the case of the Xinguanos of the Amazon, however, illness dislocates and distributes once-finite persons across different spiritual and worldly realms (Fausto, p. 55).In addition, the volume makes a significant contribution in demonstrating that the diverse cultures of the ancient Americas defy reduction to a singular animist ontology-and that ritual in particular, wielded in politically charged events, often determined what could become animate and animating (Allen, Conklin, Cummins, Fausto, Janusek, Joyce, Kosiba, Loren). Giraldo's chapter further reveals that Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's perspectivism or Philippe Descola's four ontological types would fail to describe the beliefs and value systems of the Kogi and Arhuaco of Colombia. Hamann also notes that René Descartes's philosophy was a product of a particular historical moment-especially the horrors of the Thirty Years' War-and that anthropologists have long simplified his thinking. Therefore, ontology alone (animist or otherwise) is certainly limited in making sense of historical change, political struggles, and cultural differences. Indeed, it is equally important to make room for ethics, ideology, and epistemology. Kosiba endorses such a perspective in his call for social scientists to examine "situations" as opposed to monolithic worldviews. In this spirit, contributing authors here interpret the political efficacy of nonhuman beings not simply as reflecting deep-seated ontological dispositions. Instead, the authority of animated things was variably historicized in terms of ecoregimes (Allen, Janusek), assemblages (Joyce, Kosiba), cosmopolitics (Fausto, Janusek), situated lifeworlds (Conklin), covenants (Joyce), tacit theories (Mannheim), and ontological claims (Giraldo).In the end, the chapters illustrate how power relations and the constitution of authority in the Americas are irreducible to human agency or social organization, and they demonstrate that explanations of historical process must take into account the animated material worlds ("distinctive natures") of Amerindian peoples. As Allen notes in her concluding chapter, "In spite of their vast differences in geography, environment and historical position, most indigenous American societies define authority in terms of some kind of systematized articulation of human and non-human agencies" (p. 428). In fact, this observation would accurately describe many societies beyond the Americas (Cummins, Hamann, Loren). Indeed, this volume should inspire archaeologists working in other regions of the world to examine how authority, deference, compliance, exploitation, coercion, resistance, and so forth were mediated by distinct ontological orders and realized in part by vital, nonhuman persons.
