Geoarchaeology of ritual behavior and sacred places: an introduction (original) (raw)
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Geo-ethnoarchaeology in action
For over half of a century, ethnoarchaeology has served as an important analytical tool in the development of archaeological theory and the interpretation of human culture. In recent years, with the growth of geoarchaeology as a subdiscipline of archaeological research, scholars have begun to examine contemporary and recent contexts by applying analytical methods from the field of geosciences (e.g., soil micromorphology, mineralogical, elemental, phytolith and isotope analysis) in order to better understand site formation processes and depositional and post-depositional processes. First, this paper explores , as contributions to archaeological sciences, the concept of ethnoarchaeology in general and the emergence of geo-ethnoarchaeology in particular. Second, through examination and synthesis of several key case studies, this paper emphasizes the usefulness of a broad range of laboratory-based analytical methods in linking the archaeological record and human activity. Third, this paper brings together data from recent geo-ethnoarchaeological studies conducted in Africa, South and Central America, Europe and South and West Asia that analyze floor deposits, hearths, degradation of mud houses, use of space, use of plants, animal husbandry and cooking installations. A wealth of information is assembled here to form a reference framework crucial to any study of archaeological materials and sites and for the interpretation of archaeological site formation.
Studia archaeologica et linguistica : miscellanea in honorem annos LXXV peragentis Professoris Adriani Poruciuc oblata Other Authors: Aparaschivei, Dan , [Editor] Berzovan, Alexandru 1986- , [Editor] Published: Cluj-Napoca : Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2023., 2023
The present work has the purpose to open some possibilities of interpretation of several artifacts, which, viewed as a whole, can bring new directions of vision in order to reconstruct some cultic or religious activities in the Neolithic period. We started our study from the premise that religious life is developed in a special place, and in this way temples and sanctuaries appear. It is possible that people who approached the sacred space must accomplish certain conditions, such as initiation. Profane activities are prohibited inside the place of worship. All the arrangements made within the cult buildings have the role of props for certain rituals and cults held inside. We distinguish a series of universal rituals, present in all prehistoric societies. We note the fumigatio, mactatio and libatio (more precisely the burnt offering, the blood offering and the liquid offering), each with a specific inventory: libation vessels, for keeping some liquids, seeds or products; idols or altars with cultic signs and symbols that have the role of transmitting a message or with an apotropaic role. Grinding, keeping grains and ground flour, preparation of ritual food are elements documented in certain temples. This apparently profane activity is widely present in religious buildings, in temples, but also in models of houses / sanctuaries in the Cucuten area. On the same line of ritual preparation, the activity of weaving, the making of clothes (perhaps for the administrator of the cult) or of the various fabrics needed in the cultic cleaning is included. Until now, based on the elements that are repeated in many contexts, situations, features and cultures, hypotheses have been elaborated regarding a series of cults present in the Neolithic and the Copper Age. A cult with a wide spread is that of fertility and fecundity, linked to cult manifestations in many aspects, demonstrated by the presence of idols and figurines, ritual activities, specific architectural elements. All these aspects were sometimes included under the global term of agrarian cults. Another particularly important cult is that of the female divinity, in all its aspects, encompassing a series of terms such as "great goddess" or "mother goddess". This female character, omnipresent in the central, south-eastern and southern European areas, is sometimes represented on a monumental scale, forming cultic altars. Correlating the low light or the light directed on the monumental statues, it is possible to induce the feeling of mystery, of impressing the person, the worshiper, the believer or the "priest" entering the interior of the temple building. It is possible that this was the purpose of making altars and statues of impressive dimensions. Another omnipresent character in the cultures analysed by us is the bull. Its representations covered a wide range, from wall paintings, reliefs with clay skulls and bucrania, skeletons or skulls of bulls deposited as offerings or as leftovers from public feasts, zoomorphic idols. As a symbol, the bull represents the God of Storms, through his roar like thunder, the god who brings rain and ensures the growth of plants. The art from the Neolithic and Eneolithic periods has a religious purpose, being intended to ensure abundant harvests by directly observing the cycles of nature, the seasons. The analysis of the religion of a community as a whole could help to understand the way in which the majority of individuals in a certain society worship their gods and especially the way of thinking and conception of cultic spaces.
Some spatial aspects of the ritual behavioural at the beginning of Bronze Age.
In this paper we examine continuity and change in the spatial relationships of cemeteries and other activity areas at the beginning of Bronze Age in Bohemia and Moravia. A close proximity of burial and residential areas is known from many Únětice sites and a similar pattern has been observed in Bell Beaker settlements and burial sites. Some of the Únětice cemeteries overlap their contemporary residential areas and use settlement features as secondary grave pits. This was a new phenomenon unknown in the Corded Ware or Beaker periods and it may have represented a weakening of the perception of strictly defined spatially separated funerary areas. The bodies in the settlement pits were buried in a ritual position with the same grave goods as those buried within the cemetery. Modern agriculture turned most of the central European landscape into arable land and destroyed almost all remains of the above ground burial structures, such as burial mounds. However there seems to be some evidence of the continual use of barrows from the Corded Ware period to the Únětice period. The spatial structure of cemeteries, however, changed dramatically. Beside other new features, strong spatial links appear at some sites between Únětice houses and burials, creating parallel alignments of graves with the nearby dwellings. In comparison to the Bell Beaker period, the burial rites of the early Bronze Age generally became less orthodox and more variable. In spite of certain specifics in the early Bronze Age ritual behaviour, we can suppose that the structure of the symbolic systems of Únětice burial practices was a result of a continuous development within the late Eneolithic cultural sequence and was evidence of progressive social differentiation in the Central European Bronze Age.
Festschrift Kristiansen. BAR Int. S. 2508
This paper outlines an archaeological approach to rituals that separates ritual (praxis) from religion or belief (doxa). Rather than trying to elucidate what people may have thought, we suggest focusing on ritual as action; these actions have a huge communicative and transformative potential and thus it is their effect on society that interests us here. This social efficacy can be scrutinized archaeologically in the longue durée. We apply this understanding to a new approach to the study of hoards and deposits. These, too, are understood as the results of ritual action, i.e. sequenced and communicative practice that involves handling and manipulating cultural knowledge, reproducing and maybe altering it, thus affecting social identities and relations. We therefore suggest focusing on the depositional practice rather than the motivations behind deposition. Moreover we suggest proceeding from the understanding of depositions as ritual actions to analysing what effect they had on space and how they simultaneously were directed by culturally perceived spatial structures.