Archaeology and material culture studies

Archaeology and material culture studies have recently become increasingly engaged with
ontological issues. This development stems from the recognition that modern Western
thinking may actually build on false assumptions about what the ‘real world’ is like.
Consequently, animistic and relational ontologies have attracted interest among archaeologists; a recent issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (15(4), 2008) and
a special section in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal (19(3), 2009), for example, have
been devoted to this topic.