ABSTRACT

Birdstones are an enigmatic and diverse group of objects found across eastern North America with concentrations around the Great Lakes region. Via speculative interpretations of form, analogical comparison with other regions, and consideration of basic contextual information, archaeologists think of birdstones as parts of canoes, flutes, unspecified ceremonial assemblages, and, most frequently, atlatls. Discourse and debate about birdstones largely neglects issues of material vibrancy and semiotic process, including the processes by which archaeologists and others began to name and typify these objects in the late nineteenth century. This paper rethinks birdstones through a ‘more than representational’ approach that combines assemblage theory with Peircean semiotics. Although both lines of thought align with relational ontologies, non-representational critiques, and post-anthropocentrism, archaeologists rarely consider the two together. This approach helps us chart how birdstones emerged and evolved through a complicated set of human-nonhuman interactions that continue into the present.

摘要

鸟石是在北美东部发现的一组神秘而多样的物体，集中在五大湖地区。通过对形式的推测性解释、与其他地区的类比比较以及对基本背景信息的考虑，考古学家将鸟石视为独木舟、长笛、未指定的仪式组合以及最常见的 atlatls 的一部分。关于鸟石的讨论和辩论在很大程度上忽略了物质活力和符号学过程的问题，包括考古学家和其他人在 19 世纪后期开始命名和表征这些物体的过程。本文通过将组合理论与 Peircean 符号学相结合的“不仅仅是代表性”的方法来重新思考鸟石。尽管这两种思路都与关系本体一致，非代表性的批评和后人类中心主义，考古学家很少将两者放在一起考虑。这种方法帮助我们描绘出鸟石是如何通过一系列复杂的人类与非人类相互作用而出现和进化的，这些相互作用一直延续到现在。