27th Annual Visiting Scholar Conference

Human interaction with the surrounding world is mediated through our senses. Yet archaeological interpretation has traditionally been dominated by visual descriptions, thus effectively marginalizing the senses of smell, taste, hearing, and touch as unmeasurable ways of engaging with the world. This has led to a silent, odorless, disembodied, and sense-less past. Recent work, however, has explored alternative ways to make sense of past societies, investigating soundscapes, olfactory and haptic analyses, and somatic memory, as well as other less tangible visual qualities such as shimmer and color.

This conference will bring together researchers who share an interest in such sensory modes of approaching the past and will cross boundaries between chronological periods, geographical regions, and material specializations. Potential themes to be covered at the conference include the presentation of new results of sensory archaeological projects; multisensory and synesthetic aspects of the production and consumption of material culture; the recognition of sensory hierarchies in past societies; embodied practices, including memory; and the dissemination of sensuous pasts in the present.

Click here to read more about sensory archaeology.

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