ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the disjuncture of migration is connected with the disruption of material and spatial contexts that create and sustain personhood and identity through collective memory. Nostalgic longing for returning home is directly related to material, sensory inputs, whether this involves seeing objects with mnemonic links to the homeland, hearing one’s native language or familiar songs or eating foods that taste as they do at home. The chapter looks at how archaeology can engage with emotional and sensory aspects of the past, in particular through material culture, the built environment and the epigraphic record. It outlines how it is possible to begin to access some of the emotional aspects of migration – not necessarily those that are experienced at an individual level but rather those that are related to the disruption of established social experiences, memory and collective identity.
