Overview

This Handbook is a state-of-the-field volume containing diverse approaches to sensory experience, bringing to life in an innovative, remarkably vivid, and visceral way the lives of past humans through contributions that cover the chronological and geographical expanse of the ancient Near East. It comprises thirty-two chapters written by leading international contributors that look at the ways in which humans, through their senses, experienced their lives and the world around them in the ancient Near East, with coverage of Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia, from the Neolithic through the Roman period. It is organised into six parts related to sensory contexts: Practice, production, and taskscape; Dress and the body; Ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces; Death and burial; Science, medicine, and aesthetics; and Languages and semantic fields. In addition to exploring what makes each sensory context unique, this organisation facilitates cross-cultural and cross-chronological, as well as cross-sensory and multisensory comparisons and discussions of sensory experiences in the ancient world. In so doing, the volume also enables considerations of senses beyond the five-sense model of Western philosophy (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), including proprioception and interoception, and the phenomena of synaesthesia and kinaesthesia. The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East provides scholars and students within the field of ancient Near Eastern studies new perspectives on and conceptions of familiar spaces, places, and practices, as well as material culture and texts. It also allows scholars and students from adjacent fields such as Classics and Biblical Studies to engage with this material, and is a must-read for any scholar or student interested in or already engaged with the field of sensory studies in any period.

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9781032065663

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Reviews

"""As our world is continuously forced by technological development to inhabit digiscapes of mono-sensory confinement, advances in archaeological science and field methods, as the Routledge Handbook of the Senses makes all too clear, enable scholars to empathetically probe the role of the senses in the lives of past humans. As an academic enterprise, this probing is indeed fascinating, provided that one does not forget that our own sensorium and phenomenological immersion can take us that far in understanding the role of the senses in antiquity. Both editors and contributors to this volume seem to be very careful about using the sensory as an analytical framework while basing their research on rigorously understood archaeological evidence... This hefty volume is masterfully edited... The volume is a veritable feast of valuable contributions all of which are worth reading."" - Bryn Mawr Classical Review ""The Handbook of the Senses shows how incorporating the study of the senses in research opens up new pathways of approaching and understanding people in past societies. It offers an excellent, inspirational overview of the current state of the field."" - Bibliotheca Orientalis"

Author Information

Kiersten Neumann is Curator and Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, USA, and has published numerous articles on topics pertaining to sensory experience, ritualised practice, and visual culture of the first millennium BCE, as well as museum practice, collections histories, and the reception of Assyrian and Achaemenid art. Allison Thomason is Professor of History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA. Her book, Luxury and Legitimation: Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia (2005), and her subsequent publications explore portable objects, dress, and sensory experiences in the ancient Near East.

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