'Cult' in the Study of Religion and Archaeology (original) (raw)
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Archaeology of Ancient Religions
In J. Barton et al. (eds.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Archaeology is essential to the cross-cultural study of religion. Archaeologists' focus on material evidence enables them to investigate groups not represented or underrepresented in textual traditions, including non-literate societies and non-elite members of literate societies. Accordingly, archaeology provides a broad comparative lens and longue durée perspective, as well as a means to study the practices of individuals across the social spectrum. Additionally, a disciplinary emphasis on material culture and human-thing relationships enables archaeologists to investigate the materiality of ancient religious traditions-the entanglement of ancient beliefs and practices within the material world. Because every stage of the archaeological process involves interpretation and theorization, archaeologists' View PDF theoretical stances and methodological choices shape the data they obtain. For example, any discussion of the "archaeology of religion" will be shaped by the author's (explicit or implicit) operational definition of "religion" itself (see Part I, "Considering 'Religion' and 'Ritual'"). Modern Western constructions of "religion" involve culturally specific concepts that developed within particular historical contexts, and ancient people's understandings of their beliefs, rituals, and objects may often have employed quite different analytical categories. Additionally, archaeological approaches to ancient religions have undergone significant transformation over the 20th and early 21st centuries (see Part II, "History of the Field"). In contrast to the "New Archaeology" of the 1960s-1970s, which portrayed religion as epiphenomenal and downplayed its significance as a primary generator of social change, late-20th-century movements brought renewed attention to ancient symbolism, ideology, and religion and encouraged scholars to seek methodologically rigorous ways to study ancient religion and ritual. The third section of the article ("Current Perspectives and Developments") examines contemporary research on the archaeology of religion and analyzes the field's intersections with, and importance to, broader interdisciplinary debates. Today, a proliferation of new scholarship on the archaeology of ancient religions explores the complex interactions between people, objects, and ideas in antiquity. Within the resulting range of new and ongoing developments, this article emphasizes (1) a productive engagement with the broader "material turn" in the humanities and social sciences; (2) a renewed emphasis on religion as a causal force for social change; and (3) an increasing focus on religion's embeddedness within daily life, entailing the reconsideration of analytical categories such as "domestic cult," "personal religion," and "magic." The contemporary archaeological study of ancient religions is a deeply multidisciplinary endeavor, frequently requiring archaeologists to engage with theories, methods, and specialists from fields that may include anthropology, religious studies, archaeometry, art history, philology, and more. Archaeologists not only generate empirical data about specific sites or cultures, but also investigate broader intellectual questions concerning the role of religion in society, the importance of material culture to religious experience, and the forms of agency wielded by both humans and objects. The archaeology of religion thus has important contributions to make to numerous subjects and debates throughout the humanities and social sciences.
(In), Renfrew, C. and Bahn, P. (eds.), Archaeology: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, pp. 45-49, 2005
Opuscula 5, 190-192, 2012
This book brings together the papers from a conference which took place at the Centre for the Study of Antiquity and the Department of Classical Archaeology at the University of Aarhus in 2004. The aim of the event was twofold, on the one hand, to establish a network of young scholars working on ancient Greek cult, and on the other, to let them discuss their ideas under the guidance of Richard Hamilton, a seasoned scholar, and subsequently develop them into articles. The scope of the volume is presented by one of the organisers, Jesper Tae Jensen, in a short preface. Then follow eight articles, seven of which were presented at the conference. The book is concluded with an index and a list of the contributors. The articles span a wide field including archaeology, philology, architecture, history, musicology and religion with the particular aim of combining the study of material culture with ancient texts and inscriptions. The first paper, by Lisbeth Bredholt Christensen, explores the definition of the term "cult" within various branches of scholarship, in particular in relation to concepts like "religion" and "ritual", stressing the great distinctions in the uses of the modern terminology. Within the study of religion "cult" has either been of very little interest or considered as "ritual lived" and discussed primarily within particular religions from an emic perspective with no attempt at applying an analytic apparatus, contrary to "ritual" which is treated as a category where different kinds can be discerned, such as transitory rituals, prayer, sacrifice etc, clearly an etic approach. Sociology (at least in the anglophone sphere) instead uses cult for private religions experience often contrasted with how institutionalized and mainstream religion is practiced. In prehistoric archaeology and Classical archaeology and history, on the other hand, cult is a central concept. In the study of prehistory, the preference of the terms cult, rituals and religious practice instead of religion can be explained by the nature of the archaeological evidence, which does not allow for the reconstructions of belief, the core of religion. Among Classicists the situation is partly the inverse, as cult is used as a synonym to religion rather than to ritual, an effect of the prominence of the written evidence which facilitates the interpretation of the archaeological material. This paper cautions for an unreflected use of terms, but there is are certainly further distinctions between the terminologies in different languages which should be addressed as well. Richard Hamilton analyses the relationship between altars, animals and baskets (kistai) on Attic votive reliefs from the Classical period by applying a statistical method, a chi-square test. The evidence consists of 224 reliefs dedicated to Zeus, Apollon, Artemis, Athena, the Nymphs, Asklepios and the banqueting hero, presented in a catalogue in an appendix. Several interesting observations are made. Of particular importance is the relation between altar and kiste, two elements that have to be taken as having different connotations in the reliefs. Altars more frequently occur with animals than with baskets, refuting van Straten's proposal that the kiste holds sacrificial cakes. There is also a variation between the deities and in reliefs for the Nymphs altars may have had a different meaning than to suggest animal sacrifice. A closer investigation of the kistai shows them to be is more strongly associated with children and family groups, in particular women, rather than with sacrifice of animals or vegetarian offerings, a conclusion backed up by a brief detour into Attic vase-painting. Statistics are rarely used in this way on ancient evidence, which makes the paper interesting, in particular, as pointed out by Hamilton, such an approach demands both a precise description of one's thesis and a consideration of the converse of the same thesis. On the other hand, the relationships revealed cannot be explained by this method. Bronwen Wickkiser's contribution examines the relation between the establishment of Asklepios in Athens and the plague, as the introduction of the god is usually taken to be a response to the local healing gods' incapacity to help. The only source informing us about the
Does Archaeology Generate Propositions about Religion?
How does one submit an essay for his father's Festschrift? I suppose the answer is to do the usual: one aims to add to the understanding and discussion of the topic. The essay will have to stand on its own merits, but I can say with confidence that no other scholar has penetrated my thinking so deeply as my father has. And this is not just because I have entered the same field.
Beyond Belief: The Archaeology of Religion and Ritual.
In Y. M. Rowan (ed.) Beyond Belief: The Archaeology of Religion and Ritual, pp. 1-10., 2012
Until recently, the study of religion and ritual by archaeologists was typically found among those studying "world religions," particularly those with the benefit of texts. Building upon a renewed interest in archaeological explorations of ancient religion and sacred ritual, the authors in this volume construct new understandings of the material forms of religion through the combination of multiple perspectives and differing methodological approaches. By using a variety of strategies applied to widely divergent regions and time periods, these scholars demonstrate how the archaeological study of ancient religion and ritual is methodologically and theoretically valid. [religion, ritual, materiality, theory, practice]
The Archaeology of Greek Religion
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (Springer Reference), ed. C. Smith, 2014
a culture-historical approach to the interpretation 33 of archaeological materials. The culture revealed 34 was deemed a priori unique and so beyond com-35 parison with other nations. The great ritual cen-36 ters were among the sites apportioned to these 37 foreign schools. Greek religion was already well 38 established as a field of textual inquiry when 39 these excavations commenced. The rich epi-40 graphic record from these sites, which named 41 figures familiar from myth and history, 42 reinforced the unproblematized relationship 43 with textual sources and delayed the emergence 44 of a critical body of theory regarding the relation-45 ship between the textual and the archaeological 46 record. Although calls for greater integration of 47 textual and material evidence appear in many 48 surveys of Greek religion, literary continues to 49 outweigh material evidence in the key texts for 50 the field (Hägg 1992; Osborne 1994; Morris 51 2000; Burkert 2011: 1-7). Archaeologists work-52 ing on Greek cult, moreover, are rarely located in 53 anthropology or religion departments, more fre-54 quently in art history, classics, or history -where 55 publications focused on iconography, architec-56 tural history, or the relationship of finds to 57 Greek and Latin texts speak most clearly to col-58 leagues judging questions of promotion and 59 tenure.
Archaeology and New or Alternative Religious Movements
Session Abstract: New and alternative religious movements make copious use of ancient symbols, beliefs, and practices. From the use of the Egyptian ankh in the Western occult tradition to the creation of Neo-Pagan Druidic orders and identities, these symbols, beliefs, and practices hold potent meanings to those who employ them today; meanings that are grounded in a perceived authenticity derived from their antiquity. The act of reuse, however, resituates and thereby alters the meanings and significance of these things. For many archaeologists, this shift in meaning creates a tension with the representations of ancient cultures as produced by the academy. Our session will explore this tension through analyses of newly creative or appropriative religious and spiritual behaviors involving archaeological materials, as well as the ramifications of these acts for public archaeology.