Archaeology of the Senses

The Colorado Plateau of the southwest United States is known for dramatic topography and
vibrant indigenous communities. Here, phenomenologists and GIS researchers are investigating
ancient Pueblo senses of place, visibility, and the acoustic properties of monumental spaces.
Southwest archaeologists have amassed large bodies of data on ceremonialism, foodways, and
musical instruments. Although sensory applications seldom have been explicit in this work, the
data have much potential. Because sensory studies are relatively new in archaeology, we need
to develop legislation to help land management agencies avoid potentially damaging effects to
viewsheds and soundscapes from destructive activities such as oil and gas exploration.

The olfactory world of a city reveals many aspects of a culture: urban planning, social hierarchy, professional and culinary activities, customs and values, sexual behavior, hygiene, treatment of the sick, religious beliefs, differences between mundane and holy days, plant cultivation, and animal husbandry. One way to discover the smellscapes of an ancient Egyptian city is by examining the written sources that elaborate on the smells of various urban areas. Since odors are left mostly undetected in the archaeological record, the texts the ancient Egyptians recorded themselves about the smell of their urban environment are all the more important. Within the human-made, ancient Egyptian urban environment, each area and establishment had its own special smell defined by the time of year and the activities that took place within them. The written sources elaborate on the sweet scent of the streets imbued with incense and myrrh during festivals, the perfume of the queen that fills the halls of the palace, the smell of ritual offerings getting mixed in the cult chamber of the temple, and the aroma of incense burnt in simple houses. Nevertheless, the texts don’t fail to describe the stench of industrial areas, drunkards whirling around in pleasure in the streets and the unpleasant smell of the sick.

Time and Date: September 27, 2019, starting at 8:30pm
Price: 7,50€ | Students / Artists / Stadspas: 5,25€
Location: Mediamatic, Dijksgracht 6, Amsterdam
Tickets available on https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/374649/scentscapes

Throughout this workshop, you will learn about the smells that defined the mummification chambers and tombs, and the scents that the ancient Egyptians themselves wished to be surrounded by in their life after death. In the first hour, Dora will teach you about the olfactory motivation for mummification and the substances employed during the process. In the second hour, she will give you a detailed insight into the materials. You will be able to smell each ingredient and you will learn about their significance for the Egyptians and the reasons behind their use. In the third and last hour, you will recreate the essence of mummification in a bottle by using the very same ingredients the ancient Egyptians employed for embalming their dead. Don’t worry, you will end up with an exceedingly pleasant smell.

Time and Date: September 28, 2019, 11am-2pm
Price: 90€ | Students / Artists / Stadspas: 63€
Location: Mediamatic, Dijksgracht 6, Amsterdam
Tickets available on https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/374727/recreate-the-essence-of-mummification

The smell kit includes six of my smell reconstructions, which are all based on my PhD research on the sense of smell in ancient Egypt. It also includes a detailed description of the significance of each scent for the ancient Egyptian culture.
(1)  Mendesian
(2)  Smell of mummification
(3)  Kyphi
(4)  Ancient Egyptian garden smell
(5)  Flowers at the pond
(6)  Smell of ancient Egyptian festivals

The hieroglyphic script teaches us that fish was the prototype of stench in ancient Egypt, as every word related to unpleasant smell was classified with a fish classifier. Multiple written sources inform us explicitly that fish, birds and their natural environment in Egypt, the swamps of the Delta, stank. The Nile Delta is found in the north of Egypt and it is where the Egyptians went fishing and fowling. Fish and birds in their evil-smelling environment symbolized several concepts at the same time: stench, chaos, evil, the enemy and being far away from home. It was the king’s duty to annihilate bad smells by going fishing and fowling in the dangerous, foul-smelling swamps and to secure a sweet-smelling urban environment, where the scent of perfumes and flowers filled the air. In the royal battle against evil, fish and fowl symbolized the stench, danger and the enemy that the king had to defeat. Unpleasant smells were closely related to the archenemy of the king, the god Seth. Seth, the god of all evil, incorporated all these aspects in his figure: fish and fowl, the enemy, and foul smells. Nevertheless, his evil and unpleasant nature was a necessary part of existence. There was no good without evil. There was no perfume without stench.

Plant remains might play an important role to fully understand ritual processes in ancient societies. Despite of their recovery was neglected in old excavations, some of the plant remains and iconographic information collected can shed light on the role played by plants in Iron Age ritual activities. The characteristics of the plants, their color, taste, smell, blooming season and other special features, might have played a decisive role in forming notions about the plants and their role in rituals. Their use in these ceremonies could have made stronger the connection among performers, as well as the connection between the performers and their deads, ancestors and divinities, and their landscape.

Here we report on the study of ritual contexts located on the Mediterranean coast of Spain dating from the 6th to the 1st centuries BC. Many botanical remains and iconographic evidence have been documented in necropolis and other urban and rural sacred spaces, where mainly fruits, but also cereals and wild plants have been recorded. The work presented here is part of the interdisciplinary project From the real to the imagery: Approaching the Iberian Iron Age Flora (HUM2004-04939), which has a large record of plant evidence in Iberian Iron Age sites. Combining a multi-proxy paleobotanical approach, based on anthracology, palynology and carpology, as well as iconography, we aim at reconstructing the use of plants and their symbolism in the Iberian societies to further understand their natural and sensorial history.

Der Vortrag stellt das Projekt "Ein Stück Heimat" des RGZM vor, ein im Rahmen des Aktionsplans Forschungsmuseen der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft geplantes und realisiertes diskursives Format aus partizipativen Workshops und Pop-Up-Ausstellung.
Mainzerinnen und Mainzer wurden aufgerufen, zu Workshops etwas mitzubringen das für sie "Ein Stück Heimat" ist. Diese modernen Objekte werden zusammen mit Objekten aus der Sammlung des RGZM zu Exponaten einer Ausstellung, die aufzeigt wie sich Semantiken von Heimat an materielle Kultur heften und wie die Heimat sich auf die kulturelle und soziale Praxis auswirkt.
Die Ausstellung greift affekttheoretische Aspekte und Erkenntnisse ebenso auf wie Elemente aus der Strömung der Archaeology of the Senses.

Archaeological food studies have long been relegated to either analyses of power manipulation through feasting or issues of production and do-mestication. Yet, by doing this, the importance of daily consumption is muted. Archaeological explorations of commensality are often viewed with reticence, as if commensalism were sybaritic and not worthy of research. It is through our senses, however, that we experience the world around us, and the same was true in the past. The preparation of food is a total sensory experience: feeling the texture of the raw food itself, stirring it in a pot, smelling it cooking across an open space, tasting it for seasoning and "doneness," even hearing its sounds as you go about another task. In this chapter, I explore food preparation at the Halaf period site of Fıstıklı Höyük, Turkey. This exploration will build off a discussion of food-preparation practices utilized at the site as evi-denced by the etched surfaces of ceramic food preparation vessels. The goal is to explore the powerful humanity of the past as people cooked for each other, sustaining themselves both in body and in community. In cultural anthropology, food is recognized as a powerful material used to actively and purposefully create personal, familial, ethnic, and even national identities (e.g., Appadurai

RESENHA m dos princípios estruturantes da Modernidade é conceber corpo e mente como coisas desconexas e a visão como o sentido hegemônico (LE BRETON, 2016). Coming to senses-organizado por José Roberto Pellini, Melisa Salerno e Andres Zarankin-de-senvolve, a partir de um viés arqueológico, propostas alternativas para recuperar os sentidos como uma forma de analisar a materialidade sensorialmente. Os organizadores (latino-americanos) têm despontado na proposição de tra-balhos (artigos, capítulos, livros, volumes de periódicos, cursos, simpósios, etc.) que discutem a experiência sensorial como base da vivência de mundo; seja no passado, seja no presente (

Throughout this workshop, you will learn about the smells that defined the mummification chambers and tombs, and the scents that the ancient Egyptians themselves wished to be surrounded by in their life after death. The event is run by Egyptologist Dora Goldsmith and olfactory artist Klara Ravat.

The workshop will take three hours and is made up of three components. In the first hour, Dora will teach you about the olfactory motivation for mummification and the substances employed during the process. You will be able to smell each ingredient and you will learn about their significance for the Egyptians and the reasons behind their use. In the second hour, Klara will give you an insight to the materials by teaching you about their composition and their use in modern perfumery. In the third and last hour, you will recreate the essence of mummification in a bottle by using the very same ingredients the ancient Egyptians employed for embalming their dead! Don’t worry, you will end up with an exceedingly pleasant smell!

Visit the Smell Lab in Berlin to learn about mummification and to experience a part of ancient Egypt coming back to life through your nose!

Price: 65€ + ticket fee
Time and Date: March 23, 2019, 5pm-8pm
Location: Smell Lab, Berlin
Tickets are available on: https://www.smell-lab.org/egyptianafterlife
For questions, please e-mail: hello@smell-lab.org

Resumen:
Tras 60 años de la publicación de las excavaciones en la Cueva de la Torre del Mal Paso (Castellnovo, Castelló), reestudiamos sus materiales y analizamos el uso que tuvo esta cavidad durante época ibérica. Mal Paso fue un espacio cultual dónde la imagen ofrendada jugó un papel vital en el desarrollo de las prácticas rituales. Teniendo en cuenta otros espacios similares, esta cueva destaca no solo por su cronología de uso, sino también por su localización y materialidad. Su frecuentación centrada entre los siglos III-I aC y su situación a pocos metros de un poblado, contrastan con otro ejemplos de sacralización rupestre analizados. Sin embargo, una variable se mantiene en relación a las cuevas rituales de siglos anteriores: la reutilización de un espacio sacro.
Palabras clave: Cueva, ritual, tránsito, cultura ibérica, espacio sensorial.


Abstract:
Sixty years after the excavations in Cueva de la Torre del Mal Paso (Castellnovo, Castelló) were published, we have restudied its materials and analyzed the use that this cave had during the Iberian Iron Age. Mal Paso was a sacred space where the offered images had a really important role in the ritual practices. By considering other similar spaces, this cave stands out not only because of its chronology, but also because of its location and materiality. Its chronology, focused between the 3rd and the 1st centuries BC, and its location, a few meters from a settlement, contrast with other examples of rock sacralization from the same area. However, looking at the caves ritualized between the 5th and the 4th centuries BC, one variable stays clear: the reutilization of a sacred space.
Keywords: Cave, ritual, transition, Iberian Culture, sensorial space.

This paper is dedicated to the nexus between personhood, sensory perception, and artefacts, all of which orbit the body as a locus of experience integrated in the material world. Individuals and their own bodies are central in this perspective, but in the past the concept of individuality may have been based on relational identities rather than self-consciousness identities like today. This means that people had to negotiate their own personal identity in larger communities (family, group, clan, city, and so on) characterised by specific social practices they helped to formulate and maintain (Fowler 2004: 2-3; Fowler 2010: 352-385).