ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE BODY

Abstract

Under the influence of phenomenological approaches, a semiotic perspective on the body is being replaced in archaeology by analysis of the production and experience of lived bodies in the past through the juxtaposition of traces of body practices, idealized representations, and evidence of the effects of habitual gestures, postures, and consumption practices on the corporal body. On the basis of a shared assumption that social understandings of the body were created and reproduced through associations with material culture, archaeology of the body has proceeded from two theoretical positions: the body as the scene of display and the body as artifact. Today, the body as a site of lived experience, a social body, and site of embodied agency, is replacing prior static conceptions of an archaeology of the body as a public, legible surface.