Recent, non-anthropocentric explorations of the interaction between human and non-human animals have resulted in many groundbreaking studies. In this ‘animal turn’, zooarchaeology, which deals with and has access to the material traces of animals that existed alongside humans over the last 2.5 million years, could occupy a privileged and influential position. Despite some encouraging efforts, however, zooarchaeology's ability to contribute to these discussions is heavily limited by the subdiscipline's firm footing within anthropocentric ontologies and reductionist epistemologies. This paper outlines a framework for a new social zooarchaeology that moves beyond the paradigm and discourse of ‘subsistence’ and of representationist and dichotomous thinking, which have treated non-human animals merely and often exclusively as nutritional or symbolic resources for the benefit of humans. Building on alternative zoontologies which reinstate the position of non-human animals as sentient and autonomous agents, this framework foregrounds the intercorporeal, sensuous and affective engagements through which humans and non-human animals are mutually constituted. These ideas are illustrated with two case studies focusing on human–whooper swan interactions in the Danish Later Mesolithic, based on the faunal assemblage from the site of Aggersund in North Jutland, and the whooper swan remains found associated with the Grave 8 at Vedbæk.

All living creatures exist with others in relationships – networks of ecological, biological, psychological and social interactions – that are ongoing and meaningful, and at some level affect their animate neighbours. This point seems so self-evident that it should not need stating. Yet in many instances both archaeologists and scholars within other disciplines remain mired within an anthropocentric metanarrative which serves the purpose of limiting the study of these relationships either to the human use, or to the (human) cultural construction, of non-human animals. That is changing. In arguing that a ‘shift . . . of emphasis to the live animal as an autonomous being with its own agency and even its known perspective on other species is long overdue’ (p. 116), Nick Overton and Yannis Hamiliakis offer a valuable contribution toward refining the ongoing archaeological re-examination of the potential gestalt of the human–animal social interface.

A theoretically nuanced human–animal studies now stands at the forefront of many academic disciplines. The ‘theoretical lag’ characteristic of archaeology means that a subject largely reliant on the remains of humans and animals, and their associated material residues, lies lacking in theoretical sophistication.

I am sitting at my computer with a purring cat resting its head against the keyboard – a real animal–animal situation and a reciprocal relationship. For 15 years, my wife and I looked after horses that our children had left behind when they moved off into the world. The reason was that the horses belonged, in their own way, to the extended family. So I have no difficulty understanding what Overton and Hamilakis call ‘social zooarchaeology’. As a pet owner who has personally observed the individuality of animals – from hens to horses – I have no problem accepting their view that animals are individuals, something that my urban colleagues often question. When discussing with hunters who have specialized for many years in one type of hunting, they can describe how different individuals in flocks – for example, among red deer and moose – can behave. They spend many hours moving in the terrain and observe the different animal species, not to hunt them but to acquire further knowledge about the animals, sometimes to find out which animals should later be culled, but often only for the sheer pleasure of feeling a kind of relationship between themselves and the animals they follow.

The article by Overton and Hamilakis challenges so-called traditional zooarchaeology and works as a manifesto for a new social zooarchaeology, as the authors call it. This new social zooarchaeology moves beyond the thinking of animals as (purely) resources and instead reinstates their position as sentient and autonomous agents. The approach is fresh and evidence-based (e.g. Robb 2010). The sites and bone materials used as examples come from Late Mesolithic Denmark: the Ertebølle site Aggersund in Jutland and Ertebølle Grave 8 at Vedbæk, Sjælland. Both sites were excavated and analysed many years ago, but the bone material has been reanalysed and interpreted for this study.

First of all, congratulations to Nick Overton and Yannis Hamilakis for an excellent and stimulating paper, made all the better for including two considered and rich case studies. Though in no way an animal-bone specialist, I find myself in general agreement with their approach, which attempts to persuade zooarchaeologists of the value of engaging further with particular trends within theory in archaeology (and other disciplines) from the last decade or so. It is with the implications of relational archaeologies that I particularly wish to engage: I concur with the authors that zooarchaeology (and other subfields), as well as archaeology more generally, could benefit from challenges to anthropocentrism, whether expressed in ontological or other forms, and ultimately produce more holistic as well as more diverse pasts. My comments are thus more an exploration of some of the issues raised in this paper than a commentary upon the contents per se.

These are interesting times for the exploration of the relationships between humans and other animals. The ‘animal turn’ is in full swing in a number of disciplines; anthropologists have started talking of the emergence of a multi-species ethnography (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010); and even archaeologists have, somehow hesitantly, started contributing to wider discussions within animal studies (e.g. see the recent – 2013 – special issue of the journal Society and animals devoted to archaeology; and Harris and Hamilakis, in press). Another indication that things are changing is the overwhelmingly positive response to our ‘manifesto’ by most commentators, who have offered many valuable thoughts which expand our reflections in many and interesting directions: we are grateful. Rather than trying to comment on every single point raised in this discussion, which in any case would have been impossible in the space provided, we have selected instead a couple of issues that, we hope, readers will find engaging and fruitful.

En route to becoming one of archaeology's best-known writers on prehistoric landscapes and monuments, Richard Bradley had a brief brush with the law and almost became a Romanist! Here he reflects on his early archaeological forays as a boy, his perspectives on different field methodologies, and how his ways of writing have changed over the years.

Mortuary practices could vary almost indefinitely in the Viking Age. Within a theoretical framework of ritualization and architectural philosophy, this article explores how doors and thresholds were used in mortuary practice and ritual behaviour. The door is a deep metaphor for transition, transformation and liminality. It is argued that Viking Age people built ‘doors to the dead’ of various types, such as freestanding portals, causewayed ring-ditches or thresholds to grave mounds; or on occasion even buried their dead in the doorway. The paper proposes that the ritualized doors functioned in three ways: they created connections between the dead and the living; they constituted boundaries and thresholds that could possibly be controlled; and they formed between-spaces, expressing liminality and, conceivably, deviance. Ultimately, the paper underlines the profound impact of domestic architecture on mortuary practice and ritual behaviour in the Viking Age.

Symbolism, symbolically mediated culture and the production of symbolically charged artefacts are today almost unanimously accepted in palaeoanthropology as the defining hallmarks of cognitively and behaviourally modern human beings. This orthodoxy, however, suffers from a number of serious problems, including pervasive dualisms, an internally contradictory methodology and an unwillingness to grapple critically with the symbolism concept. It is suggested that the symbolism paradigm originated in the ideas of Leslie White in the 1940s and 1950s, but did not become a serious presence in palaeoanthropology until the 1980s. This is explained in terms of the adoption of cladistic phylogenetics in that period, and by reference to new evidence that removed Neanderthals from the ancestry of living peoples. The implications of the growing body of evidence for Neanderthal symbolism are discussed. It is concluded that the symbolism paradigm is essentialist and ahistorical, and has acquired the character of an origins myth.