Emotion work and the archaeology of consensus: the Northern Iroquoian case

Abstract

In archaeology, emotion has often been thought to lie beyond the reach of responsible materialist scholarship. However, this study illustrates the central role of emotion in the formation of consensus-based political systems. In the Late Woodland longhouse societies of north-eastern North America, political alliance-building depended on emotion work – elaborated interpersonal attentions in the form of grooming, bodily adornment, smoking and gift-giving that were intended to shift the affective character of relationships and satisfy deep personal desires. Emotion work depended heavily on material things – especially wampum beads and smoking pipes – that connected individual bodies with the body politic. A crucial part of the process of building and maintaining grassroots social collectives, emotion work produced historically particular forms of power and political subjectivity. These practices can be understood as a kind of corporeal politics, one with lasting consequences for indigenous sociopolitical development in eastern North America.