ABSTRACT Amongst many hunter-gatherer communities, plants, animals and other aspects of the ‘natural’ environment, are bound up in, and gain significance and meaning from, specific cultural traditions. These traditions intricately bind the natural world into broader ontological understandings, which include concepts of animacy, the origins of the world, its structure and composition, and the behaviour of supernatural beings. Through these traditions, elements of the environment are imbued with an ontological significance that informs the way people perceive them, and how they interact with them through economic or ritual practice. There is a growing body of evidence that comparable traditions also structured the ways that hunter-gatherers interacted with their environment during the European Mesolithic. Much of the research has focused on the significance of animals, but this paper argues that plants were perceived in a similar way. Through a series of case studies from the North European Mesolithic, it shows how trees in particular were understood as powerful forces, playing active roles in people’s lives, and how interactions with them were mediated through prescribed forms of social practice.

中文翻译：

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作为人的植物：对北欧中石器时代自然世界的看法

摘要 在许多狩猎采集社区中，植物、动物和“自然”环境的其他方面都与特定的文化传统紧密相连，并从中获得了重要性和意义。这些传统将自然世界错综复杂地结合到更广泛的本体论理解中，其中包括生命的概念、世界的起源、其结构和组成以及超自然生物的行为。通过这些传统，环境元素充满了本体论意义，它告诉人们如何看待它们，以及他们如何通过经济或仪式实践与它们互动。越来越多的证据表明，类似的传统也构建了欧洲中石器时代狩猎采集者与环境互动的方式。大部分研究都集中在动物的重要性上，但本文认为植物也以类似的方式被感知。通过北欧中石器时代的一系列案例研究，它展示了树木是如何被理解为强大的力量，在人们的生活中扮演着积极的角色，以及如何通过规定的社会实践形式来调节与它们的互动。