Making posthumanist kin in the past

Abstract

is a wild category that all sorts of people do their best to domesticate" (Haraway 2016: 2) As Brück (2021) eloquently highlights, many archaeologists are dissatisfied with the narratives that are emerging from ancient DNA (aDNA) research. Oliver Harris and I have argued that one of the central problems with aDNA research is its theoretical foundation (Crellin & Harris 2020). We suggested that a nature-culture binary shapes the narratives that emerge from this work and has real political consequences. In this binary, nature has been aligned with scientific fact and made primary, whereas culture has been presented as secondary and associated with a 'froth' of human variability. Brück's (2021) article is a timely addition to the debate, as studies of kinship that draw on aDNA research are increasing (e.g. Knipper et al. 2017; Mittnik et al. 2019; Sjögren et al. 2020), and they are, as she shows, caught in the same binary trap. Genetic relatedness is not a necessary measure of kinship, and as Brück's cross-cultural comparisons demonstrate, there are many varied ways to make kin. Brück and I both want a wider and more critical discussion of kinship in archaeology. I approach this work through a theoretical lens by bringing posthumanism into conversation with kinship. Posthumanist thinking has three key aspects: it is post-anthropocentric, it is post-humanist and it is post-dualist (Ferrando 2019; posthumanism is the umbrella term for the theoretical approach; post-humanist is the specific term for the part of posthumanist thinking that reacts against the humanist figure of Man). There is much to critique about normative descriptions of kinship relations from a posthumanist perspective. Traditional models of kinship are anthropocentric, focusing on humans alone; they uphold a humanist image of the family as heterosexual and led by a man; and they are predicated on dualisms (i.e. man-woman, nature-culture, related-unrelated). In their posthumanist volume on critical approaches to kinship, Riggs and Peel (2016) argue that kinship practices are often naturalised. They consider the children's book King & king, in which two princes fall in love, and the sequel King & king & family, in which the married princes go on honeymoon and adopt a child (De Haan & Nijland 2002, 2004). The original book was controversial in the USA, sparking moral panic and political debate; the follow-up was not. Riggs and Peel (2016) argue that this is not because people were happier to accept two gay men adopting a child, but because the story is one of naturalisation, where difference is made familiar as the princes adopt a child to form a family unit. We make kin in many and varied ways, but this process is often naturalised through comparisons to a heteronormative standard narrative about kinship. Riggs and Peel (2016: 4) argue that the kind of critical kinship studies they undertake-rooted in posthumanism-aim to "examine practices of naturalization, to think of kinship as a technology rather than as a taken

Kinship questions

“…Chris Fowler (2022), in the wake of the successful and thought-provoking aDNA-based study of the collective mortuary deposit at the Hazle ton North long cairn in central-southern England (Fowler et al 2022;elaborated in Cummings, Fowler 2023), has given the best archaeological overview so far of kinship as diverse social practice in the Neolithic of Britain. This has coincided with further prompting from posthumanist theory, arguing for more fluid, creative, relational notions of kinship (Johnston 2020;Crellin, Harris 2020;Crellin 2021).…”

“…In setting out his inspiring stall, seemingly with a principal reliance on Sahlins (2013), Johnston (2020.15-18) pronounces five main features of kinship as he perceives it: its ability to create personhood and collec tive belonging; its association of people with nonhuman beings, things and landscapes; its historical situatedness; its making through the sharing of substances and what are called presences; and its creative, performative and political nature. In a similar spirit, a perceived diversity of kin relations has been emphasised, in an attempt to underscore relationality and avoid binary opposition between nature and culture (Crellin, Harris 2020;Brück 2021;Crellin 2021). It is interesting to reflect on the theoretical sour ces here.…”