I ‘full-heartedly’ agree with Harris and Sørensen that archaeologists are in need of fuller ‘appreciation of how the encounter with the material world is inherently affective’ in order to more effectively understand ‘how human beings and material things are co-constitutive’ (p. 146). Further, but assuredly not ‘foolhardily’, I would argue that in refining our appreciation and understanding of these matters of matter and emotion and being, we can make an important contribution to contemporary dialogues on emotion beyond ‘archaeological dialogues’; in particular, dialogues with psychological anthropologists.

While ‘the notion of emotion as something exclusively subjective, individual and immaterial’ (p. 146) might very well be held by many archaeologists, this supposed precept is and has been a straw (wo)man for most psychological anthropologists since the first half of the last century. In the studies of BPS (basic personality structure) and MP (modal personality) of pioneering psychological anthropologists (e.g. Kardiner, DuBois) environment and the materials of subsistence strategies were recognized as crucial to the shaping of temperament (Bock 1999, 69–76). In addressing the question of ‘learning non-aggression’ among the Mbuti, Turnbull (1978) describes thickly and sensuously the material environment critical to this ‘learning’: sweet-smelling, clean and light-coloured bark cloth to wrap infants; shared beds of leaves; baths in sweet water from vines; encouraged explorations by toddlers of camp and forest edge, adolescent play of climbing trees and swinging from branches and vines, adolescent learning of ritual fire-lighting and of songs to keep the forest awake, and so on. More current works, including Lutz's on Unnatural emotions (1988) on the Micronesian atoll of Ifaluk, recognize the role of ecology and subsistence, as well as social discourse, in the crafting of indigenous theories of emotions. In some ways, the ‘material turn’ (p. 149) has always been part of psychological anthropology's discourse on emotions. Their material turn recognizes materiality as a critical context in the cultural crafting and expression of emotions. This should encourage us to continue to explore the work of psychological anthropologists in our discussion of emotions. Our current archaeological ‘material turn’, which recognizes that ‘human beings and material things recursively shape each other’ (p. 147), however, in turn, should incite the imagination of our non-archaeological colleagues who work on the topic of emotions. Further provocation to shared dialogue comes from archaeologists, such as Harris and Sørensen, who cleverly complicate the challenge of appreciating the archaeological twist on the ‘material turn’ by focusing on the differing scale of ‘things’ that must be attended to: from ‘minimal’ broken potsherds to ‘maximal’ megaliths, palisades and landscapes.

As we archaeologists continue to argue for the inclusion of ‘emotion’ in our discussions of all things cultural and material, I appreciate the efforts of the authors to push us to pay attention to vocabulary, and to push us to test out new vocabulary. Consequently, I find it interesting indeed that the term ‘emotion’ is left deliberately unfilled with emotion-terms. This, certainly, is a warranted cautionary move after the ‘expression of empathy’ (p. 147) and the employment of specific emotion-terms (e.g. ‘grief’) by archaeologists have been critiqued from within our very ranks. As we continue to circle around and spiral into the concept of ‘emotion’ I would urge us to look at the handling of this concept by psychological anthropologists so that we might be able to benefit from their more recent nuanced approaches to the topic. To begin with, Shore might offer us additional vocabulary as he argues that we need ‘to distinguish clearly “physiological emotions” (emotion expressions), “psycho-logical emotions” (subjective feeling states), and “emotion discourse,” as three parts of an emotions system’ (Shore 1993, 361). The key word here is ‘system’. These distinctions are in some way echoed by Hinton, who borrows an analogy that likens emotion to weather classification, arguing that ‘weather’ is a ‘superordinate category . . . used to describe certain “coherences” between wind velocity, humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, and type of precipitation’ (Hinton 1993, 424). In analogous fashion the superordinate category “emotion” is used to “categorize particularly salient coherences between external stimuli, physiological changes, and evaluations” (Hinton 1993, 424). (For additional vocabulary to think about and play with, refer to Hinton 1993; to Shweder 1999; and to Middleton 1989, who suggests eight elements of ‘emotional style’.) The vocabulary of Harris and Sørensen concerning ‘affective fields’, ‘attunement’ and ‘atmosphere’ is critical for carrying us beyond discussions focused on the individual experience of emotion, and in some ways may prove more satisfying in its immediate attention to social groups, material and space than the vocabulary I have signalled above. For the moment, however, I want to continue discussion of ‘emotion’. I want to look at three points briefly: (1) the senses and sensuality, (2) the possible universality of emotions and/or adequate language to speak about emotions, and (3) indigenous theories of emotions.

The authors assert that ‘emotion has to be viscerally experienced, yet it can be discursively cognized’ (p. 150). (1) It is interesting that the authors choose the term ‘viscerally’. In English we speak of ‘gut reaction’, whereas the Malagasy speak of the heart as being shaken (nientana iray ihany ambava-foko). Clearly, the body and the senses are critical sites for emotional experience and expression. Indeed, the authors speak of people at Mount Pleasant as being ‘tied into an affective field by attending to the space, to the way the wood smelled, felt and looked’ (p. 155). As we range across the sensual, we should pay particular attention to recent work on ‘the anthropology of the senses’ (e.g. Howe 1991; Classen 1993), and to Ong's remark (1991, 26) about the ‘shifting sensorium’: ‘Cultures vary greatly in their exploitation of the various senses and in the way in which they relate their conceptual apparatus to the various senses’. This attention is necessary so that our bodies do not in turn become a problematic source of reference analogous to the ‘empathy’ of our souls.

(2) It is always interesting to revisit, from time to time, the question of ‘psychic unity’ and human and cultural universals, especially now that we continue to muster our courage to ‘face’ emotions ‘head-on’. In 1980 Ekman published The face of Man. Expressions of universal emotions in a New Guinea village. In this study in Papua New Guinea (undertaken among populations notoriously taken to be radically ‘other’), he suggested (and went on to study further) six basic emotions he declared identifiable from facial appearances. As the reader might suspect, Ekman's study has been criticized, in particular, with respect to the assignation of English emotion vocabulary (e.g. anger, joy, surprise) to the six basic emotions. As Wierzbicka argues (2003, 591), ‘Because English-emotion terms like grief or anger stand for culture-specific bundles of semantic components they are not suitable as analytical tools for exploring emotions cross-culturally’. Pushing further, we might echo Geertz (à la Shweder 1999, 67; and others) in reminding ourselves that, in the same way that we do not speak language, but rather speak a language, it is also the case that we experience fear of something or someone and we experience anger at someone, something or some situation. The work of Lutz (1988) and others further draws our attention to the fact that these supposed universal emotions can become additionally highly qualified within a culture, so that on Ifaluk one can speak not only of ‘anger’, but of ‘righteous anger’, an emotion neither accessible nor expressible by all. Nevertheless, despite Geertzianesque warnings and critiques of Western-centric labelling, there has been continued and renewed interest in universals among psychological anthropologists that we might want to pay attention to. This is not because these investigations ignore complicated cultural grounding, but rather because they offer a more sophisticated researched and theoretically grounded minimalist base from which to begin cross-cultural comparison. Levine, in a Society of Psychological Anthropology President's Forum in 1999, strongly advocated research to identify ‘characteristics related to universals of subjective experience that can be translated into unrelated languages with overlapping if not equivalent terms’ (Levine 1999, 21). Shweder alerts us to the fact that there is important contemporary work being done by psychological anthropologists in ‘collaborative research with biologists, psychologists, linguists, and others on the translation of mental state terms and concepts’ (Shweder 1999, 69). To say it loudly and clearly, I am not advocating universalism as a focus over rich, context-bound alterity. Rather, I am suggesting that deep and radical alterity can be brought into powerful relief if there is a base of possible comparison ‘of apples and oranges’ that encourages cautious generalizations. Perhaps Shweder offers an interesting mantra concerning this challenge: ‘universalism without the uniformity’ (ibid., 68).

(3) There exists additional fascinating work about indigenous theories of emotions. Levy (1973), a psychiatrist and an anthropologist, who was interested in the enduring labelling of Tahitians by the West as ‘gentle people’, has brought to our attention the fact that ‘emotions’ can be either hypocognated/hypocognized or hypercognated/hypercognized depending on culture. ‘Under’-cognized emotions are often expressed more in physical and ‘visceral’ terms, while ‘elaborately’ cognized emotions involve more indigenous specification and labelling, echoing the remark of the authors of the article in question: ‘emotion has to be viscerally experienced, yet it can be discursively cognized’ (p. 150). (As an interesting side note for archaeologists, Middleton argues (1989, 197), ‘In American culture . . . death and its attendant emotions have been hypocognized’.) Additionally, Lutz's (1988) work among the Ifaluk, Unnatural emotions, has brought our attention to the fact that individually labelled emotions, such as ‘righteous anger’, need to be understood within indigenous theories of emotion that designate the who, what, when, where and why of emotions. Lutz's work urges us to understand that age, status, gender and so on might render the crowd at Mount Pleasant a crowd of very interesting differences within an affective field.

In their abstract, the authors alert us to the fact that their focus is one ‘exclusively on the relationship between material culture and emotions (as opposed to textually, verbally or iconographically informed approaches)’. The work of Lutz (1988) and Levy (1973), along with others, however, brings to our attention the fact that ‘emotions’ are often very much embedded in language and this renders them ‘social’ and ‘cultural’. Indeed, some psychological anthropologists argue that ‘the evolution of language provided a medium by which emotions could be cognized and transformed into cultural conventions, a momentous event in the natural history of emotions’ (Shore 1993, 362). With that said, I would like to suggest that in some way we archaeologists might not be as ‘deprived’ and ‘challenged’ as we assume we are, despite the lack of texts and informants. It is the case that many of the societies we study archaeologically are non-literate, or, more correctly, oral. Leroi-Gourhan (1964–65) brought to our attention the intimate connection of (material) gesture and speech. Levi-Strauss's La Pensée sauvage (1962), Fernandez's appreciation of trope (1986), and the early works of Ong (1982) and Goody (1988; 1989), along with more recent works by others on ‘oralities’ and ‘literacies’, draw our attention to differences in ‘orality and literacy’ (Ong 1982). Collectively, these works allow us to appreciate the poetic and thick language used in societies of primary orality. This is language grounded in material and experiential trope; this is language that powerfully employs icon and index alongside symbols, if we use Pearcian vocabulary. In these societies, tropes are not limited to ‘figures of speech’; they gain their shape and force by continued accretion in material and sensuous engagement with and in the world, and consequently speech, gesture and material object are often melded in dialogic encounters. In some way, archaeologists might actually be able to (name) their cake and eat it too. The fact that powerful tropes of reflective thought in primar(il)y oral societies are materially grounded in routine and ritual activity, in objects encountered and/or created, in persons, in space, in landscape and so on might make emotions ‘legible’ in material culture. Consider the following quotes from the article under consideration:

I want to make a suggestion, and I want to offer a warning.

The suggestion is that materiality as trope might be a very exciting entry point into our discussion of emotion in oral societies known only from their archaeological remains. It is also the case that poetic redundancy across the quotidian and the ritual is also a feature of these societies. However, we might not want to think in term of repetitive, replicated and recitative ‘statements’ as we attempt to break a symbolic code, but rather to think of interpreting a poetry of copious iconic and indexical cross-references (e.g. Raharijaona and Kus 2000).

The warning is not to become hubristic and/or Jungian in our interpretation of icon, index and symbol. Stone for the Oglala Sioux is (was) an element of chaos, for they consider(ed) all that is sacred and viable to be circular, whereas ‘stone is the implement of destruction’ (Radin 1957, 277). For the Malagasy, stone is the most celestial of terrestrial materials. According to myth it is considered either fossilized lightning, the most powerful element lanced by the sky to attain earth, or stone, the most powerful element lanced by earth to attain the sky (for fuller discussion see Kus and Raharijaona 1998, 53–61).

By way of conclusion, I would direct our attention to the argument of Fernandez (1986) that insists that metaphor in daily practice and in ritual can be ‘persuasively’ transformative (cf. Kus 2006, 110–14). Daily routines erupting with significance in ritual acts can move us in ‘quality space’, as James Fernandez argues, and can accommodate us ‘in many subtle ways to our condition in all its contrarieties and complexities’ (1986, 20). Notice the embodied trope of movement that is shared between Fernandez and Harris and Sørensen. Emotion clearly ‘matters’ as a future dimension of archaeological exploration into other ways of being-in-the-world. I applaud and appreciate the authors’ attempts to focus archaeological attention on the matter of emotions. I am honoured to have been included in this dialogue. I hope this dialogue will continue within our ranks and will continue to ‘move’ out into other fields (as the authors’ bibliography suggests), but I think it would be interesting to sit down at a table with psychological anthropologists, in particular.