The Archaeology of Emotion and Affect

Abstract

The literature on the archaeology of emotion and affect is mostly quite recent and is not extensive. This review considers the main lines of approach taken so far and explores how different understandings of what constitutes an emotion underlie the work of archaeologists in this area. A distinction is made between past emotion as a subject of study and examination of the emotional subjectivity of the archaeologist as a method. The potential contribution of archaeology to emotion studies in the future includes bringing a sense of contextual historicity to the discussion and developing our knowledge of how material things and places are involved in shaping and expressing emotion. Inspired by some historians of emotion, a focus on shared emotional meanings, values, and codes seems a more productive direction than the exploration of idiosyncratic personal emotional experience. 169 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:169-185. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by Stanford University -Main Campus -Lane Medical Library on 09/28/12. For personal use only.

The object of my affection: attachment security and material culture

“…We acknowledge that our lives are inextricably entangled with things (Hodder 2012;Malafouris 2015); however, our understanding of the emotional nature of this entanglement is still in its infancy. Emotions can be seen as woolly, indefinable and difficult to interpret (Harris 2006;Harris and Sørensen 2010) so research tends to focus on the social, technological and political meanings of material culture (Foxhall 2012;Tarlow 2012). Moreover to date most archaeological research which explicitly deals with emotions has tended to focus on attempts to identify the presence of individual emotions, in particular those which are aversive, such as grief (see, for example, Fleisher and Norman 2015;Grguric 2008;McCartney 2006).…”

“…Archaeology struggles to engage proactively with the concept of emotion, though without it our understanding of past societies is arguably much lessened (Creese 2016;Harris 2006;Harris and Sørensen 2010;Tarlow 2012). Without an understanding of affiliative emotions concepts such as 'gift-giving' can all too easily become an apparent exercise in the exchange of obligations (Mauss 1967).…”

Living on Edge: New Perspectives on Anxiety, Refuge and Colonialism in Southern Africa

“…It is worth noting that 'anxiety' features heavily in a different series of discussions related to archaeologies of emotion, elaborated upon in a recent edited volume by Jeffrey Fleisher and Neil Norman (2015) and presaged by Sarah Tarlow (2012). Fleisher and Norman's collection addresses both why and how archaeologists should 'take emotions seriously', especially worry and anxiety in the past.…”

‘A Matter of Individual Opinion and Feeling’: The changing culture of mourning dress in the First World War

“…In the words of archaeologist Sarah Tarlow, 'If we find an ancient shoe […] the least interesting thing it tells us is that people in the past had feet.' 7 When studying fashion and dress there often exists a bias towards the upper classes; those who could afford to shop. Of the available source material for a dress history study, the garments that survive in museum collections are rarely those well-worn and repaired items that belonged to the lower classes, and the styles featured in magazines were aimed at those who could spend for pleasure rather than out of necessity.…”