Liminal agents: exploring the social, ritual and cosmological aspects of fishhook manufacture in Middle Mesolithic coastal communities (8300-6300 BC)

Summary

This contribution aims to investigate the entanglement of environment, materiality, technology and cosmology in the Middle Mesolithic Stone-Age (8300-6300 cal. BC), of the North East Skagerrak area, Eastern Norway and Western Sweden, by focusing on the manufacture of bone-fishhooks. I argue that fishhooks are keys objects for exploring the world-views of Middle Mesolithic coastal groups. Fishhooks were linked with daily subsistence, invested with much labour, and their manufacture entwined with the hunting of ungulates that provided the raw material. The process of producing fishhooks involved the transformation of living bodies into artefacts. Thus, I argue that these mundane objects were considered active agents in mediating the dangers and insecurities of an unpredictable "life aquatic".

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Reimagining Human-Animal Relations in the Circumpolar North

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16020