Being out at night—in darkness—influences human bodies, senses and behaviours. Moreover, darkness evokes emotions and thoughts that to some degree vary cross-culturally. Archaeology of the night is one of the first major works to examine human actions and beliefs in darkness across societies and through material and other evidence. Although the editors and authors of the volume primarily engage with night time, they also consider darkness more generally: in caves, under dense forest canopies, in daytime shadows, and during eclipses, volcanic eruptions and storms. The reduction or loss of sight in these cases makes for experiences more dependent on other senses and responsive to different affordances of materials. The night and other types of darkness disorient and conceal. Experience in darkness often establishes cosmological connections (to the night sky, ancestors or spirit beings) and can either reaffirm or challenge cultural knowledge. The dark is ideologically potent, memory- and identity-building, and potentially transformative, but also revelatory and embodied.
Archaeology of the night is expansive in its scope. The volume includes a foreword by Jerry D. Moore, an introduction by the editors, 17 substantive chapters, and an afterword by Margaret Conkey. Edited by Nancy Gonlin and April Nowell, the volume primarily addresses case studies in the USA, Central and South America, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Single chapters, however, do emphasise archaeologies of South Asia, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific islands. The timeframes of chapters range from the Upper Palaeolithic to recent centuries. The volume is multidisciplinary. The authors engage with the full range of archaeological residues, but also historical documents, oral histories and traditions, language, practice and performance, analogy and, importantly, human physiology and psychology, as they relate to the effects of darkness. Most of the contributors employ methodological and theoretical approaches linked to household archaeology, practice theory (à la Bourdieu), and phenomenology. Supporting evidence is both material and non-material. The authors are careful to guard against conjecture. Eighty-five black-and-white maps, photographs, line drawings and seven tables support the text and its core arguments.
The authors compile and interpret evidence to examine the night and its effects on human societies in the past. Individual chapters recount that observations of lunar and stellar phenomena created cultural landscapes and that sensescapes served as maps for night time movements. Furthermore, the contributors emphasise that the night was a period for camaraderie among peers that integrated storytelling and music. More pragmatic activities also occurred at night: planting and watering crops (especially in arid regions), sailing, fishing, writing, raiding and certain technological tasks (e.g. smelting iron). Archaeological evidence linked to activities during darkness spans from torch rubbings in Upper Palaeolithic caves to monuments aligned to stars (e.g. the semi-subterranean temple at Tiwanaku). In addition, the night was a period of sleep, dreaming and sex. In darkness, tricksters and witches were hazards, and sometimes healers’ medicines were thought to have greater potency. The night was a time for resistance; for enslaved people in the Bahamas, darkness negated the panoptical effect on plantations. The night also was gendered, a time of particular roles and activities alongside gendered identities, including those of a non-binary nature.
Light is newly significant in darkness. Moonlight, starlight, firelight and torchlight variously worked to improve vision, enable mobility, offer warmth, avert danger or motivate creativity. In darkness, certain items reflect or refract light or glow. Such affordances lend materials (e.g. water, crystals, hearth embers, newly smelted iron bloom and bioluminescent animals) meaning in certain cosmologies. Among Polynesians, the concept of ‘pō’ captures the significance of darkness to all time and space; it indicates “the night […] as well as the marker for their twenty-four-hour unit of time”(p. 156). Cynthia Van Gilder elaborates, stating that the word ‘pō’ invoked “all of the following: in/of the night, under/beyond the sea, in/of the ancient past, and in/of the realm of spirits” (p. 157). In many societies, people referenced the night sky to schedule pragmatic events or to set ritual calendars. Frequently, the North Star served as an axis mundi written into settlement plans. Repetitions in the night sky enabled the prediction of events (e.g. eclipses) by political leaders and ritual specialists, which naturalised their power. Thus, the night, darkness of all types and the light found in darkness worked to produce perceptual, emotional, behavioural, performative and ideological effects.
Overall, the volume is excellent, with very few shortcomings. The contributors balance a range of approaches, topics and evidence. They apply theory and regularly consider alternative epistemologies. Particularly remarkable are the chapters by Kathryn Kamp and John C. Whittaker (on sensescapes in ancient Arizona), Minette C. Church (on memory in the Colorado-New Mexico borderlands), Cynthia Van Gilder (on the sea at night in ancient Polynesia), Tom D. Dillehay (on night rituals among the Chilean Mapuche), Susan M. Alt (on the moon and Mississippian women), and Shadreck Chirikure and Abigail Joy Moffet (on nocturnal material culture in southern Africa). With regard to shortcomings, it is odd that China, Australia and the Islamic world are absent from the larger narrative given the cultural prominence of the night among their societies. In addition, binarisms (day/night, above/below and so forth) are pervasive across the volume's chapters, yet references to structuralism are near absent. Nevertheless, this volume will draw interest from scholars and students as a pioneering work that is certain to motivate further studies.
