Boundaries of Interdisciplinarity: Can Zooarchaeology Handle Ontological Diversity?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although cross-cutting disciplinary boundaries from its inception, zooarchaeology has traditionally been most at home among the positivist sciences. As a result, interdisciplinary work has proceeded most easily with science and science-adjacent fields (stable isotopes, aDNA, ecology, etc.) with impressive results. In this paper, I think through what happens when zooarchaeologists desire to explore interdisciplinarity in other directions (e.g., nonpositivism, posthumanism). How does a discipline centered in the biosciences handle ontological diversity? As an example, I focus on a process-oriented approach (specifically Deleuzian assemblage theory) thinking about how it can be used to reframe zooarchaeological research including the questions we ask, the data we assemble, and the ways we assess data. I identify points of friction with this approach within a field defined by the expectations and values of a self-consciously scientific discipline and the resulting practices of policing which are sometimes deployed to maintain traditional disciplinary structures.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38855.0