Weirding Civilization : The Strange Foundations of the Modern World

Weirding Civilization examines the irrational foundations of civilization, from the Bronze Age to the Anthropocene. Inspired by Twin Peaks and Lovecraftian horror, it reveals how weirdness – disorienting, monstrous, and ambivalent – has shaped human society since the rise of the first complex civilizations.

Taking ‘weirding’ as its conceptual lens, the book examines hallmarks of civilization such as urbanism, money, and writing, uncovering their layered and often non-rational nature. While the concept of weirding has gained traction across disciplines, from literature studies to climate science, this book applies it systematically to early civilizations for the first time. Weirdness emerges as ruptures in experienced reality, arising from the complex interplay between humans and non-humans. The book explores how civilization has unfolded in relation to hidden, invisible, and unknown dimensions of reality. Accessible and thought-provoking, it broadens conceptual horizons, offering fresh insights into the past and present while inviting readers to embrace that which resists categorization. With a primary focus on Europe and the Near East, it also addresses global questions of modernity, technology, and cultural imagination.

This book is essential for archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians studying complex societies as well as for readers fascinated by unconventional approaches to history and civilization. It appeals to anyone seeking to disrupt conventional understandings of humanity’s development.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Vesa-Pekka Herva is a professor of archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland. He has studied the Aegean Bronze Age and European northern worlds from the Neolithic to the present. His research interests encompass cosmologies, human-environment relations, cultural heritage, and classical Graeco-Roman traditions.

Antti Lahelma is a university lecturer of archaeology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research focuses on prehistoric rock art, identity, and worldview, particularly in the northern circumpolar region, and he has also worked extensively on the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. He has previously authored together with Vesa-Pekka Herva a book titled Northern Archaeology and Cosmology: A Relational View (Routledge, 2020).