Sexual Effects

Sexuality's particular quality is to be both intensely private, personal, and sensory and also public and definitive of the structures of social and economic organization, everywhere. As such, sexuality may leave no material trace and may be denied or disguised in written records, persisting only in the ephemera of memory. But at the same time, sexual norms or prohibitions may shape assemblages of artifacts, the organization of domestic space, the design and construction of institutional buildings, and the layout of cities and landscapes. This play between the personal and sensory and the public and material is a rich and provocative theme that runs through all the chapters in this book.

Developing an archaeology of sexuality – one of the ambitions of the project that resulted in this collection of essays – requires that the particular duality of the private–sensory and the public–material is made explicit and more general. As with all disciplines, archaeology is what archaeologists do. If there is to be an archaeology of sexuality, there needs to be attention to “method,” to the hermeneutical processes that move backward and forward between conceptualization and evidence, progressively building up our understanding of the world.