Animals and Animality in Eastern Woodland Societies

Exploring how humans and animals in the US Southeast interacted to shape social, ritual, and cosmological worlds across thousands of years

Archaeologists often approach the study of animals mainly as evidence of human diet or ecology, but this volume highlights the broader significance of animals across what is now the US Southeast from the Woodland period through the post-contact era. Drawing on archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic sources, contributors examine how animals shaped human identities, rituals, and social structures as seen in art, oral traditions, daily practices, and ceremonial roles.

In this volume, case studies reveal diverse expressions of human–animal relationships—in Mississippian ceramics, shell reef symbolism, deer antlers used in Powhatan rituals, the protective burial of chickens by enslaved communities, and more. These examples challenge rigid boundaries between human and nonhuman and move beyond traditional Western binaries that position animals as less than humans. This volume engages with non-Western and Indigenous-informed perspectives that recognize animals as cosmologically, politically, and socially significant beings. It explores animality as a dynamic, relational category and contributes to wider debates on materiality, agency, and ontology in archaeology.