Sensorial Assemblages: Affect, Memory and Temporality in Assemblage Thinking

Abstract

Archaeologists are familiar with the concept of assemblage, but in more recent years they have started problematizing it in interesting and innovative ways, beyond its common connotations of aggregation. Sociologists such as Manuel DeLanda and political philosophers such as Jane Bennett have been key influences in this move. These authors had adapted and modified the assemblage thinking of Deleuze and Guattari. In this article, an assemblage of sorts itself, I propose that we need to return to that original Deleuzian body of thinking and explore its richness further. Assemblages, temporary and deliberate heterogeneous arrangements of material and immaterial elements, are about the relationship of in-betweenness. I further suggest that sensoriality and affectivity, memory and multi-temporality are key features of assemblage thinking, and that assemblages also imply certain political effects. The omission of these features in the archaeological treatments of the concept may lead to mechanistic reincarnations of systems thinking, thus depriving the concept of its potential. Finally, I explore these ideas by considering communal eating and feasting events as powerful sensorial assemblages.

Watery Entanglements in the Cypriot Hinterland

“…An assemblage is the coming together and interactions of a heterogenous and nonhierarchical group of entities described by Bennett (p. 23) as "ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts... living, throbbing confederations" [1], constantly in flux or, as Harris (p. 90) describes, "in a state of becoming" [24]. The constituent parts of the assemblage are multiscalar [25], from the micro (such as microbes and bacteria) to the macro-not simply the human agent or a body of water, but even to the scale of human communities, overarching political systems, even the state, thus illustrating how tangible material entities and the immaterial might cohere to coproduce assemblages [26]. Key to understanding an assemblage is that it, as DeLanda observes (p. 2, my italics), 'actively links these parts together by establishing relations between them' [27].…”

‘Body-objects’ and personhood in the Iron and Viking Ages: processing, curating, and depositing skulls in domestic space

“…They embedded these objects in their inhabited spaces. Harvesting, processing, and depositing skulls shaped space and place in many ways: we can conceptualize this as actions to create atmospheric presence (Bille, Bjerregaard, and Sørensen 2015), emotional and mnemonic geographies (Harris 2010), or sensorial assemblages (Hamilakis 2017). These frameworks aim to capture the evocative qualities of powerful encounters, herein the becoming of body-objects and the way these tincture or intervene in dwelled space.…”

Assemblages of practice. A conceptual framework for exploring human–thing relations in archaeology

“…Assemblages of practice also entangle affective fields and the sensorial and sensuous aspects of everyday human life (Hamilakis 2017;Harris and Sørensen 2010, 150-51). Entanglements not only knot humans and material things, they also involve immaterial things such as ideas, thoughts, emotions, desires and sensory perceptions (Hodder 2016, 9).…”