What Is Animal Prehistory?

This paper engages animal archaeologies with key debates in animal history. Animal archaeology is currently and primarily framed as a multi-species venture, and a brief review of its disciplinary genealogies illustrates dominant foci on questions of ecology and (posthuman) ontology. I argue that this situation, paradoxically, has led archaeologists to largely neglect the challenges of the historical animal. To overcome this constriction, animal archaeology needs to conceive of itself also as a critical and conceptual project—coevally celebrating and problematizing the notion of “the animal.” Importantly, this project pivots to questions of historicity, with regard to both its animal subjects of study and animal scholarship itself. I position “animal prehistory” as a strategic lens to bring to the fore and interrogate these unattended animal specificities and articulate them with long-standing concerns in animal history. I suggest this can proffer a new, exciting field of inquiry and exchange for both historians and archaeologists.