This volume examines the role of gestures in past societies, exploring both how meaning was communicated through bodily actions, and also how archaeologists can trace the symbolism and significance of ancient gestures, ritual practices and bodily techniques through the material remnants of past human groups. Gesture studies is an area of increasing interest within the social sciences, and the individual chapters not only respond to developments in the field, but push it forward by bringing a wide range of perspectives and approaches into dialogue with one another. Each exhibits a critical and reflexive approach to bodily communication and to re-tracing bodies through the archaeological record (in art, the treatment of the body and material culture), and together they demonstrate the diversity of pioneering global research on gestures in archaeology and related disciplines, with contributions from leading researchers in Aegean, Mediterranean, Mesoamerican, Japanese and Near Eastern archaeology. By bringing case studies from each of these different cultures and regions together and drawing on interdisciplinary insights from anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics, design, art history and the performing arts, this volume reveals the similarities and differences in gestures as expressed in cultures around the world, and offers new and valuable perspectives on the nature of bodily communication across both space and time.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Editors’ Preface Series Preface Introduction: Tracing Gestures in the Ancient World (Amy J. Maitland Gardner, University College London, UK and Carl Walsh, The Barnes Foundation, USA) PART 1: THE MATERIALITY OF GESTURE 1. In Touch with the Minoans: Gestural Performance and Experience in Bronze Age Crete (Christine Morris, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Lucy Goodison, Independent Scholar, UK) 2. Performing Bodies and Theatrical Palaces: Courtly Gestural Vocabularies at Early Bronze Age Ebla (Carl Walsh, The Barnes Foundation, USA) 3. Aspects of Non-Verbal Communication and Rituality in Pre-Roman Banquets: The Gestures of Union (Eighth to Fifth Centuries BCE) (Audrey Gouy, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) 4. Gestures and Social Relations: The Late Neolithic Figurines of the Maltese Islands (Isabelle Vella Gregory, University of Cambridge, UK) 5. Gestures of Protection: Clay Masks of the Phoenician-Punic World (Mireia López-Bertran, Universitat de València, Spain) PART 2: THE VISUALITY OF GESTURE 6. The Pitfalls and Potentials of Visual Evidence for the History of Gestures: The Example of Athenian Pottery (Timothy J. McNiven, Ohio State University, USA) 7. Langue du geste over the longue durée: On the Diachrony of Ritual Gestures in the Near East (David Calabro, Brigham Young University, USA) 8. Tracing the Semantics of Ancient Maya Gestures (Amy J. Maitland Gardner, University College London, UK) 9. Gesture, Posture and Meaning in the Ulúa Cultural Sphere (Kathryn M. Hudson, University at Buffalo, USA and John S. Henderson, Cornell University, USA) 10. Idealised Divinity versus Identification: Ancient ‘Lifelike’ Gestures of the Buddhist Sculptures, 500 Rakan (Christine Kuehn, Independent Scholar, Germany) PART 3: INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON GESTURE 11. Freud’s Approach to Gesture and its Archaeological Inspiration (Josef Fulka, Charles University, Czech Republic) 12. Gestures of Making: An Exploration of Material / Body Dialogue through Art Process (Alice Clough and Fo Hamblin, Nottingham Trent University, UK) Epilogue: Touching on the Future of Gesture (Amy J. Maitland Gardner, University College London, UK and Carl Walsh, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA) Index