ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore how the action and physicality of shrouding may have impacted mid-Byzantine emotional experiences. The topic of emotions in Byzantium has previously been approached through text and art, most recently by Martin Hinter Berger in Liz James's companion to Byzantium. Theoretical approaches from both archaeology and material culture studies might allow us a little more room to talk about how emotions may have been generated, manipulated or controlled in mid-Byzantium. Rosaldo argues that anthropology of death has been used as a means to access social structure, a critique that is also perhaps true of much archaeology of death and burial. The relationship between thing, person and wider society generates an emotional response. Hunt suggests that it is the more secular meaning that Corippus uses in his sixth-century poem describing Justinian's campaign in Africa. The Byzantine affective field of mourning included concepts of grief as joy-bearing and tears as leading to salvation.
