Chris Gosden gave a paper in November in which he suggested that we can categorize human ontologies (experiences / beliefs about the nature of reality / being) as a continuum between the poles of formalism (in which all of reality is classified into separate, separated boxes - ie, scientific naturalism, or structuralist binaries) and fluidity (ontologies in which transformation between categories is possible, or even the default condition of reality).

Gosden is, of course, writing this from inside the position you're trying to interrogate. But, as a framework for studying human societies through history, his argument is useful, and suggests that most human groups have, to a greater or lesser degree, emphasized qualities of emergence, continuum, and the blurring of boundaries between categories world(s) in which we've lived. Even societies with relatively formal notions of the nature of the universe played with the space between categories - Zeno's paradox, discussed by Aristotle, asks how it is possible for an arrow to occupy only one place in space at any given moment in time (space as fixed points), and yet to move between spaces (space as continuum of motion). Is space a point or a wave? It's basically modern physic's wavicle dilemna expressed through classical Greek referents.

You see art emphasizing continuum and spectrum throughout the premodern world. Gosden is currently researching 'celtic' / iron age european art, and gave a number of examples of three dimensional objects whose appearance changes depending on the angle from which it is viewed. These objects blended animal and human components together, and they combined in different ways depending on how the object was turned. This kind of art, which you see from Britain to the Eurasian steppes, forces the observer to consider the softness of the boundaries between categories, and expresses an experience of the world as existing as a spectrum of interconnecting planes of being. It's art for a cosmology built on emergence and transformation.

So, while we could trace the recent intellectual development of current theories of 'emergence', 'flows', etc in anthropology (this article is a good starting place for the current ontological turn in anthropology / archaeology), it's something that has always been a part of human experience, varying only in degree rather than presence/absence.