Archaeology of Anxiety

Jeffrey Fleisher (BA, MA, PhD, University of Virginia) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University in Houston, Texas.  His regional specialty is on the ancient Swahili coast of eastern Africa, focusing on the development of first and second millennium urban centers there.  Past research has focused on the ancient settlements of rural and non-elite Swahili, and their connections and contributions to urban developments.  Currently, he directs a long-term project at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Songo Mnara in southern Tanzania, focusing on the use of open and public space. Neil Norman (BA, Flagler College; MA, University of South Carolina; PhD, University of Virginia) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.  His specialties are the archaeology of social complexity and historical archaeology.  At present, hedirects the Savi Countryside Archaeological Project (Republic of Benin), the Africatown Archaeological Project (Mobile, Alabama) and co-directs the Later Zanzibar Archaeological Project (Republic of Tanzania).

“This volume is a bold, forward thinking, and essential contribution to this movement in archaeology. … The writing of this volume contains a tone of defending the choice to study emotion as a way to advocate for its more widespread acceptance in the discipline. The results of the volume should certainly compel more archaeologists to embrace this way of thinking about the past, and recognize the potential to more fully study people’s lives through the archaeological record.” (Jane Eva Baxter, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Vol. 6 (1–2), 2018)

• Chapter 1: Archaeologies of Anxiety: The Materiality of Anxiousness, Worry, and Fear Jeffrey Fleisher and Neil Norman.- Chapter 2:The Importance of “Getting It Right:” Tracing Anxiety in Mesolithic Burial Rituals Liv Nilsson Stutz.- Chapter 3: Risky Business: A Life Full of Obligations to the Dead and the Living on the Early Bronze Age Southeastern Dead Sea Plain, Jordan Meredith Chesson.-Chapter 4: Feet of Clay: An Archaeology of Huedan Elite Anxiety in the era of Atlantic Trade Neil Norman.- Chapter 5: Hid in Death’s Dateless Night: The lure of an uncanny landscape in Hittite AnatoliaTim Flohr Sørensen and Stephen Lumsden.- Chapter 6: Communities of Anxiety: Gathering and Dwelling at Causewayed Enclosures in the British Neolithic Oliver Harris.- Chapter 7:Bodily Protection: Dress, Health, and Anxiety in Colonial New England Diana DiPaolo Loren.- Chapter 8: Ritualized Coping during War: Conflict, Congregation, and Emotions at the Late Prehispanic Fortress of Acaray Margaret Brown Vega.- Chapter 9:  “Concern”ing contributions to this volume Susan Kus.