In the scientific field, it is common to come across brilliant publications that motivate us or awaken our academic interests. It is rare, however, to encounter works that, like an earthquake, shake up our system of knowledge, spontaneously generating concerns, questions, and reflections on what we have been studying for years. Titles such as La fantasía de la Individualidad: Sobre la construcción sociohistórica del sujeto moderno by A. Hernando (Reference Hernando2018), Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things by I. Hodder (Reference Hodder2012), or The Dawn of everything: A New History of Humanity (2022) by D. Graeber and D. Wengrow, are good examples of this. The book represents one of the greatest tremors that archaeological theory has experienced, unleashing a whole cascade of reactions in the form of scientific reviews, as well as mentions at congresses and academic meetings. Its notoriety and relevance in redefining the archaeological paradigm make it comparable to the transformations introduced by Gordon Childe, such as his work Man Makes Himself (Reference Childe1936), which became a milestone for the archaeological discipline.
The success of this book, in our opinion, lies in the way it rethinks the past and the maturity with which it overcomes teleological and evolutionary tendencies. This work, deploying a wide range of solid archaeological evidence, tells us that another history is possible. One in which human groups politically negotiate their social models; in which the indigenous is not mystical, but intellectual; in which maintenance activities and the domestic sphere are not by-products, but socio-cultural driving forces; and in which our actions are not determined by so-called savage or kindly ancestors, but the capacity to choose and create different social models. Through this agency, human groups have been characterized by creating plural pasts that were lost in the discourse of time, masked by the hegemonic and monopolizing idea of progress.
Throughout the book, these ideas are intertwined, mixed, taken apart, and taken up again, blurring thematic blocks into a unitary discourse focused on dismantling old theoretical ties, and chronological paradigms. Throughout the narrative, the subjects of inequality, freedom, and agency are highlighted. In this review, we will try to address some of them.
The book begins with a reflection on the two theoretical paradigms that have shaped the discourse on human evolution, those of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For both of them, Enlightenment thought was the game changer that ratified the victory of rationality over the mystical and traditional. This idealization of rationality imposed a paternalistic and infantilizing discourse on non-Western and non-enlightened societies. Through this lens, the nineteenth-century Western academy helped spread the image of pre-industrial societies stuck in a continuous present. It is therefore difficult to assume that the societies of the past possessed their own history, as they were relegated to mere background actors on an exotic stage set, where the identities of individuals were blurred.
The conceptualization of the individual has long been discussed in the context of the archaeological discipline that is increasingly sensitive, realistic, and aware of the biases that have prevailed throughout much of its theoretical trajectory. The aphorisms of the patriarchy have affected the representation of past societies (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., Reference Hedenstierna-Jonson, Kjellström, Zachrisson, Krzewińska, Sobrado and Price2017) and the consequent occlusion of the domestic sphere and maintenance activities, which were assumed to be feminine. Moreover, it has been a conditioning factor in structuring the chronological scheme used generically in the West, which caters to an idyllic idea of progress driven by changes in economic technologies considered to be of male concern, mainly metallurgy.
In this respect, the authors put forward a plea against any deterministic understanding. They exemplarily demolish the idea of a socio-cultural evolution inherent to any human society (which places Western societies in a convenient first place) and leave the door open to an infinite number of ways of being. They argue that throughout history, there have been all kinds of societies, and none of them is the first, the original, or the natural.
Instead, the book tells us of people with an innate and instinctive capacity for political thinking. That is, the ability to consider, accept, or reject the social worlds around them. Although this idea may seem simple and logical, their approach, in addition to breaking with the evolutionary structure and the idea of linear progress, advocates the search for a subject, for an agent who makes decisions but, above all, who has self-determination and self-awareness. Similarly, the complexity of human societies is not related to ideas of domination and hierarchy. Nor is there a single form of coordination or governance of societies. Rather, these power dynamics are fluid.
As the authors exemplify throughout the book, this fluctuation and non-linearity have been the norm in history. The great sudden revolutions presented by historiography, as well as their consequences for human societies, and the spectre of the race towards economic and social progress (Fisher, Reference Fisher2009) are not the standard route.
On the other hand, the traditional interpretation of history has been based not only on the idea of progress, but also on the notion that hierarchies are necessary for the development of socio-cultural complexity. Likewise, these hierarchies are thought to have arisen as a consequence of technological complexity and the accumulation of economic surpluses, resulting from a supposed need for order and regulation. The manifestation, however, of these hierarchies in temples or palaces in urban settings was not universal; there were also cities with fluid organizational models. Cities, far from being the crystallized manifestation of the influence of centralized power, were dynamic spheres of social experimentation, sometimes peaceful, sometimes violent.
Underlying all this is the idea of domination, traditionally seen as imposed from a top-down approach. However, the authors argue that it starts in the domestic sphere and extends to other spheres of social life in a bottom-up sense. Similarly, such domination is neither absolute nor hegemonic, as it is contested by resilient attitudes, and is in constant negotiation.
The aforementioned power dynamics are based on kinship relations. Throughout the book, this term is used as a metaphor for social groupings that are not necessarily biological, and it relates to the capacity of human beings to feel connected to other people, even those they do not know. On the other hand, according to Western research tradition, kinship and consanguinity are inseparable, following modern heteropatriarchal considerations based on the ideology of the nuclear family.
Traditionally, the minimum kinship units—families—have been related to the household, treating it as a highly independent element from other social units. As the authors argue, this single unit—the household—cannot organize its work solely based on its own needs but requires other units in order to function, necessitating combined efforts and community relations. The basic social organization of the nuclear family, coupled with the idea of individualism within this family unit, is a modern conception of social organization. This, of course, has not been the only historical model, nor has it been based on the same type of family relationships.
The idea of the great man as the driver of progress in societies is a modern concept of the male inventor-discoverer, as well as a construct of the patriarchy that denies the historical agency of other subjects who do not correspond to Western men. The conception of history as linear and teleological diminishes other possible scenarios, with a greater heterogeneity of actors who do not fit this hegemonic and actualist profile. This situation, in addition to generating a vision in which the people of the past cannot be considered as our equals because our patriarchal society is the final rung of progress, infantilizes and denigrates other entities, collectives, and societies, denying and making invisible their role as historical subjects (Querol, Reference Querol and Sánchez Romero2005).
Throughout the book, in addition to introducing a decolonial critique of the historical narrative, the authors highlight the importance of the female role, maintenance activities, and the generation and transmission of knowledge in the domestic sphere, offering new interpretations through a gendered lens that breaks with the idea of the great man. They place the focus on the domestic environment and relational identity as social and cultural drivers (Hernando, Reference Hernando2018, Reference Hernando2022: 100–104). In addition to criticizing the dichotomy between productive—masculinized—and reproductive—feminized—work, the latter is recognized and valued as essential in socialization, construction, and socio-cultural development (Hernando, Reference Hernando, Montón Subías and Sánchez Romero2008; Sørensen, Reference Sørensen2000).
The Dawn of Everything compiles not only archaeological data and anthropological case studies, but also an archaeological vision that has been shaped in recent decades by various theoretical perspectives, processing it into a single coherent, substantial, and meaningful discourse. Within its pages, it strives to break down the prejudices that have constrained the interpretation of societies, both past and present, and places the historical subject and social multiplicity on a horizontal and possibilist plane. Thus, the only certainty they allow is that, throughout history, humans have unleashed a creativity that today seems to belong more to a fantasy novel than to the history of our lineage.
In short, the authors offer us the definition of a new perspective. Although many of the arguments they use and the case studies they present have been reiterated in recent times, the experience of integrating all of this into a single discourse is highly innovative and illustrative. This big picture is what Archaeology needed to provide an up-to-date and critical perspective on the interpretation of human history.
