ABSTRACT
Within the emergent ontological and material turns in archaeology, human experience appears to have been sidelined. This chapter explores how we might profitably return to phenomenology to ensure that the embodied experience of humanness continues to remain part of our narrative. In turn, however, it is clear that we need to take non-humans seriously. Thus, alongside the elements of hermeneutic phenomenology drawn from Martin Heidegger, this chapter employs concepts lifted from the work of Bruno Latour. Rather than seeking theoretical purity, it aims to provoke a discussion of how different tools can produce new understandings of the past. This is explored through the world of Byzantine song in the first millennium CE.
