“ … Not the action of mind upon matter, but the action of mind-matter upon matter-mind … ”: a world of many minds in archaeology and ethnography

Welcome to Time and Mind 14.4, the final issue for 2021 and the end of another strange year for many of us. The theme that has emerged from the papers collected here is a long-running one for our journal, and centres around the role of different modes of perception and other forms of consciousness – human and non-human – in the creation of archaeological and ethnographic sites and artefacts. This issue draws on recent philosophical and empirical developments to explore the implications of an expanded awareness of the role of different forms and modalities of consciousness for archaeological and anthropological theorising about people, art, places and objects. Contributions to this issue include discussions of the role of magical perception in palaeolithic cave art, an effort to rediscover the pre-colonial soundscapes of Swahili coastal towns and an exploration of the possible subjective lives of early medieval swords.