ABSTRACT
Past smells, in contrast to the physical remains, are fleeting moments that rarely survive in the archaeological record. This chapter documents an attempt to examine the past smells in situ. Investigating the Battle of Waterloo, I describe the deployment of an Arduino-based mobile smell dispenser connected to a Geographic Information System that allows the smells before, during and after the battle to be put back into the landscape. The emission of smells at particular locations enables us to undertake an embodied exploration, navigating by the nose, getting us closer to how the past may have smelled to our ancestors.
