Seeing is perceiving?

Current archaeological concerns with viewing and all things visual are predicated upon a series of assumptions that have so far escaped serious consideration. This state of affairs resulted from the way in which our concerns with mapping and analysing patterns of seeing and looking in the past emerged before any broader critical consideration of the senses per se. To place an interpretative premium upon viewing space is to accept that vision as a perceptual category was meaningful to those under study, and that it, above all else, shaped and structured understanding to the point that it can profitably be represented and analysed in complete isolation from all other sensory stimuli. In this paper we argue that vision should be folded back into the mix of the sensorium and sketch two potential pathways for achieving this.