This paper advocates for an ethnoarchaeology of ontologies, with a particular focus on new animism, proposing that a shift from epistemological to ontological perspectives could reshape ethnoarchaeology. Hence, it contributes to the current ontological discourse in archaeology and anthropology. By examining animism(s) and the animation of fire among the Northern Komi of the European and Siberian tundra and taiga, as well as the Tundra Nenets, this study explores the role of fire within their ontologies. Drawing on interviews with two Komi communities and on Indigenous Nenets knowledge contributed by one of the authors, we challenge the conventional Western bias in archaeology, including the dichotomies of ‘function’ and ‘ritual’ and ‘object’ and ‘subject.’ Our findings reveal that this separation is absent within the syncretic-animistic ontologies of these hunter-herders of northwest Eurasia. We conclude, based on relational deconstructive ethnographic analogies, that incorporating animistic perspectives is crucial for understanding human–fire relations in prehistoric hunter-gatherer contexts and should be extended more broadly within archaeological and ethnoarchaeological studies of hunter-gatherers.

В данной научной работе отстаивается этноархеология онтологий, с особым акцентом на новом анимизме, и предлагается переход от эпистемологических к онтологическим перспективам, который мог бы перекроить этноархеологию. Таким образом, эта работа вносит вклад в современный онтологический дискурс в археологии и антропологии. Изучая анимизм(ы) и анимизм огня среди северных коми европейской и сибирской тундры и тайги, а также тундровых ненцев, данное исследование изучает роль огня в их онтологиях. Опираясь на интервью с двумя общинами коми и на знания коренных ненцев, предоставленные одним из авторов, мы оспариваем традиционные западные представления об археологии, включая дихотомии «функция» и «ритуал», а также «объект» и «субъект». Наши выводы показывают, что это разделение отсутствует в синкретически-анимистических онтологиях этих охотников-собирателей северо-западной Евразии. На основе реляционно-деконструктивистских этнографических аналогий мы приходим к выводу, что включение анимистических перспектив имеет решающее значение для понимания взаимоотношений человека и огня в доисторических контекстах охотников-собирателей и должно быть более распространено в археологических и этноархеологических исследованиях охотников-собирателей.

Archaeological interpretations of prehistoric humanoid figurines, made and used by the hunter-gatherers of the Stone Ages, have traditionally relied on Western concepts of hylomorphism and iconology. Consequently, these figurines are depicted as finished and static objects of art, often separated from their archaeological contexts. Analysis of these figurines has been focused on identifying what they represent, rather than considering what they do or how people used them. This paper draws on new animism and Indigenous knowledge, combined with visual ethnographic analysis to create a visual ethnoarchaeology of northwestern Siberian humanoid figurines, here viewed as material spirits, within their animistic contexts. We argue that archaeologists’ interpretative focus on representation should be abandoned in favour of attending to animation and the material and immaterial ecological relations these figurines shared with their prehistoric makers. 

The archaeology of shamanism deals with prehistoric traces of shamans and shamanism(s). It is to these studies scholars of historic and contemporary shamanism(s) often refer when mentioning its Upper Palaeolithic origin. However, it has been pointed out that adding an ‘-ism’ to shaman creates a unified and recognisable system (Harvey 2015), which is not the case when turning to the ethnography of shamanism(s). The archaeology of shamanism is characterised by this unified system and reduction of shamans and shamanism(s). By discussing the relation between animism(s) and shamanism(s), along with a comparison between prehistoric shaman burials and shaman burials and non-shaman animist burials of northwestern Siberia, dating to the nineteenth century, I question this systemic reduction. I conclude that tracing shamanism through archaeological evidence is fraught with difficulties due to the oversimplification imposed by this systemic view and that animism(s) offers a more nuanced and flexible perspective when approaching prehistoric ontologies and beliefs.

In this paper, I question the view that prehistoric animism(s) were solely peaceful ideologies with a focus on caring for the environment and its non-human co-inhabitants. While this is true in many cases when surveying the ethnographic materials for analogies, the same materials also show a different side of animism(s) that legitimise human violence and warfare. By analysing the ethnohistory in relation to the ethnolinguistics and the material culture of northwestern Siberia, I argue that archaeologists must rethink the notion of human animation and consider the complexity of animism(s) that includes both peaceful and violent aspects which, based on archaeological materials, also existed within prehistoric animism(s). 

This paper challenges interpretations of Mesolithic and Neolithic imagery (‘rock art’ and ‘portable art’) of the Baltic Sea, which by default rest upon hylomorphism, iconology and transcendentalism – frameworks which reproduce a Western perspective of reality to be universal both in time and space. By drawing on theoretical perspectives of new animism and ethnographic insights from northwestern Siberia in combination with the method of ‘iconography of immanentism’, the paper reconceptualises the Mesolithic and Neolithic imageries. It suggests that these imageries are direct correspondences between humans and animals, which are practices within animistic ontologies focusing on different superior animal beings within various regions of the Baltic Sea – superior animal beings potentially caught up in totemic kinship relations, within the evolving, changing and non-static animisms existing around the Baltic Sea from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic.