Content:
The ‘archaeology of the body’ explores human remains not only as carriers of information on nutrition, mobility, or biological kinship, but also as a source for research into the role of the body in shaping social relations in ancient societies. Corporeal aesthetics and ideals can be understood as analytical concepts, as they played a decisive role in the shaping, perpetuating, and changing of social identities, and gender norms in particular. Following on from the session “Beautiful bodies: Gender, bodily care and material culture in the past” at the 2017 EAA Annual Meeting, organised by Uroš Matić and Sanja Vučetić, this session focusses on new theoretical and methodological approaches and case studies from non-literate societies (e.g., prehistoric and ethnographic). The aim is to develop a better understanding of how material culture works in creating, maintaining, or transforming bodily aesthetics and ideals. We invite contributions that critically engage with the possibilities of interpreting such culturally relative ideas, drawing on case studies from a wide range of archaeological, ethnographic, or iconographic source material. Papers may consider ‘body-related’ objects, iconography, and ‘body-related’ practices. Objects of personal hygiene (e.g., toiletry sets) or those linked to (self-) representation (e.g., jewellery, clothing, and hairstyles), prosthetics or other objects enabling or facilitating participation in social interactions may be scrutinized as well as statuettes and stelae, depictions on pottery, stone, or other media. ‘Body-related’ practices may include permanent or impermanent modifications, but also the treatment of dead bodies. We are interested in relations between aesthetics and sex, gender, power, hegemony, subversion, as well as intra- and inter-group social relations. The focus should be on contexts, actors, and perceptions, with particular emphasis on how transformations in the presentation or ‘staging’ of the body affect social positions and relations as well as individual or group identities.
Keywords:
body, gender, identity, relations, aesthetics, norms