History & Archaeology of folk beliefs Research Papers (original) (raw)
Masurian folk beliefs (East Prussia).
It is widely recognized that folk beliefs flourished in early modern Finland which had formally been Christianized for centuries. These folk beliefs seem to propose, in the modern view, that people in the past believed in the existence of... more
It is widely recognized that folk beliefs flourished in early modern Finland which had formally been Christianized for centuries. These folk beliefs seem to propose, in the modern view, that people in the past believed in the existence of non-human beings, such as trolls and spirits, and considered a variety of material things from artefacts to landscape elements to have special properties, such as agency, consciousness, and personality. Folk beliefs, however, may have been misrepresented due to the assumption that they originate in religious-like thinking. This paper reconsiders the nature of folk beliefs, their relationship with religion, and their significance to archaeological interpretation both theoretically and through a case study. It is argued that folk beliefs in early modern northern Finland – and in other similar contexts – can be understood in terms of local perception and engagement with the material world. Folk beliefs, in this view, were embedded in the dynamics of everyday life, and they are, at least in the specific case discussed in this paper, indicative of two-way relatedness between people and various constituents of the material world. The archaeological implications of this view are discussed in the context of the 17th-century town of Tornio on the northern Gulf of Bothnia.
- by Vesa-Pekka Herva and +1
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- Mythology And Folklore, Archaeology, Anthropology, Folklore
Diss. Sun Yat-sen University, 2017
T he entire world population is oppressed today because of the threat of nuclear war. The potential to annihilate the entire human race far outstrips the many pressing concerns about other oppressions. Every country in our shrinking... more
T he entire world population is oppressed today because of the threat of nuclear war. The potential to annihilate the entire human race far outstrips the many pressing concerns about other oppressions. Every country in our shrinking global world needs to continue to press forward in confronting the use of chemical weapons, human trafficking, equality for women and children, and all social justice issues in our local, state, and national communities. However, the priority is to retard and stop the proliferation of nuclear arms. Maddow (2012) describes the aging process of the United States' stack of nuclear weapons. Approximately 5,000 weapons currently comprise the arsenal of nuclear arms: Even though there's been a lot of blue-ribbon hand-wringing about how best to sustain and rejuvenate our big, leaky, can't-quite-keep-track-of-our-warheads-nuclear-bomb infrastructure, our worries about it haven't caused us to re-ask the big question of WHY we still have it. Given the manifest difficulties of maintaining our apocalyptic nuclear stockpile, how many nuclear bombs does the United States need to complete every conceivable military mission in which we used them? The world community is fearful of North Korea, Iran, and other coun-tries' potential for building nuclear weapons. The threat of wiping out the human race is overwhelming.