27th Annual Visiting Scholar Conference
Center for Archaeological Investigations
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Making Senses of the Past:
Toward a Sensory Archaeology
March 26-27, 2010
Sponsored by
Center for Archaeological Investigations
in cooperation with the Division of Continuing Education
Conference Description
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.
Click here for Call for Papers information.
Click here for a Conference Poster (PDF of US printer-compatible version or PDF of European printer-compatible version).
Registration information: to come
Click here for Program
Abstracts: to come
Click here for General Information (including maps, transit and hotel info).
