Arguments for serious problems with Cartesian dualisms separating mind and matter, and humanity from nature, are something of a ‘rule of thumb’ in the humanities. While students may be aware that what were, at one time, predominant paradigms for human life and meanings are highly contradictory, many may not feel confident about addressing why issues raised surrounding this idea matter. Why, for example, might it be critical for addressing consequences of ways of viewing the “world we live in” that eclipse “the world we live from” (Latour & Weibel Reference Latour and Weibel2021: 72).

John Barrett's book addresses such issues from perspectives offered by a masterly historical and philosophical examination of leading twentieth century approaches to European prehistoric archaeology, together with highly inter-disciplinary (and very likely contentious) arguments concerning the field's tasks. Archaeology and its discontents is a valuable contribution to debating the histories of archaeological philosophies and for understanding the field's relevance to ecological humanities. The book examines debates in archaeological theory and methods, attending to Anglo-American traditions since c.1950s, recalling key issues that Barrett raised in Fragments from antiquity (Reference Barrett1994). Building on extensive research and rethinking in the meantime, the volume considers the implications of these issues for archaeology today. One example is Barrett's approach to debates over human and non-human agencies and actor network theory (e.g. Latour Reference Latour1993, Reference Latour2005) from perspectives offered by plurality of ‘biocultural’ forms of life (Chapter 8). This radically expands timeframes by attending to ‘intentionality’ in an indeterminate universe (Kauffman Reference Kauffman1993, Reference Kauffman2019); metabolic traits displayed by bacterial lifeforms that lack speciation (Margulis Reference Margulis1998; Margulis & Sagen Reference Margulis and Sagen2002), evidencing “semiotic”, “interpretive” roots of life (p. 93); and the perceptual and cognitive architecture (Malafouris Reference Malafouris, Renfrew and Moreley2007, Reference Malafouris2013) of “humanness” (p. 103). For Barrett, life does not emerge and evolve in a supposed a-priori environment; the environment is a remarkable (Wittgenstein might say puzzling, wondrous, miraculous) creation of life's agencies.

Barrett's use of the expression ‘discontents’ might recall Clarke's (Reference Clarke1973) work, or allude to the expression's notorious use by Nietzsche (Reference Nietzsche and Norman2002 [1886], Reference Nietzsche and Diethe2007 [1887]) and Freud (Reference Freud and Rivier1949 [1929]). Barrett's (p. v & 84–85) references to Wittgenstein (Reference Wittgenstein1958), however, suggest that it is more useful to see ‘discontents’ as one of several interfaces with Wittgenstein's arguments concerning ‘dogmatism’ and seeing philosophy's tasks anew.

Barrett's and Wittgenstein's critiques of philosophical ‘dogmatism’ have parallels in terms of patterns of continuity and change between their earlier and later works. For both authors, later works focus on the implications of earlier critiques for broader change in archaeology and philosophy, respectively. Of particular interest are Barrett's thoughts on how perspectives on the making of populations can be informed by Malafouris's (Reference Malafouris, Renfrew and Moreley2007, Reference Malafouris2013) approach to Upper Palaeolithic visual culture. For Malafouris (Reference Malafouris, Renfrew and Moreley2007), treating cognition and material culture as separate and distinct limits our understanding of both. Wittgenstein (Reference Wittgenstein and Ogden1922: 6.52) argued that “things that cannot be put into words … make themselves manifest”—the miraculous brings people together. One of Wittgenstein's (Reference Wittgenstein1958: 212) most frequently cited works provides Malafouris's (Reference Malafouris, Renfrew and Moreley2007) point of departure: “We find certain things about seeing puzzling because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough”. For Malafouris, the validity of that argument and its bearing upon roots of human perception, cognition and societies are vividly evidenced by wonderfully puzzling images of animals found in Upper Palaeolithic caves. Malafouris (Reference Malafouris, Renfrew and Moreley2007: 289) points out that, if asked what we are seeing, we are likely to respond ‘animals’, and warns that such immediate answers “risk render[ing] invisible some phenomena of special interest in the study of the Palaeolithic image”.

It is difficult to overstate the usefulness of these insights. But it is hard for us to identify in Barrett the attention that Wittgenstein would have devoted to how ancient experiences of puzzlement and wonder—and also horror or terror—about the intentions of miraculous agencies might have influenced Upper Palaeolithic images. In Chapters 7 and 8, Barrett shows how focusing on possible ancient experiences of things that elicit a ‘this cannot be happening’ response directs our attention to possible turning points in how different forms of human life came to see and live in their worlds anew. Appreciating such experiences—then and now—challenges modern presuppositions that place humans “in a privileged position with respect to nature” (p. 86) and eclipse connections between “the world we live in and the world we live from” (Latour & Weibel Reference Latour and Weibel2021: 72). This is valuable for identifying ancient precedents for caring for earth's ‘critical zones’ (Latour & Weibel Reference Latour and Weibel2021). The central argument of Barrett's volume is that “archaeology must enable us to understand how different forms of human life have emerged historically [bio-culturally] through their desire to understand, and to engage with, the worlds they have encountered” (p. 1). One of the implications of Archaeology and its discontents is the antiquity of insights: “A common world is not something we can come to recognize, as though it had always been here. A common world, if there is going to be one, is something we have to build, tooth and nail together” (Latour Reference Latour2004: 455).