Movement, Intersubjectivity, and Sensory Archaeology– Insights from Western Ireland

Summary

Movement is fundamental to bodily perception and to the formation of the archaeological record. Histories of movement shape our perceptual apparatus and generate embodied knowledge. This recursive constitution of bodies, movements, and materials simultaneously defines the challenge and opportunity of phenomenological approaches within sensory archaeology. Explicitly or not, most researchers use their own bodily experiences of movement as analogies for making inferences about the material and sensory consequences of bodily movements in the past. As imitative learning produces shared embodied knowledge among craftspeople, likewise, archaeologists can engage with movements and materials to produce some degree of intersubjectivity with bodies in the past. Drawing from archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork in western Ireland, this paper will propose simple guiding premises for undertaking a sensory archaeology of movement. To illustrate these premises, I discuss the changing material settings and practices of Irish pilgrimage and pastoralism between the medieval and modern period. I contend that interdisciplinary, collaborative research can play a vital role in refining phenomenological research by placing researchers’ subjective experiences in dialogue with descent communities, communities of practice, and relevant historical texts and imagery.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20447