Abstract Emotions are a vital part of coalescent communities. Specifically, they help create the broader relational fields in which coalescent communities form; they also dictate the practices and sentiments of community members as well as the impacts of these communities on the wider world. This article examines the “affective fields” that created Noble-Wieting, a late thirteenth-century Langford-Mississippian village in what is now central Illinois. Due to population movements, social unrest, and climate change during the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries in the North American Midwest, feelings of unease and anxiety colored the larger relational and affective fields in which Noble-Wieting was constructed and were the driving force behind the construction of coalescent communities like Noble-Wieting. Archaeological evidence from an ongoing consultative and collaborative project at Noble-Wieting shows that the layout of the village and the activities that occurred there facilitated community integration and thus mitigated residents’ anxiety, at least to some degree. This study shows that the physical layout and materiality of communities are crucial in altering residents’ experiences and emotions.
Skousen et al. (Tue,) studied this question.