Making Senses of the Past

Making Senses of the Past PDF Author: Jo Day
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809333139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
Since the nineteenth century, museums have kept their artifacts in glass cases to better preserve them, and drawings and photographs have become standard ways of presenting the past. These practices have led to an archaeology dominated by visual description, even though human interaction with the surrounding world involves the whole body and all of its senses. In the past few years, sensory archaeology has become more prominent, and Making Senses of the Past is one of the first collected volumes on this subject. This book presents cutting-edge research on new theoretical issues. The essays presented here take readers on a multisensory journey around the world and across time. In ancient Peru, a site provides sensory surprises as voices resound beneath the ground and hidden carvings slowly reveal their secrets. In Canada and New Zealand, the flicker of reflected light from a lake dances on the faces of painted rocks and may have influenced when and why the pigment was applied. In Mesopotamia, vessels for foodstuffs build a picture of a past cuisine that encompasses taste and social activity in the building of communities. While perfume and flowers are examined in various cultures, in the chamber tombs of ancient Roman Palestine, we are reminded that not all smells are pleasant. Making Senses of the Past explores alternative ways to perceive past societies and offers a new way of wiring archaeology that incorporates the senses.

Making Senses of the Past

Making Senses of the Past PDF Author: Jo Day
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809333139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the nineteenth century, museums have kept their artifacts in glass cases to better preserve them, and drawings and photographs have become standard ways of presenting the past. These practices have led to an archaeology dominated by visual description, even though human interaction with the surrounding world involves the whole body and all of its senses. In the past few years, sensory archaeology has become more prominent, and Making Senses of the Past is one of the first collected volumes on this subject. This book presents cutting-edge research on new theoretical issues. The essays presented here take readers on a multisensory journey around the world and across time. In ancient Peru, a site provides sensory surprises as voices resound beneath the ground and hidden carvings slowly reveal their secrets. In Canada and New Zealand, the flicker of reflected light from a lake dances on the faces of painted rocks and may have influenced when and why the pigment was applied. In Mesopotamia, vessels for foodstuffs build a picture of a past cuisine that encompasses taste and social activity in the building of communities. While perfume and flowers are examined in various cultures, in the chamber tombs of ancient Roman Palestine, we are reminded that not all smells are pleasant. Making Senses of the Past explores alternative ways to perceive past societies and offers a new way of wiring archaeology that incorporates the senses.

Making Senses of the Past

Making Senses of the Past PDF Author: Jo Day
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809332876
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
Since the nineteenth century, museums have kept their artifacts in glass cases to better preserve them, and drawings and photographs have become standard ways of presenting the past. These practices have led to an archaeology dominated by visual description, even though human interaction with the surrounding world involves the whole body and all of its senses. In the past few years, sensory archaeology has become more prominent, and Making Senses of the Past is one of the first collected volumes on this subject. This book presents cutting-edge research on new theoretical issues. The essays presented here take readers on a multisensory journey around the world and across time. In ancient Peru, a site provides sensory surprises as voices resound beneath the ground and hidden carvings slowly reveal their secrets. In Canada and New Zealand, the flicker of reflected light from a lake dances on the faces of painted rocks and may have influenced when and why the pigment was applied. In Mesopotamia, vessels for foodstuffs build a picture of a past cuisine that encompasses taste and social activity in the building of communities. While perfume and flowers are examined in various cultures, in the chamber tombs of ancient Roman Palestine, we are reminded that not all smells are pleasant. Making Senses of the Past explores alternative ways to perceive past societies and offers a new way of wiring archaeology that incorporates the senses.

Sensing the Past

Sensing the Past PDF Author: Mark Michael Smith
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520254954
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
"Smith's history of the sensate is destined to precipitate a revolution in our understanding of the sensibilities that underpinned the mentalities of past epochs."--David Howes, author of Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory "Mark M. Smith presents a far-ranging essay on the history of the senses that serves simultaneously as a good introduction to the historiography. If one feels in danger of sensory overload from this growing body of scholarship, Smith's piece is a useful preventive."--Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality "This is a masterful overview. The history of the senses has been a frontier field for a while now. Mark Smith draws together what we know, with an impressive sensory range, and encourages further work. A really exciting survey."--Peter N. Stearns, author of American Fear: The Causes and Consequences of High Anxiety "Who would ever have guessed that a book on the history of the senses--seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling--could be informative, thought-provoking, and, at the same time, most entertaining? Ranging in both time and locale, Mark Smith's Sensing the Past makes even the philosophy about the senses from ancient times to now both learned and exciting. This work will draw scholars into under-recognized subjects and lay readers into a world we simply but unwisely take for granted."--Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South "Mark M. Smith has a good record of communicating his research to a broad constituency within and beyond the academy . . . This will be required reading for anyone addressing sensory history."--Penelope Gouk, author of Music, Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth Century England "This is a fine cultural history of the body, which takes Western and Eastern traditions and their texts quite seriously. Smith views a history of the senses not only from 'below' but places it squarely in the historical imagination. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers."--Sander L. Gilman, author of Difference and Pathology

Making Sense of Taste

Making Sense of Taste PDF Author: Carolyn Korsmeyer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080147132X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Taste, perhaps the most intimate of the five senses, has traditionally been considered beneath the concern of philosophy, too bound to the body, too personal and idiosyncratic. Yet, in addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear symbolic and aesthetic value in human experience, and they continually inspire writers and artists. Carolyn Korsmeyer explains how taste came to occupy so low a place in the hierarchy of senses and why it is deserving of greater philosophical respect and attention. Korsmeyer begins with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as an inferior, bodily sense; she then traces the parallels between notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the formation of modern aesthetic theories. She presents scientific views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple components of taste experiences. Turning to taste's objects—food and drink—she looks at the different meanings they convey in art and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the representational and expressive roles of food. Korsmeyer's consideration of art encompasses works that employ food in contexts sacred and profane, that seek to whet the appetite and to keep it at bay; her selection of literary vignettes ranges from narratives of macabre devouring to stories of communities forged by shared eating.

A Sensory History Manifesto

A Sensory History Manifesto PDF Author: Mark M. Smith
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271091967
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
A Sensory History Manifesto is a brief and timely meditation on the state of the field. It invites historians who are unfamiliar with sensory history to adopt some of its insights and practices, and it urges current practitioners to think in new ways about writing histories of the senses. Starting from the premise that the sensorium is a historical formation, Mark M. Smith traces the origins of historical work on the senses long before the emergence of the field now called “sensory history,” interrogating, exploring, and in some cases recovering pioneering work on the topic. Smith argues that we are at an important moment in the writing of the history of the senses, and he explains the potential that this field holds for the study of history generally. In addition to highlighting the strengths of current work in sensory history, Smith also identifies some of its shortcomings. If sensory history provides historians of all persuasions, times, and places a useful and incisive way to write about the past, it also challenges current practitioners to think more carefully about the historicity of the senses and the desirability—even the urgency—of engaged and sustained debate among themselves. In this way, A Sensory History Manifesto invites scholars to think about how their field needs to evolve if the real interpretive dividends of sensory history are to be realized. Concise and convincing, A Sensory History Manifesto is a must-read for historians of all specializations.

Making Sense of the Bible [Leader Guide]

Making Sense of the Bible [Leader Guide] PDF Author: Adam Hamilton
Publisher: Abingdon Press
ISBN: 1501801325
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
In this six week video study, Adam Hamilton explores the key points in his new book, Making Sense of the Bible. With the help of this Leader Guide, groups learn from Hamilton as his video presentations lead groups through the book, focusing on the most important questions we ask about the Bible, its origins and meaning.

The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology

The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology PDF Author: Robin Skeates
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317197461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
Edited by two pioneers in the field of sensory archaeology, this Handbook comprises a key point of reference for the ever-expanding field of sensory archaeology: one that surpasses previous books in this field, both in scope and critical intent. This Handbook provides an extensive set of specially commissioned chapters, each of which summarizes and critically reflects on progress made in this dynamic field during the early years of the twenty-first century. The authors identify and discuss the key current concepts and debates of sensory archaeology, providing overviews and commentaries on its methods and its place in interdisciplinary sensual culture studies. Through a set of thematic studies, they explore diverse sensorial practices, contexts and materials, and offer a selection of archaeological case-studies from different parts of the world. In the light of this, the research methods now being brought into the service of sensory archaeology are re-examined. Of interest to scholars, students and others with an interest in archaeology around the world, this book will be invaluable to archaeologists and is also of relevance to scholars working in disciplines contributing to sensory studies: aesthetics, anthropology, architecture, art history, communication studies, history (including history of science), geography, literary and cultural studies, material culture studies, museology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

When the Past Is Always Present

When the Past Is Always Present PDF Author: Ronald A. Ruden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135271763
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
When the Past Is Always Present: Emotional Traumatization, Causes, and Cures introduces several new ideas about trauma and trauma treatment. The first of these is that another way to treat disorders arising from the mind/brain may be to use the senses. This idea, which is at the core of psychosensory therapy, forms what the author considers the "third pillar" of trauma treatment (the first and second pillars being psychotherapy and psychopharmacology). Psychosensory therapy postulates that sensory input—for example, touch—creates extrasensory activity that alters brain function and the way we respond to stimuli. The second idea presented in this book is that traumatization is encoded in the amygdala only under special circumstances. Thus, by understanding what makes an individual resistant to traumatization we can offer a way of preventing it. The third idea is that traumatization occurs because we cannot find a haven during the event. This is the cornerstone of havening, the particular form of psychosensory therapy described in the book. Using evolutionary biological principles and recently published neuroscientific studies, this book outlines in detail how havening touch de-links the emotional experience from a trauma, essentially making it just an ordinary memory. Once done, the event no longer causes distress.

How Race Is Made

How Race Is Made PDF Author: Mark M. Smith
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458719804
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
For at least two centuries, argues mark smith, white southerners used all of their senses - not just their eyes - to construct racial difference and dene race. His provocative analysis, extending from the colonial period to the mid-twentieth century, shows how whites of all classes used the articial binary of ''black'' and ''white'' to justify slavery and erect the political, legal, and social structure of segregation. Based on painstaking research, how race is made is a highly original, always frank, and often disturbing book. After enslaved Africans were initially brought to America, the offspring of black and white sexual relationships (consensual and forced) complicated the purely visual sense of racial typing. As mixed-race people became more and more common and as antebellum race-based slavery and then post bellum racial segregation became central to southern society, white southerners asserted that they could relyon their other senses - touch, smell, sound, and taste - to identify who was ''white'' and who was not. Sensory racial stereotypes were invented and irrational, but at every turn, smith shows, these constructions of race, immune to logic, signied difference and perpetuated inequality. Smith argues that the history of southern race relations and the construction of racial difference on which that history is built cannot be understood fully on the basis of sight alone. In order to come to terms with the south's past and present, smith says, we must explore the sensory dynamics underpinning the deeply emotional construction of race. How race is made takes a bold step toward that understanding.

The Memory of the People

The Memory of the People PDF Author: Andy Wood
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052189610X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
The Memory of the People is a major study of popular memory in the early modern period.