Introduction: Human-Animal Relationships From a Long-Term Perspective

Humans, like other animals, are inextricably bound to their local complex web-of-life and cannot exist outside of relationally interwoven ecosystems. Humans are, as such, rooted in a multispecies universe. Human and non-human animals in their variety of forms and abilities have been commensal, companions, prey, and hunters, and archaeology must take this fundamental fact – the cohabiting of the world – to heart. Human societies are, there-fore, not so much human as web-of-species societies. Recently, anthropological theory has explored non-modern societies from the perspective of an anthropology of life which incorporates relationality of local humans and non-human animals, a pursuit that is significant for the diverse contributions in this special section of Current Swedish Archaeology: a themed section which deals with past multispecies intra-actions in a long-term perspective.