In this article we intend to present an investigation on the contribution that the ontological turn in contemporary anthropology can provide to intellectual history. It is thought as a response to the linguistic turn, especially by the ontological primacy given to existing ones, including nonhumans, which reinforces its antinarrativist and anti-textual materialist character. The work was divided into three parts: in the first, we present some features of intellectual history within and beyond the linguistic turn; in the second part, we present some ideas of the ontological turn in anthropology, embodied in symmetrical anthropology, Amerindian perspectivism and anthropology of nature; Finally, we use an empirical example of intellectual history in Brazil that can allow a reading of the work as the presence of two ontologies: the naturalism and the animism. It is the work Rebellion in the Backlands, by Euclides da Cunha.