonialism. In this context, one might question why we need to decolonise the Mesolithic of Europe: and indeed, one attendee at our workshop raised exactly this point, asking ‘Decolonising from whom?’ Bhambra and Holmwood argue that ‘Europe is in urgent need of decolonisation’ (Bhambra and Holmwood 2021, p. 3) because colonial structures of thought and practice dominate. Any discussion of European decolonization requires a consideration of the long histories of colonialism, Imperialism, migration and displacement that have played out within Europe. Colonialism is a complex historical phenomenon, which has taken different forms in different times and places. Here, we refer to colonialism as the historically distinctive settler, or extractive, colonialism of the post-Medieval period, which originated in Europe and continues today (Bhambra and Holmwood 2021, pp. 6–15), including American and Russian colonialism of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries.

Examples of colonization within Europe are much debated, not least because they do not immediately fit the classic binary of colonialism: where a foreign population exploits distant people. In contrast, within Europe the links between colonisers and colonised were often much more complex, with long histories and sometimes close cultural links between the communities involved (Scanlon and Satish Kumar 2019). Discussions of colonialism therefore carry suffixes such as ‘internal’ or ‘gentle’ or are glossed as ‘integration’ (Ojala 2009, Lehtola 2015, Ojala and Nordin 2015). Key examples of colonization within Europe include English settler colonialism in Ireland and the varied states, which colonized the Sámi. These European colonial histories are complex, emotive and continue to have significant social and political effects today. These exceed our understanding, and we look forward to the development of regional perspectives on our discussion.

COLONIALISM AND THE EUROPEAN MESOLITHIC

As noted above, expositions of the decolonizing project often posit the centrality of exploring instances of Eurocentric thought, or ‘race-based’ science (Pimblott 2020), which structure our practice. As a point of departure, it is therefore important for us to critically consider the historiography of the concepts that we use.

It is widely recognized that the development of the concept of the Mesolithic in the late nineteenth century and its acceptance in the early Twentieth Century in its slightly altered ‘modern sense’ as the post-glacial and pre-agricultural period was embedded within models of social evolution across time (Rowley-Conwy 1996, Zvelebil et al. 2009, Warren forthcoming). Whilst we believe that most practising Mesolithic archaeologists would distance their work from socio-evolutionary approaches, fundamentally socio-evolutionary forms of categorisation persist throughout European prehistoric archaeology and in understandings of change over time more generally (Graeber and Wengrow 2021). The Mesolithic, for example, is commonly defined by reference to prehistoric hunter-gatherers. As has been widely discussed, the idea that there was a distinctive form of human sociality characteristic of hunter-gatherers and the speculative social evolutionary models into which it was emplaced is a product of colonial ideologies and enabled the dispossession and genocide characteristic of settler-colonialism (McNiven and Russell 2005, Warren 2021) and the term continues to carry a powerful and damaging set of public meanings (Lavi et al. 2023). The category encompasses very significant diversity in forms of human social organisation, belief, internal and external relations, and indeed, in subsistence (Bird-David 2015, Widlok 2020). As such its utility as an analytical term has been questioned, although it remains a widely used concept, especially in Europe where it arguably still has some value (Warren 2021). We retain its use for this discussion.

More recently, the term ‘Prehistory’ has also seen critical attention, especially in settler contexts where the construction of Indigenous pasts as ‘pre’history has been argued to be damaging through its erasure of Indigenous histories (Schmidt and Mrozowski 2013). ‘Prehistory’ as a category has been shown to cause harm, and in some settler contexts is not used (McNiven and Russell 2005). In keeping with many of our discussions, the situation in Europe is less clear cut – Schmidt and Mrozowski (2013) note that it has had ‘less deleterious impacts on identities in Europe.’ (p. 1) and that the concept remains central to archaeologist’s self-identification (p. 5). Again, we retain it here to reflect wider usage and as a convenient point of reference.

Despite the widespread recognition of these issues (Porr and Matthews 2020), we see little consistent discussion of this problematic in Mesolithic archaeology. It remains unclear to us whether this ambivalence represents a belief that the political legacies of social-evolutionary thinking are restricted to the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries; that colonial violences are essentially historic and no-longer actively performed, or, alternatively, a fatalistic resignation to the reliance of archaeology upon such categorisations to generate meaningful knowledge. We would reject these contentions.

In the case of the former, we observe universalizing social-evolutionary models actively emerging from Mesolithic research in new forms. These are doing so in a world within which hunter-gatherer groups continue to suffer extreme forms of political and economic marginalisation and subjugation. These models emerge through two distinct stages. Firstly, a term designed to deal with an issue in Northern European archaeology has been continuously exported internationally via colonial structures. Secondly, the Mesolithic has become bound with notions of progress. The relationship between the European Mesolithic and social-evolutionary thought is not just a problem because of a legacy and history, it is perpetuated by the ongoing publication of globally disseminated scholarship as the Mesolithic takes on new forms.

Westropp’s initial definition of the Mesolithic in 1865 was an attempt to resolve a problem of northwestern European prehistory. The term failed to catch on at the time, being occasionally reused and slightly redefined in English language usage. This reticence did not, however, stop the idea being exported: It was used for Argentinian prehistory in 1878, and in 1888 Brown notes his debt to Carlyle’s use of the term with the Survey of India (Smith 1961, Chauhan 2020). This particular example is illuminating; the Survey of India was not a neutral scientific institution but an explicit colonial project, wherein (European) knowledge was translated into political power, which was wielded to enable resource extraction from colonies. The Mesolithic continued its expansion within colonial structures once established in its ‘modern’ form: as for example when defined in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, effectively controlled by Britain at the time (Arkell 1947).

Closer to home, the hiatus between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic was manifested very differently in northern and southern Europe, reflected by the long persistence of discussion of an Epi-Palaeolithic in the latter. The imposition of a northern Mesolithic onto the southern European sequence is another example of expansion. The Anglophone, stratigraphic definition of the Mesolithic would also prove dominant over the French ‘Mésolithique’ introduced by Reboux in 1869 (Schlanger 2013).

The history of the Mesolithic in the late 19th and early 20th century can therefore be seen as the establishment of a universal prehistoric sequence and terminology based on evidence from colonially dominant nation states, and even as part of contests for influence and cultural domination within a multi-lingual Europe. The Mesolithic was part of a colonial project of knowledge expansion, which was directly reliant on the structures of colonial rule. This should make us hesitant about seeing its wider application and discussion beyond the regions of Europe from whence it originally developed – yet, as will be shown below, it is increasingly universalized on the global ‘stage’.

The concept of the Mesolithic has long been linked to progressivist ideas. Czarnik highlights that the Mesolithic began as a negative in opposition to the clearly defined and understood Palaeolithic and Neolithic (Czarnik 1976). As a ‘residual’ the Mesolithic could be backfilled with different narratives. These have tended to be broadly adaptationist, such as general comments which link social developments within the Mesolithic to the shift to temperate woodlands at a continental level. Perhaps the dominant recent progressivist framework has been the link between the period and the development of social-political complexity. The equation of the Mesolithic with complex hunter-gatherers relies heavily on the remarkable archaeological record of Southern Scandinavia and the Baltic, which has dominated the European Mesolithic archaeological imagination despite regional variation (Warren 2014). Whilst initially the emphasis on social complexity was an attempt to highlight hunter-gatherer diversity, and counter stereotypical views of hunter-gatherers, it has become a, if not the, dominant model in European Mesolithic archaeology. Voices of caution have stressed that even within Southern Scandinavia ‘(i)t looks as if this expression [complexity] instead of being an analytical term, a heuristic devise (sic), has become the ultimate goal, with all Hunter Gatherers ending up with this designation’ (Brinch Petersen and Meiklejohn 2007).

These progressivist notions of social change play out in new and highly influential narratives and claims about global trends of human evolution and social change. Ellis (2021a), for example, in presenting a 12,000 year summary of global land use and ecological change defines the period post-10,000 BCE and pre-agricultural as that of the Mesolithic and hunting and gathering. According to Ellis 2021a, p. 10), this Mesolithic age is contrasted from the preceding Palaeolithic by increasing evidence for hunter-gatherer ‘food production’, defined as ‘ecosystem engineering practices such as landscape burning and the propagation of favoured species that enable landscape use intensification without dependence on domesticates’ (see also Ellis et al. 2021b). In this social evolutionary model the Mesolithic is a global developmental stage of humanity associated with hunter-gatherer food production and the Holocene period, due to give way to the ‘simple horticulture’ of the Early Neolithic. Graeber and Wengrow also define a global post-glacial Mesolithic ‘in which it first becomes possible to trace the outlines of separate “cultures” based on more than just stone tools’ (Graeber and Wengrow 2021, p. 123). ‘The emergence of local cultural worlds’ (Graeber and Wengrow 2021, p. 125) is the key feature of the Mesolithic in their account.

The two accounts are strikingly similar in structure. A European typo-chronological label (‘Mesolithic’) is exported to a global scale through the dominance of Anglophone scholarship and the cultural and academic power of dominant research institutions from particular geographical regions. The label Mesolithic is then pegged to a developmental concept – either in terms of forms of exploitation of the environment or structures of social change, both of which are tied to global environmental conditions. Czarnik’s observation in 1976 is still true today: ‘the idea of the Mesolithic, whether we know it or not, has the effect of making an unbroken trajectory of cultural evolution conform to our notion of absolute geological time.’ (Czarnik 1976, p. 65) and continues to be exported to the widest of geographical scales. The Eurocentric Mesolithic is alive and kicking, and continues to generate uncritically universal and progressivist understandings of the global human past.

The danger with these universal models is the ways in which they downplay diversity and variation in our record. Rather than considering the creativity of different forms of social organization of hunter-gatherers in the post-glacial period, grand Eurocentric and progressivist narratives continue to be reiterated in use of the term Mesolithic. We think that serious questions are required of the use and definition of the term Mesolithic outside of its areas of origin (ie Northern Europe), and we strongly anticipate that a greater regional focus would highlight the creativity and diversity of deep-time hunter-gatherer lives and provide a creative repost to universal models that equate the Mesolithic with a small number of progressivist themes.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that the legacy of colonialism is only of relevance to Mesolithic research when viewed at the global scale; colonialist hegemonies within Europe continue to shape the ways in which the Mesolithic is conceptualised. Contemporary Europe is still shaped by colonial dynamics and power relationships that arise from this. These include financial discrepancies between European states, many of which have historical origins bound with colonialism. This economic power is connected to political power and the uneven distribution of cultural capital and resources throughout Europe – sometimes marked as crude distinctions between East and West, or North and South; and at other times articulated in terms of cosmopolitanism and rustique.

These political and economic disparities have real-world implications for the ways in which Mesolithic research is carried out. Professional international mobility within Europe is heavily encouraged by the EU and national funding schemes, yet the distribution of prestige, expertise, equipment, and facilities is demonstrably inequitable across Europe’s institutions. These legacies, coupled with inequalities between national funding council budgets, results in a bias in opportunities towards European countries with more generously funded research institutions. These disparities were often built up over centuries between institutions which can themselves trace their wealth and intellectual prestige back to 19th century colonialist projects including colonial land-theft and industrialised slavery. Consequently, colonially rooted, inter-European political dynamics have a direct influence on where Mesolithic research is carried out. Historical investigation into the links between Europe’s key Mesolithic research institutions, the knowledge they generate, and historic colonial violence is so far under-developed in comparison to other subfields within history and anthropology. Comparative research focusing on the funding available to Mesolithic researchers in different locations, the role played by trans-national funding in research trajectories in different areas, and the historical background to the development of this research capacity would be very beneficial.

Who carries out this research is also bound up within these dynamics, with research mobility often entailing migration within Europe. Language is also a discriminating factor within this, with academic discourse (particularly at the prestigious international and interdisciplinary scale) being dominated by English, and to a lesser extent French, German and Spanish. These modes of discourse create further barriers for non-native speakers of these languages, and whilst the utility of single-language dissemination is well established, the colonial roots of these linguistic choices are undeniable.

Beyond European nationals, there are several high-profile international researchers (most of whom are North American) who have made significant contributions to Mesolithic research, yet there is no meaningful data available on the demographic composition of the European Mesolithic research community. This is another area where targeted research would be very valuable, not least in helping us better understand who it is that generates knowledge about the Mesolithic in different parts of Europe. Based on our own experiences it is our anecdotal impression that it is common for national Mesolithic research to be dominated by people of that nationality, although it is uncommon for Mesolithic research communities to be demographically representative of their respective national populations. We are aware that colleagues in different parts of Europe will have different perspectives on these relationships, and any further discussion of the various barriers which prevent people from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds from contributing towards Mesolithic research is fundamentally contingent on high quality demographic data on the current research community. In passing, we note that such research might also be able to provide useful data on characteristics including age, gender and sexual identity which would better enable us to understand and encourage diversity in our research community.

DECOLONISATION FOR THE MESOLITHIC

If our conception of the European Mesolithic is informed by, and contributes towards, colonial imbalances of power, how then might we go about challenging these? Following the broader decolonial agenda, is it possible for Mesolithic Research to answer the call of Tuck and Yang, and affect social justice for Indigenous Peoples; i.e. the colonised? Within Europe, this is a somewhat contentious question; the definition of European Indigeneity is complex, due to the great diversity of people who might be described as such. Beckett (2015) suggests that Indigenous: ‘differentiates the original inhabitants of a territory from those with whom they now share it. Culturally, indigenous difference is defined in terms of not only adherence to tradition and a keeping of modernity at arm’s length but also as having an inferior and deprived status in the society of which they are a part’. (Beckett 2015, p. 755). Issues of definition and the value of the term have been sharply debated (Kuper 2003; see Barnard 2006, and responses). In Europe, the Sámi are the only State and EU-recognised Indigenous People, but the term is sometimes used in other colonial contexts such as Ireland, where Scanlon and Satish Kumar have attempted to define ‘an indigenous Irish that has been previously overlooked’ (Scanlon and Satish Kumar 2019, p. 204).

The term ‘indigenous’ is increasingly appropriated and misused in popular debate in Europe, often as an attempt to differentiate communities who claim a distinct national identity from recently arrived migrant communities. This nationalist and racist usage of the term indigenous does not match most understandings of the long-term complexity of the movement of peoples within Europe. In these circumstances, the definition of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the United Nations (2009) (after Martínez Cobo 1986), holds more utility. This stresses the political and economic subjugation of Indigenous peoples in relation to invading or colonising communities. As such, indigenous identities are self-ascribed, and situated beyond those of incoming, hegemonic groups. This highlights some of the shortcomings of Beckett’s definition, including the ambiguity of ‘original’ and ‘share’. To avoid these blurrings, we will use Indigenous to refer only to instances where a population has endured settler colonialism, trauma, and subsequent subjugation.

Following this distinction, the Sámi represent the only internationally recognised group of Indigenous peoples within Europe, and as such, co-productive archaeology represents the only opportunity for conventional forms of Indigenous Archaeology to develop within the context of the European Prehistory. However, as Harlin (2019, p. 257) notes, ‘indigenous archaeology is yet to become mainstream in Nordic archaeology, and the concept has been subject to explicit discussion only recently’. This is in spite of explicit calls from Sámi scholars for archaeologists to adopt the theoretical tenets of Indigenous Archaeology when working within the Sámi territories (Porsanger 2018). With Indigenous Archaeology appearing (for now) to be underdeveloped within Europe, we turn our attention to the other ways in which Mesolithic archaeology engages with Indigenous peoples.

The most prominent way in which Mesolithic archaeology does this, and simultaneously reiterates Eurocentric forms of knowledge, is through the ways in which we undertake analogy and comparative analysis.

THE ETHICS OF ANALOGICAL PRACTICE

It is widely recognized that analogies and comparisons between archaeological evidence and indigenous hunting and gathering peoples in the (ethnographic-)present are utterly fundamental to how Mesolithic archaeology generates knowledge. Yet it is less frequently observed that this forms the most common intellectual interface between European Mesolithic researchers and Indigenous communities. Whilst analogy has been extensively discussed in hunter-gatherer and Mesolithic archaeology for many years, this has tended to focus on epistemology (Lane 2014) rather than politics, ethics and morality, which we focus on here. What kinds of coloniser/colonised encounters occur within the interface between Mesolithic archaeologists and indigenous groups created by our use of analogy?

The most common forms of analogy make comparisons between hunter-gatherers in the ethnographic present and the Mesolithic (although not all ethnographic comparisons used in Mesolithic archaeology focus on hunter-gatherers in the present, this is by far the most common kind of analogy). Although it is very rarely explicitly acknowledged, this is based on both neo-evolutionary categorisations and logic – the idea that all hunter-gatherers are in some senses the same, and to a certain extent, historically interchangeable. This dynamic situates contemporary hunter-gatherer groups into the deep time of European prehistory: contemporary groups of hunter-gatherers are held to be what contemporary Europeans once were (Fabian 1983). Many analogies draw on geographically distant – and often geographically diverse – subjects. As such they recreate a long-standing colonialist trope: collapsing geographical distance from Europe into temporal difference.

The European analytical category of hunter-gatherer is created and sustained by our analogical practices and renders contemporary groups as Other. Porr and Bell show how the uses of analogues about animism in hunter-gatherer groups ‘contain the danger of a fetishization of an animistic hunter-gatherer world-view as a distinct and essential mode of thought that represents an alien way of perceiving and experiencing the world’ (Porr and Bell 2012, p. 163). In these terms, the repeated use of analogies between Mesolithic communities and peoples in the present who we classify as hunter-gatherers fetishizes and reproduces the idea that there is such a thing as a hunter-gatherer. Given the problems of this social-evolutionary concept this is an outcome of our work we should be more mindful of.

In this context it is also important to consider how much of the knowledge used in analogy was obtained. The issue is not just that colonialism had influenced the structures of these societies, and that these histories of transformation are not always acknowledged in analytical attempts to identify a hunter-gatherer core that we can use to make analogical comparisons (for an extended case study on the role that colonial-era observations of Tasmanian Aboriginal communities has had on recent constructions of the Irish Mesolithic see Warren 2021). The power-differentials created by colonialism also enabled the anthropological gaze and the extraction of knowledge from local context into overarching Western (Settler) frameworks. At times, this was an act of violence to local traditions. This extractivist relationship continues today, because our use of analogies is also structured and maintained by a power differential: we do not ask Indigenous groups if we can use them in our analogies, instead we assume that we have neutral scientific information to use. Many Mesolithic researchers, ourselves included, continue to take information from Indigenous communities to narrate a European past, and develop our careers, without ever asking for permission.

The extraction and transformation of knowledge continues as specific Indigenous narratives are emplaced into academic discussion as examples of a quasi-universal hunter-gatherer worldview, often at the expense of both local specificity and variations within Indigenous interpretations of specific stories (Hunt 2013, Watts 2013). This risks creating a ‘Pan-Indigeneity’, which – as Hernandez observes, is a further cause of harm to Indigenous groups today: ‘Pan-Indigeneity is what conflates Indigenous peoples as monolithic groups, despite having different experiences, perspectives, voices, and intersectionalities. … This Pan-Indigeneity is harmful because it also continues to bring to mind people from the past as opposed to people who are also contemporary and have adapted like many communities to modern times. It assumes that Indigenous peoples living today are more like their ancestors who were living in the past, thus not recognising modern and current lived experiences’. (Hernandez 2022, p. 93)

Montgomery suggests that in contrast to simply defining Indigenous narratives as stories that some believe to be true, our research would be transformed by a ‘Radical Indigenism’ that takes these knowledge systems much more seriously (Sundberg 2014, Montgomery et al. 2020). These forms of ontological engagement have been more characteristic of the development of Indigenous archaeology in contexts where Eurocentric academic thought and Indigenous understandings have found a ‘space’ to negotiate shared approaches (McNiven 2016). It has also been argued that the use of Indigenous thought requires a meaningful engagement with Indigenous politics and contexts. In Sundberg’s terms, this means ‘walking with’ Indigenous communities, where ‘walking with entails serious engagement with Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies. Doing so in a humble manner that treats Indigenous people as political subjects – rather than objects of research – entails following Indigenous protocols, principles, and methodologies’. (Sundberg 2014, p. 38). Here, it appears that some of our practices can change meaningfully. Yet challenges remain. What does this ‘space’ look like in a context where there are no Indigenous communities present? How might one follow Indigenous methodologies in a context with no Indigenous communities without essentialising a Pan-Indigenous perspective in the problematic ways outlined above?

Some of these issues are developed in the diverse and increasingly self-critical field of ethnoarchaeology. Ethnoarchaeological research has the potential to be extractive and to continue the Colonialist othering characteristic of analogy outlined above, but it can also be genuinely co-produced. In some senses, the ‘slow-science’ of ethnoarchaeological collaboration (Cunningham and MacEachern 2016) is well placed to create the ‘shared spaces’ that enable researchers and Indigenous groups to both learn new things about the world. In these contexts, collaborative work ‘opens up a distinctively dialogic process in which all is potentially challenged, reconfigured and redefined’. (Brady and Kearney 2016, p. 643). At the least, the practice of ethnoarchaeology raises the key question more directly than analogy: what are Indigenous peoples getting out of Mesolithic knowledge production?

We should be clear: we believe analogy is fundamental to archaeological reasoning and an inescapable part of our discipline. But in the form practiced in Mesolithic archaeology it is also Eurocentric and colonialist in collapsing hunter-gatherer variability into universal types and making contemporary, geographically diverse communities represent the European past. This is argued to be damaging to these communities by representatives of these groups. The reliance on the category hunter-gatherer within the justification of analogy also embeds a colonialist and evolutionary concept into very heart of the comparative project.

We have no road map to follow in navigating this challenge. The morality and ethics of comparative analysis in a situation of widely differential power are sensitive. If our arguments are heeded, Mesolithic archaeologists must find their own solutions, which may include developing mechanisms to embed consent within the use of analogies or exploring co-production of knowledge in comparative context. These are unfamiliar and ‘unsettling’ landscapes – and challenging ones. But the opportunities are there to open up more direct dialogue between Mesolithic archaeologists, Indigenous peoples, and anthropologists and to consider the politics, ethics and morality of knowledge production about Mesolithic Europe. Given that it is widely accepted that the ‘ethical spaces’ (Asselin and Basile 2018) required for self-reflection in contexts of Indigenous archaeology lead to the creation of better scientific practices, it is likely that finding new ways of engaging with the role of analogy in knowledge production will be transformative of our perspectives on the past. The global approach to ethnographic analogy often adopted by Mesolithic archaeologists – the same approach that contributes so much to the damaging collapse of time and space in relation to Indigenous peoples – also creates potential to empower these same groups in the face of colonial impression, because it represents the most common point of contact between European prehistorians and a myriad of indigenous peoples. Could a reformulation of the way in which we construct and employ ethnographic analogies, centred around ethical approaches to ethnoarchaeological practice, help to create a tool for global social justice and restorative equality?

ONTOLOGIES AND THE POST-HUMAN

Turning aside from the thorny issue of analogy, we might also question Mesolithic archaeology’s broader potential to unsettle or destabilise colonial hegemony through the narratives it tells of Europe’s past. One avenue towards this may lie in the leading role that Mesolithic archaeology has played in the exploration of relational ontologies in past societies. Within the wider context of European prehistory, the Mesolithic research community has been notable in its willingness to foster and advance relational, posthuman and more-than-human approaches to the study of the past. Much of this work can be traced back to Conneller’s (2004) pioneering application of a perspectivist ontological framework in the interpretation of humans and red deer at Star Carr, and the enduring influence that this work has had upon the belated blossoming of theoretical maturity within 21st century Mesolithic studies. Conneller’s Becoming Deer can be seen as a watershed moment in this regard, going further than contemporary ‘Animal Turn’ studies which sought to expound animal agency and personhood within Mesolithic societies (e.g. Jordan 2003, Warren 2005, Chatterton 2006, Mannermaa 2008), and heralding a subsequent wave of relational approaches which explore the ontological articulation of Mesolithic humans within their respective environments (e.g. Conneller 2011, Overton and Hamilakis 2013, Mansrud 2017, Overton 2018, 2019, Lahelma 2019, Pasarić and Warren 2019, Nyland 2020, Taylor 2020, Živaljević 2021). These approaches have helped to situate humans alongside plants, animals, and osseous and lithic material cultures, and have been particularly influential within Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia (coincidentally, the core areas for the original definition of the term Mesolithic). The long established (and occasionally maligned) interdisciplinary connections between Mesolithic archaeology and physical geography in the shared pursuit of understanding human/environment interaction (Bradley 1984, p. 11) has, to a certain extent, facilitated the development of these discussions; furnishing posthuman archaeologies with a rich array of palaeoenvironmental data within which to envelop their understanding of Mesolithic societies.

These relational approaches are worth some consideration within the context of our argument, as they all draw from a theory closely associated with cultural anthropology’s ‘ontological turn’; a movement fundamentally entangled with post-colonial critique and decolonial activism. Yet it is notable that the radical arguments within ontological anthropology have yet to be explicitly translated into Mesolithic discourse.

Let us explore this at the point of origin; Conneller’s (2004) discussion of relational ontology within the context of the European Mesolithic. The anthropological writings of Viveiros de Castro play a foundational role in the approach adopted by Conneller, providing the bones of a perspectivist ontological framework, which is supported through ethnographic observation, and augmented with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) definitions of assemblage and affect, and Haraway’s (1988) approach to ‘machine’ bodies. Introduced by his famous quote, ‘The West is dead. Get over it’, Holbraad and Pedersen describe Viveiros de Castro as an ‘anthropologist, political activist, and father of anthropology’s ontological turn’ (Holbraad and Pedersen 2017, p. 157). Latour (2009) describes his approach to ontology as ‘a bomb’, directed at dismantling Eurocentric hegemonies within anthropological research. His work on Amerindian ontology, and in the definition of perspectivism as a distinct form of commonality within these societies, is explicitly decolonial in its outlook (Vivieros De Castro 2013): attempting to create a space where ‘(a)nthropology is ready to fully assume its new mission of being the theory/practice of the permanent decolonisation of thought’. (Viverios de Castro 2014, p. 40). Viveiros de Castro is motivated to critically analyse Amerindian ontologies precisely because they have been dismissed by anthropological research that assumes a singular, Western reality. He argues that this assumption is in itself an act of colonisation, which subsequently structures a hierarchy of intellectual knowledge that gives primacy to Western/modern understandings of the mechanisms by which the universe operates. He explicitly eschews a focus on epistemology to argue that affording serious consideration to indigenous ontologies is in itself a radical act, and contributes directly to the deconstruction of Western hegemony. This aspect of his work is shed within Conneller’s complex synthesis of a perspectivist theoretical approach. We think it is somewhat curious and unfortunate that the growth of interest in the ontological turn within Mesolithic research has not coincided with a more explicit shift towards discussions of postcolonial theory or decolonial action.

The legacy of Vivieros de Castro’s radical arguments can be traced in Mesolithic research through Conneller’s interest in the ontological relationship between people and animals, and subsequently into Overton and Hamilakis (2013) manifesto for social zooarchaeology. This discussion, although multi-period in its outlook, is firmly rooted within Mesolithic archaeology through its use of case studies from the Danish Ertebølle, and has prompted slightly more explicit engagement with postcolonial and decolonial discourse. Within their exposition of the theoretical underpinnings of the social zooarchaeological approach, they briefly note the potential for the animal turn to unsettle colonial categorisations of animals as ‘Other’, although this appears somewhat subservient to broader movements towards recognising the agency of animals, and their potential for social interaction with humans; concerns traditionally more associated with the animal turn than the ontological, which is broader in its subject matter and scope.

However, the potential for social zooarchaeology to challenge colonial hegemonies is expounded in more detail in the responses to this paper. Borrowing language from postcolonial discourse, Argent (2013, p. 142) notes that in challenging assumptions of the alterity of animals, social zooarchaeology offers Western societies an opportunity to reframe discussions of animal rights in relation to social justice discourse. Pluciennik (2013, p. 159) makes the important link between Hamilakis and Overton’s (2013) formulation of social zooarchaeology and its implications for the study of past ontologies; highlighting the challenge it poses to the assumed Western categorisations of humans and animals. Yet despite the explicit historiographical entanglement of the ontological turn with decolonial activism, Pluciennik views the development of postcolonial discourse as analogous to, but contextually distinct from, the implications of Hamilakis and Overton’s social zooarchaeology. In response to these comments, Hamilakis and Overton (2013, p. 114) describe archaeological approaches that assume an ontological homogeneity for all non-humans as ‘a colonial act’, and go on to cite the importance of Viverieos de Castro’s perspectivist approach as a fundamental ethnography in any attempt to reconsider ‘zoontology’ (Hamilakis and Overton 2013, p. 113) in terms which decentre the human. Again, they stop short of following through Vivieros de Castro’s original argument, that radical reappraisals of ontology within past and present societies represent a crucial step towards dismantling colonial power structures that affect humans in the present.

Whilst it appears that the pronounced influence of the ontological turn represents somewhat of a missed opportunity for Mesolithic research to engage with decolonial discourse, it should be noted that this lack of continuity between the political radicalism of Viverios de Castro’s work and the apparent political neutrality of its application within archaeological contexts is not restricted to the European Mesolithic (Alberti 2016, p. 171). Coarse-scale commentaries on the influence of the ontological turn within archaeology tend to emphasise the critique of the ‘Othering of things’ and the implications for understanding the archaeology of historically situated colonial encounters (Harris and Cipolla 2017, Preucel 2021). Cipolla et al. (2021, p. 5) highlight that (p)osthumanism offers a critical alternative, one with potential (our emphasis) to forge new connections with non-Western perspectives, and their discussion comes close to the forms of radical Indigenism noted above. However, despite the clear movement towards the analysis of ontologies within European prehistory more generally, these decolonial potentials are not always realised, and there is little indication that engagement with these theoretical positions reflects a conscious attempt to unsettle Western hegemonies and politically empower the range of peoples variously subjugated through colonialism (although see Domanska 2018).

Why is this? Certainly, Conneller’s initial work attempts to synthesise perspectivist ontologies with the work of Western philosophers and anthropologists (e.g. Deleuze and Guattari, Ingold, Latour, Gell, Harraway) to develop and apply archaeological theory, rather than draw an analogy to a particular indigenous group (cf. Alberti and Marshall 2009). In many ways, her approach can be viewed as a prototype for the Radical Indigenism latterly advocated by Montgomery et al. (2020). But did this synthesis result in the dilution of any single political impetus from its ingredients? Certainly it seems to result in an approach which is geared more towards deconstructing western hegemonies of thought in our understanding of the past than in the present (Cobb 2005). This is undoubtedly useful for archaeologists, but perhaps of little benefit beyond the discipline in dismantling inequality and actualising social justice. Does the translocation of ethnographic source material or philosophical argument, across vast amounts of time and space, and into different socio-political contexts, effectively render any contemporary political context irrelevant? Proponents of Heideggerian theory certainly might argue (and hope) that this is the case. However, as we have already seen, Mesolithic archaeology’s interaction with indigenous peoples around the world continues to territorialise; relational and ontological approaches continue to draw macro-scale links (however indirectly) between the deep past inhabitants of Europe and indigenous peoples living around the work today. Mesolithic archaeological practices regarding Indigenous peoples also continues to Other, despite explicit attempts of the ontological turn to collapse many of the Cartesian dualities on which these Otherings hinge. With this in mind, it may well be fruitful to return to Vivieros de Castro’s original arguments concerning the hegemony-busting capacities of ontological analysis, and consider what more Mesolithic archaeologists might need to do to realise these within the context of our own field. In the first instance, an explicit acknowledgement of the political context from which these approaches emerged, and the continuation of the hegemonic structures that these approaches respond to into the present seems an important step. Looking ahead, a careful consideration of exactly how understandings of ontology within past societies might be communicated to broader audiences beyond archaeology, in ways which more effectively and efficiently disrupt Western ontological hegemony, may also prove fruitful paths towards a closer engagement between Mesolithic archaeology and decolonial discourse.

MOVING FORWARDS

Throughout this paper, we have highlighted a series of ‘unsettling’ questions; most of which require further work to answer. We have suggested that analysis of the Mesolithic research community, to better understand the factors dictating who gets to engage in the practice of Mesolithic research, where funding is available, and how this enables national and transnational research, would be very important and enable evidence-based self-reflection about our research community. We have also argued against the ongoing imposition of Mesolithic terminology and chronological structure in regions of the world removed from its original development, highlighting the need to generate regional histories that may challenge the progressivist social evolutionary models that appear to remain dominant.

More broadly, we have argued that, within the context of the debate around decolonization, the key themes of epistemology and ethics share a profound resonance within the practice of Mesolithic researchers. Both the conditions within which Mesolithic archaeology generates knowledge about the past, and the epistemological tools it uses to generate this knowledge, actively replicate colonial hegemonies within and beyond Europe. This point is not widely recognized by our research community – some of whom appear to think it is not a topic that we should even be considering. This should concern us.

We have argued specifically that the widespread use of ethnographic analogy within Mesolithic research prompts a series of ethical, moral and political dilemmas for those seeking to decolonise practice. We note that reconsidering this practice has the possibility to create very different forms of knowledge production, new visions of deep time hunter-gatherers and, possibly, new relationships with Indigenous communities in the present

Montgomery’s et al.’s (2020) exposition of Radical Indigenism may offer another way forward, being mindful of the challenge of exploring this without essentialising Indigenous perspectives. An interesting foreshadowing of this can be found in the legacy of Conneller’s (2004) blending of indigenous ontology with more academically conventional forms of Western European and North American philosophy. However, whilst the intellectual influence of this work is testified by the growth of interest in Mesolithic ontologies, subsequent researchers have missed the opportunity to develop the links between the radically decolonial aspects of the ontological turn, or a synthetic approach to Settler/Indigenous philosophy in the development of theoretical approaches. These avenues remain open for revisitation, and we would direct the attention of future researchers who seek to develop narratives of the past which directly challenge colonial hegemonies and empower those experiencing subjugation, towards them. Yet as things currently stand, whilst the ontological turn within Mesolithic archaeology has contributed towards the deconstruction of colonial hegemonies in relation to our understanding of past, it offers little in terms of the deconstruction of hegemonies in the present.

We do not claim to have all the answers nor that our own practices to date should act as guides on how to proceed. In lieu of any obvious models from comparable contexts, constructive engagement with these points of critique will require imagination, creativity, and patience. Our questions come from a position of care for our subject and aim to help us change (see Liboiron 2021 for discussion of disciplinary care). Decolonisation discourse can appear to be dominated by critique and negativity. We hope instead to have captured something of the position of decoloniality advocated by Mignolo and Walsh, which emphasizes creativity: ‘decoloniality can be understood as a process, practice and project of sowing seeds … ’ (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, p. 100). Beyond the points of critique raised here, we also wish to stress a longer-term commitment to reimagination and positive transformation of Mesolithic research practice. The incentives for meeting the challenges we outline are huge; the potential to transform Mesolithic archaeology into a tool for achieving social justice and equality at the global scale should be motivation enough for change. The development of ethical discourse around the subject of consent and co-production within the spaces created by ethnoarchaeology presents one opportunity to foster this engagement; but discussion of ethics should not be limited to these contexts where direct engagement with Indigenous communities is present As noted above, we do not have an answer to how to negotiate the issues raised by this re-consideration of a form of knowledge production central to our discipline and we do not wish to impose any single vision of the forms these processes might take. We offer an open invitation to other researchers to join us in this conversation, and shape a response to these challenges. For these reasons, we have eschewed attempting to present our vision of solutions to the issues we have raised here. At this stage, we think it is more valuable to debate the questions raised and allow different perspectives on them to inform the development of forms of decolonial praxis. This praxes will be personal, varied and myriad in their forms: a top-down statement would not be helpful.

To close, we return to the context with which we started this paper, a continuing discussion between us about what appears to be a pressing issue, which is not getting the attention it requires: the relationship between the Mesolithic and colonial thought, structures and practices. We write as practicing Mesolithic archaeologists trying to explore an issue, which seems fundamental to us. Our conversations have helped us begin to navigate some of these issues and to ask some unsettling questions – although we make no claims to have identified all of these. We look forward to the comments of colleagues to help refine debate. Decolonising the Mesolithic is a process and a commitment. It requires that we ask unsettling questions: talking, publishing and debating with as many audiences as possible to ensure that the issues raised are taken seriously. A position of decoloniality attempts to hold a focus on critique and creativity, on planting and nurturing seeds and possibilities. We cannot predict how all of these will grow and develop, and some seedlings, will meet with resistance. We can, however, hope that they will lead to changes in how we practice Mesolithic archaeology and, ultimately, make a broader contribution to key social issues. Because we care both about our discipline and its futures, and the global communities that we are part of and their futures, we will keep asking the unsettling questions. We encourage others to do the same.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank the members of the Mesolithic Archaeology and Hunter-Gatherer Research online discussion group for many enjoyable and thought-provoking conversations on and around this subject. Special thanks also go to the NAR editorial board for the invitation to write this paper, and to the three anonymous referees who provided supportive, critical and helpful feedback.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).