ABSTRACT
There can be little doubt that the entangled forces of capitalism and anthropocentrism have led the world into the climate crisis and extinction processes. The separation and elevation of our species above the rest of the world has allowed us to develop a dangerous and damaging relationship with planet Earth where humans exploit the natural world as a resource for their own ends. In this chapter, the authors explore how we can build a post-anthropocentric critique of the Anthropocene while still recognizing the key role some humans play in the climate crisis. The chapter argues for a reconceptualization of the natural world by drawing upon feminist and Indigenous thinking that seeks to address the long-standing association between women, nature, and the wild. Touching on debates about rewilding and a return to older ways of life, the authors argue for the importance of reconceptualizing humans as embedded in complex interspecies relationships situated in ecologies. The chapter explores the kinds of evidence and examples that archaeology can provide to help this process of reconceptualization. Instead of pinning hopes on technology, or a return to past lives, this chapter argues for the importance of attending to the world as archaeologists, specifically, by thinking about affect, and future relations with the world in a posthumanist manner. These approaches result in an ethics of care that might sustain the human species and others into the future. The chapter explores these orientations through a case study on waste, nuclear and otherwise.
