Summary of Erica Hill’s Archaeology and Animal Persons: Toward a Prehistory of Human-Animal Relations

Summary, Hill 2013
Please write a one paragraph (3-5 sentence) summary of Hill 2013.
Remember that you cannot reasonably include everything in this summary; you will need to pick and choose what you include based on the goal you have in mind. For this assignment, use the reading questions below (and the chapter by Graff and Birkenstein) as a guide to help craft your summary. When summarizing a lens for the Lens Essay, you will want to make sure that the summary is appropriate for your specific argument.
1. Does this article have a thesis statement? If so, what is it?
2. What types of evidence does Hill use to support her argument?
3. An “ontology” is a system for creating categories (e.g., “human” and “animal”) and describing their properties and the relations between them. Given this definition, what does Hill mean when she uses the term “relational ontology”? Try to define this term in your own words.
4. When a human-animal relationship is defined by animal personhood/a relational ontology, does a human perceive animals?
5. What animal behaviors to we associate with animal personhood? What human behaviors do we associate with animal personhood?