Theme:
5. Theories and methods in archaeology: interactions between disciplines
Session format:
Discussion session (with formal abstracts)
Title:
CANCELLED Networking: Bringing Scientific Approaches to Sensory Archaeology
Content:
The senses are adaptive, communicative and interpretive. They interconnect the physical, social, emotional and the semantic, informing cognitive development. To engage with the senses from the tangible to the most incorporeal, is it possible to bring scientific approaches to sensory information about ancient societies, people, practices and cultures? And can we merge these individual studies to explore how the sense interact to evolve human societies from the very early hominin periods through to the modern day?
Sensory archaeology can link us to behaviours of ancient peoples. Our understanding has often been placed within conceptual and theoretical narratives, sometimes with anthropological approaches that are based on living societies and presenting a comparative analysis. However, through scientific approaches to explore the senses, we can bring robust empirical evidence that can be used to decrease the spatio-temporal distance between the archaeologist today and the people of yesterday.
Different scientific analysis into taste, vision, smell, sound and touch, can bring us insights into how the individual senses have evolved and how they are essential to evolutionary patterns in societies. But how do they work collectively? In this session, we hope to explore how sensory networking and interactivity can provide essential information for today’s archaeologist to inform our interpretations and narratives around ancient cognitive activity; its existential and practical manifestations, and how human behaviours and adaptations are demonstrated in past cultures.
Keywords:
sensory archaeology, scientific approaches, bioarchaeology, sensory and cognitive networking, science and archaeology, sensory interaction
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Rose Malik (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Alice Choyke (United States) 2
Affiliations:
1. Durham University
2. Central European University (Budapest and Vienna)
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