Norwegian Archaeological Review

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Beyond the Anthropocene: Defining the Age of

Destruction

Alfredo González-Ruibal

To cite this article: Alfredo González-Ruibal (2018): Beyond the Anthropocene: Defining the Age
of Destruction, Norwegian Archaeological Review, DOI: 10.1080/00293652.2018.1544169

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2018.1544169

Published online: 19 Nov 2018.

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ARTICLE Norwegian Archaeological Review, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2018.1544169

Beyond the Anthropocene: Defining the

Age of Destruction
ALFREDO GONZÁLEZ-RUIBAL

The question of the Anthropocene has gained increased notoriety among

archaeologists recently. Precisely because of that, it is in need of thorough
critique. The aim of this article is not to rule out the concept of
Anthropocene, but to point out some of its problems: the relationship of
Anthropocenic discourses with the emergence of an all-embracing biopolitical
science; the inadequacies of the term, which blames all humans equally for
a specific effect of modernity and capitalism; its failure to accept a diversity of
origins (but also the problem of accepting overly deep origins), and the short-
comings of adopting a geological framework for archaeology. I thus suggest that
the discipline has to define its own eras – also for the contemporary period – and
that the Age of Destruction could be an apt archaeological counterpart for the
Anthropocene. One of the benefits of outlining an archaeological era is that it
brings modernity and capitalism back to the fore, and with them issues of power
and conflict that have been largely lost in recent post-anthropocentric debates.

INTRODUCTION (Edgeworth 2014a), but the question of the

Anthropocene is not restricted to those inter-
During the last few years, a body of growing
ested in the last 100 or 200 years, which is
archaeological literature is addressing the
the chronology usually proposed for the new
Anthropocene, the present geological era
geological era. Some prehistorians (and nat-
characterised by the leading role of humans.
ural scientists) have argued for a long-term
This journal, in fact, published one of the
perspective, which puts the Anthropocene in
first papers approaching the topic from an
relation to the evolving relationship between
archaeological point of view (Solli 2011).
humans and non-human beings and phe-
Brit Solli put the accent on heritage. Since
nomena, whereas others advocate for con-
then, many practitioners have entered the
flating the Anthropocene and the Holocene
discussion from a variety of perspectives,
(Braje and Erlandson 2013, Erlandson and
including climate change, resilience, long-
Braje 2013, Smith and Zeder 2013).
term adaptations, past and present politics,
In this paper, my intention is not to sum-
stratigraphy, materiality and so on
marise or revise this growing body of litera-
(Edgeworth 2014a, 2014b, Braje 2015, Lane
ture (see Braje 2015, Lane 2015). My aim is
2015, Bauer and Bhan 2018). An issue of the
to provide a critique of the use of the
Journal of Contemporary Archaeology
Anthropocene as the main framework of
brought together the views of archaeologists
reference for archaeologists. Although this
mainly working on the recent past

Alfredo González-Ruibal, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas - Institute of Heritage Sciences, Santiago de
Compostela, Spain. Email: [email protected]

© 2018 Norwegian Archaeological Review

2 Alfredo González-Ruibal

includes a critique of the term itself (see Crist environmental humanities. The rise of the
2016, Moore 2016), I am not defending its Anthropocene as a topic, the environmental
abandonment, because, as has been argued, humanities, science and technology studies,
the idea has stuck and has important peda- and post-anthropocentrism cannot be under-
gogic value (Braje 2018): it has helped raise stood separately from each other. I also believe
consciousness of the global problems that they are in turn related to the current hege-
brought about by the destructiveness of mony of archaeometry (or the natural sciences)
humanity during the last 250 years (or at in archaeology. Although some hail this as
least part of humanity). In the present article a revolution (Kristiansen 2014), I see it as
I begin by wondering about the archaeologi- further evidence of a very worrying ‘assimila-
cal interest in the Anthropocene and its rela- tion of the natural by the social’ (Crist 2016,
tion to other discourses. I then develop three p. 28, Hornborg 2017) and the impoverishment
arguments: first, I criticize the fact that the of social interpretation more generally (see Ion
concept of the Anthropocene distributes (2017) for cogent criticism). In the last instance,
guilt equally and unfairly among all human archaeometry can be understood as part of
beings; second, its historicity is problematic a new emerging biopolitical science that occu-
for different reasons (too deep, too precise, pies all the space of knowledge and that margin-
too homogeneous); and finally, I contend alizes everything that cannot be translated into
that archaeology should go beyond the the language of hard science, technology and,
Anthropocenic framework and produce its ultimately, economy. In this line, Felipe Criado-
own periodisations, which can be only par- Boado (2018) has recently noted that out of 50
tially coincident with that of geologists (or top scientific journals, 28 are biomedical:
historians, for that matter). Such periodisa-
tions have to bring back to the fore issues of Health, disease, hygiene, life expectancy stand out
power, inequality and conflict – that is, pol- as the most important and interesting problems.
itics (Bauer and Bhan 2018) – as they are Nobody will discuss that it is better to be healthy
manifested in the material world. than to be ill. But precisely because of such obvious-
ness, we cannot see that behind this propensity
toward individual wellbeing there is a biopolitics
that sustains a biopower. Such biopower is based
WHY THE ANTHROPOCENE? on an ‘endless medicalisation’, which is the essence
The answer is simple: because it is here, it is of the new strategies of power in modern societies.
(Criado-Boado 2018, p. 121)
important and it refers to one of the topics
that archaeology has always explored: the rela-
tionship between societies and environments. The reflection of this new biopolitical science
Yet simple answers are seldom satisfactory. can be seen in the rise of aDNA and stable
We should always wonder about the archaeol- isotopes analyses, which are preferentially
ogy of our knowledge, in Foucaldian style funded by large organisations, such as the
(Foucault 1968): How and why do some con- European Union and national governments.
cepts, statements (énoncés) and discourses Not surprisingly, the journal with the highest
emerge and succeed at certain points? In which h-index1 in the field is the Journal of
ways are discourses related, and for what rea- Archaeological Science.
sons? Michel Foucault (2004) saw links between A similar argument can be put forward for
the birth of the clinic, prisons, the modern state the rise of environmental humanities and the
and modern subjectivity. We should wonder concern with the Anthropocene. Adaptation,
about the current convergence of the discourse resilience, vulnerability and environmental
of the natural and social sciences at the change, which recur in discussions of the
moment, epitomised by the ecological or new geological era, have been key issues in
 Beyond the Anthropocene 3

archaeology for over a decade (Redman imagination of the future by putting too
2005, Bradtmöller et al. 2017) and are inher- much emphasis on mere survival.
ently biopolitical: the concern here is with
managing and protecting the life of human
populations threatened not by viruses or
bacteria, but by pollution, drought or fam- MAN OR HUMAN?
ine. Thus, generously funded projects study One of the main problems with the
how societies have coped with climate Anthropocene label is that it puts a universal
change, drought and catastrophes in the anthropos at the heart of the era (Moore 2016).
deep and recent past. While this is doubtless This has already raised numerous criticisms.
a fascinating topic with an important prac- Several scholars have proposed less anthropo-
tical side (Marchant and Lane 2014), it has centric terms, such as Carbocene (LeCain
troubling political implications when we try 2015), Ecozoic (Crist 2016) or Ctulhucene
to apply the lessons to the present. On the (Haraway 2015). However, to displace the
one hand, it does not take sufficiently into anthropos in post-humanist fashion to make
account the fact that the current situation is room for non-human beings and substances
largely incomparable to Prehistory, in that (Braidotti 2013, Morton 2013) is unsatisfac-
the meddling of humans in ecosystems today tory: they evince more a utopian aspiration
has no historical parallel (Steffen et al. 2011) at a non-anthropocentric world in which
and that single communities or societies can humans and non-humans reorganise their
do little to intervene in changes at a global lives in a more symmetrical way, than
scale. On the other hand, the concepts of a realistic description of the present and fore-
adaptation and resilience put emphasis on seeable future. The current geological era has
making do with reality as it is, instead of been largely and negatively shaped by human
trying to change it. This is inevitably conser- beings, and this refers to much more than
vative. Not surprisingly, AXA, the insurance climate change. The global anthropogenic
company, is actively funding research on production of sediment, for example, was of
resilience in megacities (how to deal with 150 km3 in 2015, 24 times greater than the
unstoppable demographic growth, construc- annual sedimentation produced by all major
tion in inadequate zones, such as earthquake rivers flowing into the oceans (Cooper et al.
and flood-prone areas, ever-increasing pollu- 2018). Displaced sediment volumes in the
tion, etc.).2 This is undoubtedly relevant, but Western Front (1914–1918) were in the range
it would be even more relevant in the long of 1,000–2,000 m3/Ha (Brenot et al. 2017). It is
term to try to stop the growth of megacities, human beings (with human-made things, such
a monstrous offspring of modernity and as shovels and high explosives) that changed
unrestrained global capitalism. I understand the geology of Flanders. To insist in the
that this is not the role of an insurance com- agency of nitrogen dioxide (a component of
pany, but it should definitely be on the trinitrotoluene) or Rattus norvegicus (rats) in
agenda of engaged social scientists. Not to the production of devastated landscapes to
learn to live with the Anthropocene and its create a decentralised account of the First
many consequences, but to criticise its poli- World War is, for me, missing the mark. It is
tical economic bases – that is, capitalism and obvious that destruction is not produced by
modernity. The biopolitical paradigm of the human minds alone. However, emphasising
social sciences entails at least two problems: the role of humans does not mean engaging
it diverts our attention from anything that in some modernist act of purification that dis-
cannot be cast in the language of the natural regards the importance of non-human actants,
sciences and it limits our political but taking responsibility. It is not only
4 Alfredo González-Ruibal

epistemology that is at stake in how we craft relations with nature and unleashed destruc-
narratives and explanations, but ethics. tion in a scale that is scarcely distinguishable
We have to acknowledge the paramount from capitalism (Feshbach and Friendly
role of humans in shaping the 1993). The Aral Sea, for instance, lost 90%
Anthropocene, but we also have to acknowl- of its surface due to Soviet irrigation pro-
edge that the new geological era is not the jects. The pollution generated by the fac-
work of generic humans, but of Man. It has tories of socialist countries and the
been the Man of humanism – white, infrastructures that transformed the face of
Western, male (Braidotti 2013) – that has the planet, such as the White Sea–Baltic
created the critical conditions of our age. Canal constructed during Stalin’s time,
Yet the concept of Anthropocene conflates demonstrate that capitalism is not the only
Man and human. It makes all humankind ideology promoting planet-wide material
guilty of something for which many are transformations. Indeed, Marx was a great
not – if anything, they are the victims (Fig. admirer of capitalism; he was not against
1). The origin of the Anthropocene has very technological progress per se or its capability
specific cultural, political, economic and geo- to transform the world (Berman 1983), but
graphic reasons. Because of this, some would against the social inequalities underscoring
prefer the concept of Capitalocene (Moore capitalist development.
2016), for which I feel much more sympathy. Bauer and Ellis (2018) have criticised the
However, I still find it inadequate, because Anthropocene divide, noting that it recapi-
although capitalism is by far the politico- tulates the infamous division between primi-
economic regime that has done more to tives and moderns. They argue that well
give birth to the Anthropocene, it has not before the eighteenth century human beings
been the only agent. During the brief socia- were active in the Earth’s biogeochemical
list interlude (1917–1991), the Second World processes for thousands of years. Other
engaged in material practices, developed authors have signalled different periods

Fig. 1. A pet monkey and a bunch of arrows in the home of an Awá family. The Awá, one of the last
hunter-gatherer groups of South America, have a relationship to the non-human world that is radically
different to that of humans responsible for the Anthropocene. Author’s photograph.
 Beyond the Anthropocene 5

during the last millennia when modern four attitudes in human societies in relation to
humans caused important geomorphological the environment – passive, participative, active
and biological impacts on the Earth: from and destructive – which do not have to be seen
the Late Pleistocenic extinctions to the onset as evolutionary stages. The passive attitude is
of agriculture and the emergence of cities characteristic of hunter-gatherers; the second
(Braje and Erlandson 2013, Erlandson and encompasses all the communities with non-
Braje 2013, Smith and Zeder 2013, Zhuang permanent agriculture both in the past and in
and Kidder 2014). Although this is certainly the present. According to Criado-Boado, in
true, the scale of human involvement in geo- these societies there is a close relationship
logical and biological processes is very dif- between nature and culture, in such a way that
ferent in the Neolithic and in social reproduction depends on the natural
Supermodernity (Steffen et al. 2011). Thus, reproduction of the environment. From this
we can agree that there is not a clear date in point of view, the Neolithic would have implied
which humans became geophysicaI (Bauer a naturalisation of culture, and not
and Ellis 2018, p. 214), but this is not contra- a domestication of nature as has been tradition-
dictory to stating that there is a date on ally maintained. The domestication of nature
which they gave rise to the Anthropocene – proper would characterise those communities
irrespective of whether we place it in the late that have an active stance toward the environ-
eighteenth or mid-twentieth century. I find it ment. Peasant societies, or rather societies based
potentially dangerous, though, to say that on farming, would be the best representatives of
the Anthropocene could have started at dif- this attitude and of domesticated thought more
ferent times before modernity (Erlandson generally, which implies a heavy modification
and Braje 2013). Stating that human beings of landscape. We can include here state socie-
have always been geophysical does not mini- ties, and, more generally, inegalitarian commu-
mise the role of capitalism in the current nities with intensive agricultural and pastoralist
ecological crisis (Bauer and Ellis 2018, economies. The destructive stance, however,
p. 215), but saying that early agriculturalists would be associated with modernity only, and
were not less Anthropocenic than twenty- it is best represented by capitalist notions of
first century industries runs the risk of ‘cheap nature’ (Moore 2016).
doing just that. In my opinion, some divides It can be misleading, then, to argue that the
are worth keeping for both epistemological greater impact on the environment caused by
and political reasons, and these include the inegalitarian societies (those that display an
Holocene/Anthropocene and the modern/ active stance toward nature, according to
non-modern divides. Criado-Boado) makes them ‘similar to those
This does not mean, however, that we have to of contemporary capitalism’ (Bauer and Ellis
lump together all non-modern societies. Bauer 2018, p. 214). There is a qualitative and quanti-
and Ellis rightly note the relationship between tative difference between active and destructive
a higher human impact in the environment and societies. Non-capitalist state societies with an
‘the production of social relationships and insti- active stance toward nature can certainly pro-
tutionalised forms of inequality’ (Bauer and duce atmospheric change (Hong et al. 1994,
Ellis 2018, p. 214). Here is another divide that Bauer and Ellis 2018, p. 213), and they often
is worth keeping: that between state and non- collapse due to a combination of factors,
state societies – or divided and undivided socie- including unsustainable economic practices
ties (Clastres 1974). The diverse biogeochemical (Tainter 1990). But only with capitalist-
impact of different social formations in the past modernist ideologies, subjectivities and techni-
was already pointed out, with different terms, cal means is something like the Anthropocene
by Felipe Criado-Boado (1993). He described possible: a transformation of the Earth on
6 Alfredo González-Ruibal

a global scale and beyond the threshold of the second half of the nineteenth century, which
recovery (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2013). Thus, is in turn linked to the chemical revolution of
I would insist that the human at the origin of the time – which would also lead to synthetic
the Anthropocene is predominately white, male fertilizers and medicines enabling exponential
and Western, but also state-organised and demographic growth and weapons of mass
modern. destruction, such as poison gas and high explo-
sive. By focusing on the mid-twentieth century,
we may fail to understand the origins and devel-
A LONG OR A SHORT
opment of our era. Therefore, we need to
ANTHROPOCENE?
appraise what Harman (2016, p. 63) calls dor-
The chronology of the Anthropocene is a topic mancy, which is the period prior to the moment
that has been hotly debated. Although some at which we start registering the effects on the
take it back to the Middle Holocene, environment of an object. This might be of little
8000 years ago (Ruddiman 2003, Smith and interest to geologists or biologists, but is of
Zeder 2013), there is wider consensus that it is enormous relevance for social scientists.
a phenomenon of the last 250 years. The origins Historians have long been working with the
of the era have been variously put in 1784 or the assumption that the European Middle Ages
mid-twentieth century (Crutzen and Steffen did not end in 1453 or 1492. In many ways,
2003, Crutzen 2006, Zalasiewicz and Waters they can be said to have ended in the eighteenth
2015, Waters et al 2016). This precision can century (Le Roy Ladurie 1974) or even the
make sense from a stratigraphic perspective, twentieth (Mayer 1981). We need similar flex-
but social scientists, including archaeologists, ible and fuzzy chronologies for the contempor-
should be cautious in following such period- ary era – temporal frameworks that
isation. From an archaeological point of view, accommodate a reality that is multifaceted and
the proliferation of mega-artefacts and of multitemporal.
things more generally, or the rise of mass The chronology of origins is just one of the
destruction, which are clear indicators of radi- problems with the Anthropocene. Another
cal change during the contemporary era one is homochrony. The Anthropocene is
(González-Ruibal 2019), cannot be directly a global phenomenon like any other geological
linked to one single date. era, but although this is definitely the case for
We have to think of more complex chronol- today, it was not so obvious at the beginning.
ogies than those used by natural scientists, It can be hard to argue that Northern
which are surprisingly culture-historical in England, the Antarctica and Central Africa
their quest for precision. Among other things, were all in the Anthropocene in 1800. Thus,
we have to take into account that the birth of an Matt Edgeworth et al. (2015) have argued for
object is always prior to its effects (Harman diachronous origins for the era, based on
2016, p. 41): ‘an entity qualifies as an object as archaeological stratigraphies. Indeed, many
long as it is irreducible both to its components processes that have influenced the march of
and its effects’. This is because, according to the Anthropocene (such as the transformation
Harman, objects must exist in order to act, of agrarian societies into industrial or post-
rather than act in order to exist (Harman industrial ones) developed at different times
2016, p. 63). What natural scientists identify in in different places. We need to adopt
the mid-twentieth century is the effect of an a heterochronic and heterotopic perspective
entity that emerged well before. Thus, the pro- (Fig. 2), one that understands the multiple
liferation of consumer plastics from the mid- temporalities and geographies of the modern
twentieth century onwards is directly related era and for which archaeology can be extre-
to the invention of synthetic polymers during mely useful. We cannot gloss over regional
 Beyond the Anthropocene 7

Fig. 2. The heterochronies of the Anthropocene: a millennia-old agricultural artefact – a plough – drawn
by a tractor in Galicia (Spain). Author’s photograph.

and cultural differences: taking into account both for other disciplines and to expand the
diverse temporalities for the emergence and archaeological imagination (Pétursdóttir
development of the Anthropocene is also 2017). But I would encourage archaeologists
a matter of justice; as I have pointed out to define their own frameworks of analysis
above, it shows how unequally distributed is for the contemporary period, instead of
the agency of human societies in the process. resorting to an imported Anthropocene.
By equating the archaeology of the recent past This is in line with my quest to reclaim the
with the Anthropocene, we also run the risk of theoretical and methodological potential of
overlooking a variety of social formations that archaeology (González-Ruibal 2013).
have resisted the encroachment of modernity Archaeologists make periodisations based
and capitalism. The contemporary era is more on material phenomena: we can do the
than plastic, CO2 and radiogenic isotopes. same with our own age. The contemporary
There is also straw, mud and stone. The last archaeological era could be called theAge of
communities whose mode of production Destruction – or Devastation (Olivier 2013) .
would never have led to the Anthropocene It roughly covers can be identified by clear
are disappearing, and with them important indicators in the archaeological record, such
lessons about alternative temporalities and as the proliferation of technologies of mass
potential futures. destruction – not only weapons, but also
extractive and predatory technologies
(LeCain 2009), accelerated cycles of con-
GEOLOGICAL ERAS OR
struction and destruction, necropolitical
ARCHAEOLOGICAL ERAS?
regimes (Mbembé 2003) materialised in
Archaeology can help define a geological era mass graves and camps (veritable fossil
(Edgeworth 2014a, 2014b, Edgeworth et al. guides of our era), and the widespread ruina-
2015) and offer new insights into the very tion of non-modern and early modern forms
notion of Anthropocene, which are useful of existence – represented, among other
8 Alfredo González-Ruibal

things, by the ruins of peasant landscapes issues. Indeed, as the revival of fascism and
(González-Ruibal 2019). I do not advocate other forms of extreme right politics today
replacing the Anthropocene with the Age of show, we should be cautious with forgetting
Destruction. Both can stay; they refer to about such issues as xenophobia and autoritar-
different, if strongly related, phenomena. ianism. Not only they are back, they are also
Archaeologists do not conflate the strongly related to the ecological crisis.
Palaeolithic and the Pleistocene, even if Again, this does not mean that archae-
they occur almost simultaneously – ca. ology should not be working on the
2.5 million to 11,000 years ago, although Anthropocene as a problem. It definitely
the date of the Palaeolithic keeps moving as has to. Discussions on the current geolo-
we find more evidence for earlier artefacts gical era are all about things and sub-
(Harmand et al. 2015). We keep both stances produced by humans (plastics,
terms, because they refer to different (if concrete, petroleum, radioactive materi-
intertwined) phenomena. It is the task of als). With others (Solli 2011, Edgeworth
archaeologists to define not ‘–cenes’ 2014a, Braje 2015, Pétursdóttir 2017,
(Anthropocene, Plantationcene or Bauer and Ellis 2018), I believe that
Capitalocene), but archaeological eras. archaeology can and should play a more
The fact that the Anthropocene has been prominent role in the discussion, but this,
described by natural scientists with a specific for me, means not so much working with
research agenda in mind is only one of the the agenda of natural scientists as reshap-
problems. More important is the fact that by ing the discussion of the Anthropocene in
working within a geological framework we end archaeological terms and with archaeolo-
up putting all emphasis on relations between gical concepts – instead of those of the
humans and non-humans – and between non- natural sciences that have become so
humans (Pétursdóttir 2017), as if those between exceedingly popular lately. Archaeology
humans (needless to say, mediated by things) can do more than contribute data to
were now of lesser importance. Thus, one of the a debate that has already been fashioned
prophets of environmental humanities, by geologists and biologists and more
Timothy Morton (2013), is fascinated by the recently by historians and philosophers.
very specific and tangible drops of sweat pro- Thus, Christopher Witmore (forthcoming)
duced by global warming on his forehead and suggests that archaeology should confront
by the non-local, viscous hyperobject that is the fundamental changes in being human
global warming itself. But he seems less inter- of the contemporary era by paying more
ested in what lies in between, which is the poli- attention to the ‘mega-monstrous things
tical economy of the Anthropocene. By paying that are now pervasive’ (Fig. 3), and
too much attention to the environment, we run Matt Edgeworth (2010) has likewise called
the risk of downplaying conflictual and asym- attention to the changing scale of materi-
metrical relations between humans. These ality in the contemporary era. It can also
unequal relations are structured by class, race, document the proliferation of things that
sex and gender (Quijano 2000, Grosfoguel has characterised the last 100 years of
2007). Our era cannot be defined solely from human life on Earth (Olsen 2010), the
the angle of large-scale geological processes; radically new ontologies of contemporary
total war, dictatorship, genocide, coloniality, artefacts and substances (Pétursdóttir
patriarchy, religious fundamentalism or nation- 2017), and the widespread destruction
alism are important forces that define the con- (ecological and human) associated with
temporary world socially and materially and supermodern politics and predatory
that cannot be reduced to pure environmental economies (González-Ruibal 2019).
 Beyond the Anthropocene 9

agents, not all are equally guilty regarding the

emergence of the Anthropocene. We thus have
to narrow down the concept of anthropos. This
leads me to the third point, which is the chron-
ology of the Anthropocene, which is proble-
matic for three different reasons: in the
formulation of natural scientists, it is extre-
mely precise and therefore incompatible with
the temporal frameworks needed by social
scientists. However, when (mostly) social
scientists try to blur the divide by suggesting
other, earlier, Anthropocenic beginnings, they
run the risk of naturalising the action of capit-
alism. Finally, there is a general tendency to
produce a homochronous account of the
Anthropocene that conceals a variety of begin-
nings. A way out, and this is my fourth and
last point, is to adopt an archaeological frame-
work; that is, to define archaeological (and not
geological) eras that can accommodate the
diverse and complex temporalities with which
archaeology usually works. This also
Fig. 3. A megamonstrous artefact: a high-rise means bringing back sociopolitical issues that
being demolished in Detroit (United States). are not contemplated by natural scientists but
Author’s photograph. are of the utmost importance for archaeolo-
gists, anthropologists and historians.
By criticising the concept of Anthropocene
CONCLUSION I am not defending the idea that we have to
An archaeological perspective of the contem- abandon it. I find it useful and necessary
porary era, in sum, should go beyond fixation (when applied to the last 250 years and in par-
with the Anthropocene and develop its own allel to purely archaeological frameworks). Yet,
frameworks of analysis – always in dialogue precisely because it is useful, it is in need of
with other disciplines, but not subservient to thorough critical reflection. This reflection has
them. In this article, I have briefly developed to be extended to post-anthropocentrism, neo-
four ideas. My first point is that our current materialisms and the environmental/ecological
interest in the Anthropocene, and the ‘envir- humanities, which underpin debates on the
onment’ more generally, is related to a wider Anthropocene. There is much to be learned
biopolitical momentum, which is in turn asso- from them: the ontological symmetry between
ciated with worrying forms of biopower. I thus humans and non-humans, the deconstruction
suggest that we have to adopt a Foucaldian and decentring of the humanist subject, the
perspective to examine the emergence of dis- alterity of things (Olsen 2010, Witmore 2014,
course on the Anthropocene. Another pro- Pétursdóttir 2017). However, the very necessary
blem with the focus on the Anthropocene is vindication of things has meant that all-too
that it has blurred issues of gender, sex, class human relations of power and conflict have
and culture that are nonetheless essential in virtually disappeared from our accounts,
our understanding of its emergence and devel- despite being essential in the emergence not
opment: while all societies are biogeochemical only of the Anthropocene, but of other periods
10 Alfredo González-Ruibal

in which humans became particularly active An annotated review. Quaternary International,

biogeochemical agents (Bauer and Bhan 446, 3–16. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2016.10.002
2018). The only relations that seem to matter Braidotti, R., 2013. The posthuman. Cambridge:
now are between humans and non-humans or Polity.
between non-humans (e.g. Dominguez Rubio Braje, T.J., 2015. Earth systems, human agency,
and the Antropocene: Planet Earth in the
2016). We are forgetting the anthropos of the
human age. Journal of Archaeological Research,
Anthropocene, which is the anthropos of mod- 23 (4), 369–396. doi:10.1007/s10814-015-9087-y
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