A great deal of recent social archaeology has concentrated on a rather narrow (and some would argue gendered) spectrum of social experience. In addition to rational action, decision making processes, structures of power, hierarchy, and the control of resources within ecological systems, archaeologists (especially, but not solely, postprocessual) are coming to theorise and work upon the aesthetic dimension, considering the affective component of art and style and social practice generally. This can be interpreted as part of wider project of embodiment and the influence of phenomenology in archaeology.

The aesthetic and affective dimensions of the past are often prominent in the constructions of heritage and those cultural works which deal with the presence of the past, being vital sources of energy in nationalist and regional identities. The transdisciplinarian program of material culture and visual culture studies, arising out of archaeology and anthropology, has most explicitly addressed the role of affectation (vz. 'corpothetics') as a component of the 'meaning' or 'action' of archaeological artifacts.

References

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Gosden, C., 2001, Making sense: archaeology and aesthetics, World Archaeology, 33, 163 -7.

Pinney, C. and N. Thomas, 2001: Beyond Aesthetics: art and the technologies of enchantment, Oxford.

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Theory