Relational Ontologies in Archaeological Practice: A Perspective from Animal Matter in Teotihuacan

Abstract

With the animal turn and vibrant discourses on relational ontologies in the anthropological literature, archaeologists, too, are striving to find ways to acknowledge and integrate Indigenous knowledge systems while maintaining methodologically and contextually grounded interpretations of material culture. In this talk, I contextualize the use of relational ontologies within the framework of a case study from the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan. I propose that multi-archaeometry methodologies allow us to go beyond understanding subjugated agencies by recognizing active, international, and contextually contingent socialites of
animals in the formation of ceremonial landscapes. As articulated by the Mexican historian and philosopher of religions of Mesoamerica, Alfredo López Austin, relational ontologies were part of the “hard nucleus” that provided continuities despite radical cultural, economic, and ideological ruptures throughout past and present Mesoamerican communities. With enhanced methods to bring specific corporeal interactions to life, archaeologists should strive to provide historically and contextually contingent, data-driven, inter-personally centered, and socially engaged reconstructions of ancient landscapes.