1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology
Edited by two pioneers in the field of sensory archaeology, this Handbook comprises a key point of reference for the ever-expanding field of sensory archaeology: one that surpasses previous books in this field, both in scope and critical intent.
This Handbook provides an extensive set of specially commissioned chapters, each of which summarizes and critically reflects on progress made in this dynamic field during the early years of the twenty-first century. The authors identify and discuss the key current concepts and debates of sensory archaeology, providing overviews and commentaries on its methods and its place in interdisciplinary sensual culture studies. Through a set of thematic studies, they explore diverse sensorial practices, contexts and materials, and offer a selection of archaeological case-studies from different parts of the world. In the light of this, the research methods now being brought into the service of sensory archaeology are re-examined.
Of interest to scholars, students and others with an interest in archaeology around the world, this book will be invaluable to archaeologists and is also of relevance to scholars working in disciplines contributing to sensory studies: aesthetics, anthropology, architecture, art history, communication studies, history (including history of science), geography, literary and cultural studies, material culture studies, museology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.
List of figures
List of tables
List of plates
Preface
1 Sensory archaeology: key concepts and debates
Robin Skeates and Jo Day
PART I: APPROACHES TO SENSORY ARCHAEOLOGY
2 Digging up the sensorium: on the sensory revolution in archaeology
David Howes
3 Early theories of sense perception: Greek origins
Han Baltussen
4 Doing sensory archaeology: the challenges
Ruth Tringham and Annie Danis
5 How does it feel? Phenomenology, excavation and sensory experience: notes for a new ethnographic field practice
Christopher Tilley
6 The senses in museums: knowledge production, democratization and indigenization
Cara Krmpotich
PART II: SENSORIAL PRACTICES, contexts and materials
7 Emotion and the senses in archaeology
Ruth Nugent
8 Movement, materials and intersubjectivity: insights from western Ireland
Ryan Lash
9 Sensing death and experiencing mortuary ritual
Liv Nilsson Stutz
10 Environment and the senses
Andrew Hoaen
11 Waterfalls and moving waters: the unnatural natural and flows of cosmic forces
Terje Oestigaard
12 Darkness and light in the archaeological past: sensory perspectives
Marion Dowd
13 The sensory archaeology of textiles
Susanna Harris
14 Sensory perception and experience of glass
Chloë N. Duckworth
15 Ceremonial architecture and public events
Takeshi Inomata
16 Cities and urbanism
Jeff Veitch
17 Warfare and the senses: archaeologies of the senses and sensorial archaeologies of recent conflict
Matthew Leonard and Esther Breithoff
18 The sensory experiences of food consumption
Erica Rowan
PART III: Archaeological Case-studies by period and region
19 Stealing through the back door: sensory archaeology in the European Mesolithic
Ben Elliott
20 Sensory archaeology in Scandinavia and Finland
Astrid J. Nyland
21 Sensory Mediterranean prehistory
Robin Skeates
22 Sensory approaches to the Aegean Bronze Age
Jo Day
23 The sensory world of Mesopotamia
Augusta McMahon
24 The sensory worlds of ancient Egypt
Richard Parkinson
25 Classical archaeology and the senses: a paradigmatic shift?
Heather Hunter-Crawley
26 Experimental archaeology and (re)-experiencing the senses of the medieval
world
Brendan O’Neill and Aidan O’Sullivan
27 Haptic vision: making surface sense of Islamic material culture
Simon O’Meara
28 Sensorial experiences in Mesoamerica: existing scholarship and possibilities
Sarah Newman
29 Sensory archaeology in the Pueblo Southwest
Ruth M. Van Dyke
30 Sensory approaches to the woodland and Mississippian cultures of the Eastern Woodlands of North America
Corin C.O. Pursell
31 Sensory archaeology in the Pacific
Tim Thomas
32 Afterword: sensory archaeology¿a work in progress
Robin Skeates and Jo Day
Index
Biography
Robin Skeates is a Professor at Durham University, UK. His research and publications explore a wide variety of themes within the overlapping fields of material, visual and sensual culture studies and museum and heritage studies. He is author of An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta, which combines his specialist interests in sensory archaeology and Central Mediterranean prehistory.
Jo Day is Assistant Professor in Greek Archaeology and Curator of the Classical Museum at University College Dublin, Republic of Ireland. She edited Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology and continues to research archaeology and the senses, especially relating to the Aegean Bronze Age. She also works on early ceramic technology and ancient foodways.
