An archaeological journey into the layers of loneliness and solitude in the past

This research will show that loneliness is not a new problem. By examining and debating the material past, this project will undermine the myth that our ancestors lived in close-knit communities devoid of loneliness. Archaeological perspectives will demonstrate the historical experience of loneliness, providing insights to tackle today's problems.

Loneliness is often understood as a product of alienated, modern ways of life (Alberti 2019), yet my MA dissertation demonstrated that loneliness was widely experienced in the past (Santos 2023). I began to develop methods for identifying and understanding conditions that make loneliness more likely and practices used to mitigate it; however, more work is essential. This project will address questions including:

How can one identify loneliness and solitude across cultures and periods? How did loneliness vary across different historical contexts? How did people tackle loneliness in the past? Can that knowledge help address modern concerns?

Archaeology has already demonstrated its capacity to study emotions - mainly grief, fear, and anger (Tarlow 2000; Harris and Sorensen 2010) - but ignoring loneliness, despite the attention given by psychologists and historians (Snell 2015). The archaeological study of loneliness is an essential next step. Recent literature argues that loneliness is a global crisis (Ozawa-de Silva and Parsons 2020), and this PhD will contribute to its urgent discussion.

I argue that loneliness was historically constituted, varying over time and across cultures. For example, it has an edge of shame in the contemporary West, whereas cultures that associate solitude with enhanced spirituality might see it as selfless and sacred. Solitude and loneliness are often considered separate emotions, yet some languages only define them with one word.

This project explores the complex emotional ambiguity of feeling alone, moving between theory and practice: the first task is to create a theoretical and methodological basis to build an archaeology of loneliness, using understandings of loneliness in other disciplines and creating a new interdisciplinary framework. This basis underlies the second part, which will identify, describe and analyse the materiality of solitude and loneliness in four case studies over 2000-years to explore loneliness in its diverse constructions, chronologies and geographies:

1) C. Valerius Venustus wrote on a Pompeian inn's wall how lonely he felt without his wife. On a different wall, a woman sorrowed for an absent husband (Mau 1902). Starting from this evidence, I will question how people felt lonely in an ancient Roman city from such evidence.

2) I will study the eremitical landscape of medieval southern Portugal to assess spiritual loneliness/solitude (Volzone et al., 2023).

3) Archaeological studies of fishermen's communities in 17th-century Newfoundland will be exploited to demonstrate strategies to mitigate loneliness (Pope 2004).

4) My study of contemporary houses abandoned following the death of elderly people without heirs (Casimiro et al., submitted) to tackle archaeological, spatial and material evidence of loneliness/solitude.

By shedding light on a universal and complex human experience often neglected in historical narratives, this study can significantly impact our understanding of the past and the present, providing valuable insights on coping with these emotions today.