Living Amongst and with Trees: Botanical Agency and the Archaeology of Plant-Human Relationships

Abstract

The last decade has seen a significant change in the way the humanities have approached the study of botanical life. Termed ‘the plant turn’, this questions traditional views of plants as a largely passive form of life, seeing them instead as living beings capable of acting upon and with other elements of the world. This paper argues that such a perspective offers significant potential for the archaeological study of human-plant relationships. Using a case-study on the lives of trees and humans at the early Mesolithic settlement at Star Carr (UK) it shows that by viewing plants as active participants in past worlds we can achieve a richer understanding of both non-human and human life, and the complex ways they interacted with each other. It also suggests that by making more of this approach, archaeology can help address our own, contemporary relationship with the botanical world.