On Wolves and Predation: Toward a Multispecies Archaeology of Settler Colonialism

Abstract

This article traces the life and death of two wolves that perished at the hands of 18th-century settlers in the small agropastoral community of San Antonio del Embudo in what is today northern New Mexico. Through a study of their interred remains, we examine how wolves became entangled in the unfolding negotiations between settler and Indigenous communities in the American West, playing varied ecological, political, and symbolic roles. In the process, we advance two wider arguments: first, that the archaeology of settler colonialism would do well to adopt a multispecies perspective in which nonhuman animals are counted among both the colonizers and the colonized, and second, that doing so requires a new mode of historical narration focused on the experiences of individual nonhumans as opposed to the anonymous, animalistic mass.