ABSTRACT
Interrogating Human Origins encourages new critical engagements with the study of human origins, broadening the range of approaches to bring in postcolonial theories, and begin to explore the decolonisation of this complex topic.
The collection of chapters presented in this volume creates spaces for expansion of critical and unexpected conversations about human origins research. Authors from a variety of disciplines and research backgrounds, many of whom have strayed beyond their usual disciplinary boundaries to offer their unique perspectives, all circle around the big questions of what it means to be and become human. Embracing and encouraging diversity is a recognition of the deep complexities of human existence in the past and the present, and it is vital to critical scholarship on this topic.
This book constitutes a starting point for increased interrogation of the important and wide-ranging field of research into human origins. It will be of interest to scholars across multiple disciplines, and particularly to those seeking to understand our ancient past through a more diverse lens.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
section 1|2 pages
Introduction
section 2|2 pages
Definition of the human and its colonial legacy
chapter 3|16 pages
Modern ontologies of the ‘more-than-animal’ human
chapter 5|17 pages
Primordialising Aboriginal Australians
section 3|2 pages
Representation, temporality and narratives of human origins
chapter 6|24 pages
Old flames
section 4|2 pages
National, political and historical dimensions of human origins
chapter 10|28 pages
The Far West from the Far East
chapter 11|18 pages
Interpretative shifts in understanding the prehistoric settlement of the Indian Subcontinent
chapter 13|14 pages
‘If we are all African, then I am nothing’
section 5|2 pages
The construction of genetic facts