This short essay, “Body and Embodiment” is published in the Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms (2020). It begins:
“Bodies are research tools. They can be put to work in concert with other sources to explore the past. Bodies are also archives. They are of the world, (re)created within the same contexts as the objects they use, the places they inhabit, and the times in which they live. Available technologies often represent the past in drawings, writing, paintings, photography, sculptures, and film by recording the activities of living bodies. Dead bodies can also give up the secrets of the past when archaeologists, historians, and physical anthropologists learn about the health and habits of humans through the examination of exhumed remains. Contemporary bodies can also help reveal history by doing things that have been done before. Reenactors use their bodies in this way. They perform the past by relating their bodies to past activities and engaging with material culture—buildings, weapons, furniture, clothing, books on etiquette, recipes, descriptions of practices, and lists of purchases. They also recreate these objects for research through performance. In these situations, contemporary bodies stand in for formerly living bodies, asking questions of the past from the vantage point of the present. But no body, whether past or present, is a tabula rasa; all bodies are made in cultures. This affects what can be known about the past through the contemporary embodiment of historical practices. ”