The fungal lives of ruins: paths forward for a mushroom archaeology

Abstract Recent literature within archaeology and heritage studies has highlighted the need for multispecies and more-than-human approaches that go beyond human exceptionalism in the past and within the remains of the past in the present. Responding to these developments, this paper highlights a previously underrepresented group of cohabitants within human societies and their ruins – fungi. The paper demonstrates the need to account for fungi in archaeology, given that fungi can be both decomposers (living off traces of the past) and symbionts (forging connections for healthier multispecies ecologies). As such, four principles for ‘a mushroom archaeology’ are proposed by drawing on the work done within the ongoing ‘fungal turn’ in social sciences, humanities and the popular imagination. As an example of how this can be done, recent archaeological work on German World War II era ruins in northeastern Norway is drawn into dialogue with ongoing research with a local citizen science group that has begun surveying the unique fungal ecologies of these post-conflict remains. In the process, this paper demonstrates how focusing on fungi reveals a previously overlooked archaeological data source and underscores the need to notice the emergent more-than-human subterranean ecologies created in the wake of human use and ruination that underpin life in the present and future.