Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Connecting Archaeological Practice with the Senses and Past Bodily Experience: Introduction to “Sensory Engagement in Historical Archaeology”

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Historical Archaeology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Allen, John S. 2012 Why Humans are Crazy for Crispy, 27 May. Chronicle of Higher Education <https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-humans-are-crazy-for-crispy/>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Andrews, William J. H. 2006 A Chronicle of Timekeeping: Our Conception of Time Depends on the Way We Measure It, 1 February. Scientific American <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-chronicle-of-timekeeping-2006-02/>. Accessed 27 July 2021.

  • Aristotle 1987 De Anima (On the Soul), Hugh Lawson-Tancred, translator. Penguin Classics, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bain, Allison 1998 A Seventeenth-Century Beetle Fauna from Colonial Boston. Historical Archaeology 32(3):38–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bender, Barbara (editor) 1993 Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Berg, London, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryan, Joe 2011 Walking the Line: Participatory Mapping, Indigenous Rights, and Neoliberalism. Geoforum 42(1):40–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chapin, Mac, Zachary Lamb, and Bill Threlkeld 2005 Mapping Indigenous Lands. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:619–638.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Classen, Constance 1992 The Odor of the Other: Olfactory Symbolism and Cultural Categories. Ethos 20(2):133–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Classen, Constance, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott 1994 Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. Routledge, London, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Codesal, Diana Mata 2008. Rice and Coriander: Sensorial Re-Creations of Home through Food: Ecuadorians in a Northern Spanish City. University of Sussex, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, Working Paper No. 50. Brighton, UK. ResearchGate <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242521694_Rice_Coriander_Sensorial_re-creations_of_home_through_food_Ecuadorians_in_a_northern_Spanish_city>. Accessed 9 January 2015.

  • Cook, Lauren J. 1998 “Katherine Nanny, Alias Naylor”: A Life in Puritan Boston. Historical Archaeology 32(1):15–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crang, Mike 2003 Qualitative Methods: Touchy, Feely, Look-See? Progress in Human Geography 27(4):494–504.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Day, Jo (editor) 2013 Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drobnick, Jim (editor) 2006 The Smell Culture Reader. Berg, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dumper, Kathryn, William Jenkins, Arlene Lacombe, MarilynLovett, and Marion Perimutter 2019 5.6 The Gestalt Principles of Perception. Introductory Psychology, PressBooks <https://opentext.wsu.edu/psych105/chapter/5-7-the-gestalt-principles-of-perception/> Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Durie, Bruce 2005 Senses Special: Doors of Perception, 26 January. New Scientist <https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524841-600-senses-special-doors-of-perception/>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Gillings, Mark 2015 Mapping Invisibility: GIS Approaches to the Analysis of Hiding and Seclusion. Journal of Archaeological Science 62:1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • González-Tennant, Edward 2009 Using Geodatabases to Generate “Living Documents” for Archaeology: A Case Study from the Otago Goldfields, New Zealand. Historical Archaeology 43(3):20–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • González-Tennant, Edward 2016 Recent Directions and Future Developments in Geographic Information Systems for Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 50(3):24–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Edward T. 1968 Proxemics. Current Anthropology 9(2&3):83–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilakis, Yannis 2013 Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heaton, Patrick J. 2003 Farmsteads and Finances in the Finger Lakes: Using Archival Resources in a GIS Database. Northeast Historical Archaeology 32:29–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herz, Rachel S. 2014 Verbal Priming and Taste Sensitivity Make Moral Transgressions Gross. Behavioral Neuroscience 128(1):20–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffer, Peter Charles 2003 Sensory Worlds in Early America. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holtzman, Jon D. 2006 Food and Memory. Annual Review of Anthropology 35:361–378.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howes, David 2019 Multisensory Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 48:17–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howes, David, and Constance Classen 2014 Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. Routledge, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hultén, Bertil 2015 Sensory Marketing: Theoretical and Empirical Grounds. Routledge, New York, NY.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Matthew H. 2012 Phenomonological Approaches to Landscape Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 41:269–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kobialka, Dawid 2018 Living Monuments of the Second World War: Terrestrial Laser Scanning and Trees with Carvings. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 23(3):129–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kooser, Amanda 2014 Bacon Alarm Clock Wafts Meat Odors from Your iPhone, 10 March. CNET <https://www.cnet.com/news/oscar-mayer-bacon-alarm-clock-wafts-meat-odors-from-your-iphone/>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Kwan, Mei-Po 2002 Feminist Visualization: Re-Envisioning GIS as a Method in Feminist Geographic Research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92(4):645–661.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kwan, Mei-Po 2008 From Oral Histories to Visual Narratives: Re-Presenting the Post–September 11 Experiences of the Muslim Women in the USA. Social and Cultural Geography 9(6):653–669.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landeschi, Giacomo 2018 Rethinking GIS, Three-Dimensionality and Space Perception in Archaeology. World Archaeology 51(1):17–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Law, Lisa 2001 Home Cooking: Filipino Women and Geographies of the Senses in Hong Kong. Cultural Geographies 8(3):264–283.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawless, Harry T., and Hildegarde Heymann 2010 Sensory Evaluation of Food: Principles and Practices. Springer, New York, NY.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lazzari, Marisa 2008 Topographies of Values: Ethical Issues in Landscape Archaeology. In Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, Bruno David and Julian Thomas, editors, pp. 644–653. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehrer, Jonah 2007 Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Houghton-Mifflin, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lock, Gary, and John Pouncett 2017 Spatial Thinking in Archaeology: Is GIS the Answer? Journal of Archaeological Science 84:129–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Longhurst, Robyn, Elsie Ho, and Lynda Johnston 2008 Using ‘the Body’ as an ‘Instrument of Research’: Kimch’i and Pavlova. Area 40(2):208–217.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacPhee, Marybeth 1992 Deodorized Culture: Anthropology of Smell in America. Arizona Anthropologist 8:89–102.

    Google Scholar 

  • Majid, Asifa, and Nicole Kruspe 2018 Hunter-Gatherer Olfaction Is Special. Current Biology 28(3):1–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manalansan, Martin F. 2006 Immigrant Lives and the Politics of Olfaction in the Global City. In The Smell Culture Reader, Jim Drobnick, editor, pp. 41–52. Berg, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann, Anna, Annemarie Mol, Priya Satalkar, Amalinda Savirani, Nasima Selim, Malini Sur, and Emily Yates-Doerr 2011 Mixing Methods, Tasting Fingers: Notes on an Ethnographic Experiment. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1(1):221–243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marte, Lidia 2007 Foodmaps: Tracing Boundaries of “Home” through Food Relations. Food and Foodways 15(3&4):261–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Metheny, Karen Bescherer 2013 Modeling Communities through Food: Connecting the Daily Meal to the Construction of Place and Identity. Northeast Historical Archaeology 42:137–183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Metheny, Karen Bescherer 2019 Preface to the New Edition. In Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape, Rebecca Yamin and Karen Bescherer Metheny, editors, pp. xiii–xxiv. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

  • Paliou, Eleftheria 2014 Visibility Analysis in 3D Built Spaces: A New Dimension to the Understanding of Social Space. In Spatial Analysis and Social Spaces: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Interpretation of Prehistoric and Historic Built Environments, Eleftheria Paliou, Undine Lieberwirth, and Silvia Polla, editors, pp. 91–113. Walter De Gruyter, Berlin, Germany.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Paliou, Eleftheria, Undine Lieberwirth, and Silvia Polla (editors) 2014 Spatial Analysis and Social Spaces: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Interpretation of Prehistoric and Historic Built Environments. Walter De Gruyter, Berlin, Germany.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pink, Sarah 2009 Doing Sensory Ethnography. Sage, Los Angeles, CA.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Qin, Amy 2018 In Italy, ‘Al Dente’ Is Prized. In Taiwan, It’s All about Food that’s ‘Q,’ 4 October. The New York Times <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/world/asia/taiwan-food-q-texture.html>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Reilly, Eileen 2003 The Contribution of Insect Remains to an Understanding of the Environment of Viking-Age and Medieval Dublin. In Medieval Dublin IV: Proceedings of the Friends of Medieval Dublin Symposium 2002, Sean Duffy, editor, pp. 40–62. Research Repository UCD <https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/handle/10197/5549>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Richards-Rissetto, Heather 2017 What Can GIS + 3D Mean for Landscape Archaeology? Journal of Archaeological Science 84:10–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodaway, Paul 1994 Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. Routledge, London, UK.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rodman, Margaret 1992 Empowering Place: Multilocality and Multivocality. American Anthropologist 94(3):640–656.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ScienceDaily 2010 Enzyme in Saliva Shapes How We Sense Food Texture; Perception and Digestion of Starchy Foods Varies from Person to Person, 14 October. ScienceDaily <https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101013173839.htm>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • ScienceDaily 2016 Music Makes Beer Taste Better: The Music Played in a Bar Can Impact How Much You Enjoy Your Drink, 28 July. ScienceDaily <https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160728125306.htm>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Shepherd, Gordon M. 2012 Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters. Columbia University Press, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sletto, Bjørn Ingmunn 2009 “We Drew What We Imagined”: Participatory Mapping, Performance, and the Arts of Landscape Making. Current Anthropology 50(4):443–476.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Mark M. 2007 Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History. University of California Press, Berkeley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spence, Charles 2017 Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating. Viking, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spence, Charles, and Betina Piqueras-Fiszman 2014 The Perfect Meal: The Multisensory Science of Food and Dining. Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Spence, Charles, Charles Michel, and Barry Smith 2014 Airplane Noise and the Taste of Umami. Flavour 3(2). Flavour <https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2044-7248-3-2>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • Stoller, Paul 1989 The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tilley, Christopher 1994 Phenomenology of the Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments. Berg, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tolia-Kelly, Divya P. 2010 The Geographies of Cultural Geography I: Identities, Bodies and Race. Progress in Human Geography 34(3):358–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tuan, Yi-Fu 1977 Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Christopher 2017 Cinematic Airs: The Battle of the “Smellies.” Cabinet Magazine 64. Cabinet <https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/64/turner.php>. Accessed 16 February 2022.

  • University of California-Berkeley 2006 Sniffers Show that Humans Can Track Scents, and that Two Nostrils Are Better than One, 20 December. ScienceDaily <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061219095409.htm>. Accessed 12 November 2018.

  • Vannini, Phillip, Dennis Waskul, and Simon Gottschalk 2012 The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture: A Sociology of the Senses. Routledge, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Voosen, Paul 2016 The Oaxaca Incident: A Geographer’s Efforts to Map a Mexican Village Reveal the Risk of Military Entanglement, 27 April. Chronicle of Higher Education <https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Oaxaca-Incident/236257>. Accessed 27 April 2016.

  • Walker, John H. 2012 Recent Landscape Archaeology in South America. Journal of Archaeological Research 20:309–355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallisch, Pascal 2017 Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw “The Dress” Differently, 12 April. Slate <https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/heres-why-people-saw-the-dress-differently.html>. Accessed 19 March 2018.

  • Wernke, Steven A., Lauren E. Kohut, and Abel Traslaviña 2017 A GIS of Affordances: Movement and Visibility at a Planned Colonial Town in Highland Peru. Journal of Archaeological Science 84:22–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wood, Denis 1992 The Power of Maps. Guilford Press, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wurgaft, Benjamin Aldes 2006 Incensed: Food Smells and Ethnic Tension. Gastronomica 6(2):57–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gastronomy Program, Metropolitan College, Boston University, 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A.

    Karen Bescherer Metheny

Authors
  1. Karen Bescherer Metheny
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karen Bescherer Metheny.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The author states there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Metheny, K.B. Connecting Archaeological Practice with the Senses and Past Bodily Experience: Introduction to “Sensory Engagement in Historical Archaeology”. Hist Arch 56, 172–183 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-022-00341-8

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-022-00341-8

Search

Navigation