The Archaeology of Religion and Belief

School of Archaeology & Ancient History 

The Archaeology of Religion and Belief 

Level 3 Courses by Distance Learning 

www.le.ac.uk/archaeology 

AR3553

School of Archaeology and Ancient History 

BA (LEVEL 3) IN ARCHEOLOGY BY DISTANCE LEARNING 

AR3553 The Archaeology of 

Religion and Belief 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

This module was developed with the assistance and advice of a number of colleagues in the 

School of Archaeology and Ancient History at Leicester, especially Deirdre O’Sullivan and 

Ruth Young. I would like also to acknowledge the very material help in the form of actual 

contributions from Katharina Rebay-Salisbury. Lara Callaghan provided invaluable support in 

the DL office, and Kamlesh Chandarana in Print Services. 

Produced by the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester 

The contents must not be reproduced or sold 

Copyright 2013 

Updated September 2014 

© SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY 1

2 © SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY

Contents 

Preliminaries 

Section 1 

Section 2 

Section 3 

Section 4 

Section 5 

Section 6 

Section 7 

Section 8 

Section 9 

Section 10 

Thinking about Religion, Ritual and Belief 

Of Gods and Men, Ancestors and Relics 

Rock Art and Shamans 

Religion and belief in Space I 

Religion and belief in Space II 

Life, Death & Burial I 

Life, Death & Burial II 

Archaeology and Religious Change I 

Archaeology and Religious Change II 

Archaeologies, Religion and Belief 



The Archaeology of Religion and Belief 

0.1. Introduction to the Module 

This new course forms a core component of the Level Three BA in Archaeology by Distance 

Learning at the University of Leicester. Building on a number of the modules that you may 

have already taken at Level One and Level Two, it provides a structured framework for the 

archaeological study of religion and belief. 

The course is designed to engage with issues of religion and belief in various ways and at 

different levels, which in turn may range across a number of areas of archaeological study, 

some previously encountered, and some perhaps less familiar. We begin with a consideration 

of the some of the more theoretical background concerning religion and belief, and related 

spheres (e.g. ritual). As a point of departure we need to get some sense of our subject matter, 

and how we may approach it. Questions will be raised which we hope will become clearer as 

the module unfolds, and which can be revisited at its conclusion. 

We will move on to focus on a number of often prominent areas of archaeological studies in 

which religion (or ritual, or beliefs) may be implicated. These also include a number of areas 

of study which you have encountered previously, at least in passing, which we can now look 

at in a little more depth. Some other areas may be more unfamiliar. It is also possible to look 

at themes and fields of research which may be of importance should you wish to develop your 

studies further. 

The module makes use of a range of case studies relating to different periods and archaeological 

contexts. Ranging across time and space, we take a deliberately wide-ranging approach, to 

encourage comparative perspectives on certain topics. All too often, working within relatively 

narrow fields of study we risk losing a good sense of perspective on wider and more important 

issues which we should be addressing. It may also become tempting to ignore important 

evidence from other areas which may challenge what may happen to be fashionable theory 

in specific areas. As such the module is not expecting you to develop a specialist knowledge 

of late Roman religious practices, for example, but it should be possible to recognise shared 

issues, themes and linkages across time and space which will allow you to engage with the 

archaeology of a wide range of places and periods in a thoughtful and critical manner. By this 

stage in your studies you should also be able to follow up and research in greater depth topics 

of special interest to you, through your own reading. 

Opting for the wider, rather than narrower approach to this module is, we hope, justified by 

the great interest of the subject matter. Stepping outside of more familiar areas of the West 


(often represented as increasingly secular and non-religious) we may also be quickly reminded 

how our modern preconceptions of the place of religion in life may need to be revised. Again, 

we hope that the comparative case studies will take you into fresh fields as well as build on 

your existing knowledge, and encourage you to dig a bit deeper into the arguments and 

evidence. 

0.2 Organisation of the Module 

We have selected a number of different themes for this course, which we will briefly introduce 

here. Many of you will have taken earlier courses in the undergraduate programme, and this 

section indicates some relationships which you may recognise. It is however designed as a freestanding 

module, and you should be able to achieve all of the learning outcomes with the 

materials provided or recommended. 

As we have said, we will begin with a consideration of some of the more theoretical background 

concerning notions of religion and belief, and related spheres (e.g. ritual – what do we 

mean by this?). As a point of departure we need to get some sense of our subject matter, 

and how we may approach it and it is important to move beyond the common-sense (‘we all 

know what we mean about that..’. .. do we?) to recognising that things may be slightly more 

complicated than we once suspected! It is all very well studying ‘Roman religion’ , but would a 

Roman actually know what you were talking about if you told them? Questions will be raised 

which we hope will become clearer as the module unfolds, and which can be revisited at its 

conclusion. 

The second section continues to develop some basic grounding in the development of longterm 

histories of religion as well as picking up on some themes which merit wider discussion. 

When do gods, or goddesses first appear? What do we mean by ancestors – a term muchused 

in archaeological texts? When we are talking about belief, may this include other sorts of 

‘belief’ – beliefs about the body, for example? What about sacred objects – in archaeological 

terms (archaeology as a study focussed on material culture). Examples from medieval and 

modern contexts are used, raising issues about how we give meanings to ‘things’. 

The next section moves into another field – rock art – which deserves some more detailed 

attention. Some of the theoretical issues which need to be faced are introduced, as well as 

a series of case-studies, ranging from those dealing with living communities, to much more 

ancient. We can also explore related issues of how we may envisage prehistoric religions – 

especially in relation to debates concerning notions of shamans, ancient and modern. 

The next two sections look at issues of how religion and religiosity may relate to space. 

This provides an opportunity to start thinking about landscape (landscape archaeology 

being an important approach in modern archaeological studies) and the fascinating world 


of pilgrimage activities. You will have encountered pilgrimage in earlier modules (e.g. 

AR2553) and this is a rich and rewarding area of study, manifested in many ways, from major 

architectural studies, to the study of artefacts associated with pilgrimage/religious centres, in 

many religious traditions. This again links us with the modern world where pilgrimage still 

survives as an important form of religious activity, and shapes the world we live in. The issues 

of sacred space and urbanism are also investigated in AR3552. 

The next two sections provide an opportunity to think about mortuary archaeology in more 

focussed ways, introducing some of the key theoretical issues that we need to be familiar with 

to allow more specific studies. Mortuary archaeology and what it may hope to achieve is a 

complex and fascinating subject, and these sections will provide a grounding in this field. The 

extent to which religion and religious beliefs may or may not be reflected in burial practices 

is of course one key area of interest. The first section will look in some more detail at some 

studies of later prehistoric and Roman practices, and their potential for study. 

The second section will explore the complex world of the post-Roman/early medieval period, 

which has a rich archaeological record. The development of varied Christian traditions of burial 

practice are also explored - again with an interest in exploring the extent to which religion 

was important in the development of new practices, allowing comparisons with other religions 

(e.g. Islam). A further facet of medieval, and post-medieval, research is the study of burial/ 

commemorative monuments, a topic which is also explored here a little further. 

Some themes raised here are then further explored in two sections dealing with religious 

change. How religious practices may have changed within the Roman world, in an expanding 

Roman Empire. How the Roman Empire became Christianised is also a very important topic 

which is further explored. Moving forward in time, religious changes underway at the end 

of the medieval period – in the Reformation – also provide a fascinating focus for study, in 

a period which is also a major disciplinary dividing point. Religion also plays a prominent role 

in the colonial and imperial histories of the post-medieval world. Studies within the domain 

of historical archaeology may however provide new insights into research in earlier periods. 

In the final section we will return to some of the issues addressed at the start and see how 

understandings may have developed through the module. This provides an opportunity to 

consolidate our thinking about this complex and wide-ranging topic. 

In each section, you will be challenged to think about a set of key questions to bear in mind 

as you work your way through the course materials. At other points, often after directed 

readings, you will be asked to consider more specific issues, reflect on points of comparison 


etween case studies, or otherwise think through the implications of what has been covered. 

The sequence of sections is developmental, and you will find the course easier to follow if 

you adhere to this. However there are many connections to be made between sections and a 

number of the case studies are relevant to more than one theme. 

0.3. Learning Outcomes 

At the end of this module students should be able to demonstrate that they have: 

• engaged with archaeological approaches to the study of religion, ritual and belief 

• understood key concepts which frame and define the study of religion and belief 

• become familiar with the archaeological methods used to explore different facets 

of religion and belief 

• grasped the range of sources which are also available for research 

• acquired an appreciation of the potential complexity of exploring questions of 

religious beliefs and practices and the different types of analysis which may be 

adopted in relation to the material record. 

0.4. Resources for this Course 

Reading Materials 

The following text books are provided with the module book: 

Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) 1998. The Archaeology of Rock-Art, Cambridge: CUP. 

Ashmore, W. and Knapp, A. B. (eds) 1999. Archaeologies of Landscape: contemporary 

perspectives, Oxford: Blackwell. 

Parker Pearson, M. 2003. The Archaeology of Death and Burial, Stroud: Sutton. 

In addition, this book should be accessed as an e-book through the Library: 

Insoll, T. (ed.) 2001. Archaeology and World Religion, London: Routledge 

Online Resources 

In addition to the books and readings provided, there is a great deal of useful material available 

on the WWW, but care should be taken in selecting appropriate sources. Wikipedia should not 

be used as an academic citation. 

Further reading is identified in the bibliographies at the end of each section, as well as within 

texts you are reading. In many cases this consists of articles from journals available online 


via the University of Leicester Library E-Link. It is expected that you will be making more and 

more use of academic journals, World Archaeology, Medieval Archaeology, Journal of Social 

Archaeology, History of Religions, Past and Present, Journal of Early Christian Studies, to name 

a few. 

A selection of some other reliable sources, often providing access to much data, is set out 

below: 

ADS - The Archaeology Data Service http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/ 

BBIH (Bibliography of British and Irish History) a helpful compilation of publications, 

updated regularly. BBIH provides bibliographic data on historical writing dealing with the 

British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, during all periods for which 

written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present. As well as providing details of 

publications, the Bibliography provides links to online catalogues to help you find the items 

that it lists in research libraries in Britain, Ireland and the USA, and links to online text where 

this is available. 

The Society for Medieval Archaeology http://www.medievalarchaeology.org/ 

This society supports research into the archaeology of the Medieval period, with a strong, 

but not exclusive emphasis on the archaeology of Britain and Ireland. It has a useful website 

where you can access the most recent newsletter, as well as information about current 

projects. The journal, Medieval Archaeology is available online via the Society webpage, and 

this contains an annual review of fieldwork in Britain and Ireland. 

The Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology http://www.spma.org.uk/ 

The SPMA promotes “the archaeology of late medieval to industrial society in Britain, Europe 

and those countries influenced by European colonialism… up to the present day”. Its journal, 

Post-Medieval Archaeology and newsletter are both published twice-yearly; you can access 

the more recent issues of the newsletter on the website, and the journal via the University of 

Leicester Library e-link. Its annual review of fieldwork was published in the journal until 

2007. It is now put directly online, and can be accessed via the society webpage and the ADS. 

The Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group (IPMAG) http://www.science.ulster.ac.uk/crg/ 

ipmag/ 

This is a fairly recent (2001) creation, but it has established a dynamic reputation and 

supports a well-maintained web site. Here you can access a useful bibliography on Irish post- 


medieval archaeology and summaries of post-medieval excavations carried out in Ireland 

between 1985-2001. It issues a regular newsletter; most volumes are available online. 

Index of Grey Literature in the USA 

The National Park Service and the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University 

of Arkansas provide a resource for grey (unpublished) literature in the United States, 

the National Archaeological Database. NADB-Reports is an expanded bibliographic 

inventory of over 350,000 reports on archaeological investigation and planning, mostly of 

limited circulation. This grey literature is claimed to represent a large portion of the primary 

information available on archaeological sites in the U.S. The database contains records going 

back to the 1980s, but it has not been updated since 2004. You can access the database 

online at http://www.nps.gov/archeology/tools/nadb.htm 

Database of Irish Excavation Reports http://www.excavations.ie 

This database contains summary accounts of all the excavations carried out in Ireland – North 

and South – from 1970 to 2005. The system is based on the summary reports submitted 

annually through the licensing system, and is therefore fairly comprehensive, although 

the reports are often fairly brief. More recent excavations are summarised in the annual 

Excavations Bulletin produced by Wordwell. 

Local Archaeological Societies 

The publications of local societies are a huge resource of published archaeological 

information about all sorts of archaeology and history. Although many are still only available 

as print copies, several provide information about journal contents on websites, and the 

number with online access is steadily increasing. You can access a list of UK local societies, 

and their web links via the ADS, at http://www.britarch.ac.uk/info/socs.asp. 

EDINA: Digimap 

This resource, supported by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) is based at 

the University of Edinburgh. It gives you access to contemporary UK Ordnance Survey 

maps. You need to register for the service individually, and there is a delay of up to 48 hours 

between registration and intended use. 

Digimap allow you to access the full range of current Ordnance Survey maps, from the 1: 

50.000 (large scale) to the 1: 1250 (small scale). The latter is sufficiently detailed to allow the 

reproduction of the footprints of buildings, but not all areas of the country have coverage at 

every scale. Digimap supports two fairly simple packages that allow you to produce your own 

maps from these sources. The simplest, Roam, allows the capture of and reproduction of 

grids of Ordnance Survey maps at fixed scales. Carto is a more complex package (though it is 

still fairly easy to use). In Carto you can choose your own scale, turn off elements of the map 

that you don’t need, and print at different page sizes. 


You can also access Historic Ordnance Survey maps via EDINA. Although the quality of these 

is often very poor, they may be sufficient for research/information purposes. 

It is possible to download OS data tiles for particular grid squares, in a number of 

different formats, which can then be incorporated into GIS or CAD packages for individual 

modification. The facility can also be used to get precise grid references for sites, and to 

calculate distances and areas on a map. 

To Register for EDINA: 

You need to logon to EDINA via http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/index.shtml Access to EDINA 

databases is firstly via Institutional login. Instructions for this are at http://www.le.ac.uk/ 

library/digital/accessoffcampushelp.htm (How do I use Institutional login? Heading) 

Having logged onto EDINA you can register for Digimap (or other databases) by clicking on 

the link to registration and completing the online forms. 

Assessment and Assignments 

There are two assignments for this module. The first assignment should be submitted after 

Week 6 of your study period. The second assignment is due in at the end of the course. Each 

assignment is worth 50% of your overall assessment. 

Assignment 1 

Write a 3000 word essay on one of the following topics. Your essay should draw on individual 

case studies covered in the module or encountered in your wider reading and research. It is 

required to be appropriately presented and referenced. 

Essay Titles: 

1. Using case-studies from at least two continents, discuss how ethnographically 

informed approaches may contribute to the archaeological study of rock art. 

2. In a region of your choice discuss the historical role of pilgrimage activities, their 

development and material manifestations in relation to the wider phenomenon 

we term ‘pilgrimage’. 

3. Discuss, using case-studies how a ‘landscape’ approach may be linked with an 

interest in the ‘religious’ in archaeological research. 

4. Can studies of prehistoric rock-art realistically expect to be more than speculative 

imaginings? 

5. Sacred objects appear to be a near universal phenomenon across time and 

space. Discuss, using case-studies, some of their more prominent archaeological 

manifestations, in at least two different religious traditions. 


These essays will require you to draw on theoretical discussions encountered in the module 

sections, illustrated with appropriate archaeological examples. A full engagement with the 

core textbooks and course materials should be apparent in your written work. You are also 

encouraged to develop and extend your reading beyond the examples which can be included 

in the course materials, so bear in mind that we would like to see evidence for wider research 

and independent reading, appropriate to Level 3 work. 

Assignment 2 

Write a 3000 word essay on one of the following topics. Your essay should draw on individual 

case studies and use archaeological examples covered in the module or encountered in your 

wider reading and research. It is required to be appropriately presented and referenced. 

Essay Titles: 

1. ‘To what extent can archaeologists aspire to identify and explore religious aspects 

of prehistoric life ? ‘ 

2. ‘How useful may studies of mortuary practice be in identifying religious change?’ 

(Use case studies from at least two different periods/contexts in your discussion) 

3. ‘Would it be helpful to focus more on religious practice rather than religious 

beliefs in archaeological discussions?’ 

4. Colonialism as ‘the colonisation of consciousness’: using at least two case-studies 

from different periods, discuss how an interest in religion may contribute to 

understandings of colonial and imperial encounters 

5. Do mortuary practices tell us about the concerns of the living, or about ideas about 

death? Discuss using case studies from at least two different periods/contexts. 


SECTION 1 

Thinking about Religion, 

Ritual and Belief 



Thinking about Religion, Ritual and Belief 

Key Readings 

Orme, B. 1982. Anthropology for Archaeologists. An Introduction. (Chapter 5. 

Ritual and Religion. Pp. 218-254.) London: Duckworth. (paper) 

Renfrew, C. 1994. The archaeology of religion. In Renfrew, C. and Zubrow, E. 

(eds) The ancient mind, Cambridge: CUP, 47-54 (paper) 

Fogelin, L. 2007. The Archaeology of Religious Ritual, Annual Review of 

Anthropology 36: 55-71. (paper, also e-link) – {you will probably want to revisit 

this at the end of the module} 

 

Fitzgerald, T. 2003. ‘Religion’ and ‘the Secular’ in Japan. Problems in history, social 

anthropology, and the study of religion, Electronic Journal of Contemporary 

Japanese Studies http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/discussionpapers/ 

Fitzgerald.html 

Additional Readings 

Asad, T. 1983. Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz, 

Man 18 (2): 237-259. (e-link) 

Asad, T. 1993. The Construction of Religion as an anthropological Category 

(Chapter 1) , In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in 

Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 27-54. (paper) 

Bossy, J. 1982. Some Elementary Forms of Durkheim, Past and Present 95: 3-18. 

(e-link) 

Smith, J. Z. 1980. The Bare Facts of Ritual, History of Religions 20(1/2): 112-12. 

(e-link) 

Introduction 

The contents of this module will be wide-ranging in time and space, using Religion as a focus 

of study, but ranging widely around that. We expect that by this stage in your studies you will 

have developed a sense of what aspects of archaeology you are especially interested in, but 

hopefully not to the exclusion of everything else. In this module we will also be reading quite 

widely in books and journals which are not, at least at first glance, self-evidently concerned 

with, or presented as archaeology. Along with explicitly archaeological readings, we will be 

looking at texts written by historians, sociologists, cultural geographers and anthropologists, 

by academics who work in religious studies departments, amongst others. Do not be put off by 

this. These are all people who are interested in studying the world, and making sense of the 

world, and all (we hope) have useful things to say to us … to help us understand the particular 


archaeological manifestations of the world which interest us. What they all contribute are 

their own particular theoretical insights into issues which we all (in many disciplines) need to 

confront, if we are to better understand the world, and past worlds. Here it should be quite 

clear that ‘theory’ is absolutely integral and essential to what we do. 

In this case working towards a clearer understanding of what we are talking about (e.g. 

‘religion’, ‘ritual’ etc ) must be our point of departure. In this first section we will begin 

by looking at a few key questions which we will need to be thinking about as the module 

progresses, and begin organising our thoughts about what we may, or may not, be talking 

about at any particular moment (this is a point that several of your readings will make, again 

and again, in that many of the problems people seem to encounter when dealing with topics 

such as ‘religion’ or ‘ritual’ are due to a lack of clarity of what they are actually talking about, 

and perhaps a reluctance to grapple with some basic theory, which other academic disciplines 

perhaps take for granted: see for example &Orme (1981), a useful introductory text, albeit 

some 30 years old. 

What we hope will emerge is that there are no easy answers to many of the questions we 

might raise, and certainly no ‘right’ answers (if there were then we could stop doing research 

and stop thinking about such things..). Nonetheless, the topics covered in the module will, we 

hope, prove interesting, covering quite a lot of new ground, while building on your previous 

studies. We will revisit some of these questions and issues at the end of the module and see 

where we have got to. Hopefully we will at least feel we know more about what we are 

talking about, and can discuss such issues in a more informed and critical way. We may also 

have begun to feel we know enough about this to have our own ideas, and have identified 

some areas or topics we find more interesting. 

At this stage you want to start familiarising yourself with the textbooks, as well as focussing 

more directly on readings identified in this section. The material here may require reading 

through a number of times. Many points will be revisited later in the module so do not expect 

necessarily that everything will make complete sense at this early point in time. 

What do we mean by ‘religion’ anyway? 

Before we go any further, we perhaps need to get a firmer grasp on what we are talking 

about. As ever, we need to engage with the ‘theory’ here, whether we like it or not. So while 

you are beginning to read the core textbooks, we will also think about some of the more 

fundamental questions, beginning with: 

‘What do we mean by ‘religion’ anyway?’ 

If we think we may be able to see religion in the prehistoric world, are we clear what we are 

looking for? Is there a reason for thinking that things like rock drawings/rock art should be 


thought of as religious. If so, why? We might commonly think that attitudes to death and 

burial (commonly engaged with in mortuary archaeology) are religious. Is this really so? As 

you will also commonly encounter in your readings there is also often an assumption that 

Religion is (sort of?) the same things as Ritual (?), .. an issue we will need to discuss in a little 

more depth to try and untangle some of the uncertainties, and potential misconceptions and 

confusions which all too often seem to crop up in the archaeological literature. 

Your textbooks 

You have several textbooks which will provide you with a range of studies, some 

theoretical discussions, and some case-studies which provide examples from many 

historical contexts world-wide. We are hoping that within these you will be able 

to gain a broad comparative perspective on many of the topics we are interested 

in, as well as find more specific material which links in with whatever your more 

specific interests (chronological or geographical) may be. At this level, where your 

engagement with the academic literature is expected to be much greater, the 

bibliographies to be found in these books should provide many pointers for further 

reading. Bear in mind the importance for showing a full engagement with the 

course materials – including these books – in your assignments. If we were to suggest 

an order in which to approach these books, then perhaps look at them in this order, 

but not necessarily attempting to read them cover-to-cover at the first attempt. But 

you will need to get a sense of their contents as soon as possible, so that you may 

read/reread specific chapters as you proceed through the module. 


Ashmore, W. and Knapp, A. B. (eds) 1999. Archaeologies of Landscape: contemporary 

perspectives, Oxford: Blackwell. 


Insoll, T. (ed.) 2001. Archaeology and World Religion, London: Routledge. (as e-book) 

If we are looking for definitions then we probably need to avoid the route of just turning to 

the nearest dictionary. There are in fact – as you might have suspected - no easy answers to 

what religion in fact is. What would be worth reading here is an old, but quite influential paper 

by Colin Renfrew ( Renfrew 1994), when he tried to wrestle with what an archaeology of 

religion might be, and along the way tries to formulate some sense of what religion might 

be. Perhaps in a not very helpful way he adopted a rather simplistic approach of starting off 

with the ‘what does the dictionary say?’ approach. [By their nature, dictionaries try to distil 

down complexities to a few words so are unlikely to be helpful when dealing with difficult 

and complex issues. A general dictionary (e.g. Shorter Oxford Dictionary, Chambers Dictionary 

et etc) is also of course aimed at a general audience, so I would suggest that when we are 


engaging in academic discussions we need to aspire to more complex approaches, from the 

start]. This is worth reading however in drawing attention to many points we will be visiting 

and revisiting through the module. ‘How do we recognise religion?’ ..’how does it relate 

to ritual?’ .. as well as introducing some more general concerns about the topic drawing on 

anthropological and sociological literature . ‘What is religion ‘for’?’… ‘what purpose does it 

serve within societies?’ What he usefully points out are some of the different approaches to 

religion we may encounter in different ‘school’s of anthropology/sociology, for example (e.g. 

functionalists, Marxists, structuralists etc). 

Functionalism: theories which explain social institutions primarily in terms of 

the functions they perform. Functionalists tend to treat societies as systems of 

interacting parts 

As a contrast to that you should be aware of Clifford Geertz’s discussion of religion (Geertz 

1966), another important theoretical treatment (criticised by Renfrew, as you will see). This is a 

fundamental text which you will see referred to, again and again, by other scholars interested 

in religion, typically in his attempt to define religion, as part of wider cultural systems, with 

religion being very much a social issue (rather than a personal issue) .. it is about society as 

a whole, and the function that religion plays within culture [hence ‘functionalism’]. Religion 

is defined as: 

‘(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods 

and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) 

clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations 

seem uniquely realistic’ (Anon. 1998). 

Geertz then goes on to discuss more fully the five parts of the definition in some detail. Here 

I will note the key ideas from each of these five parts. As part of a cultural system it gives 

meaning, (that is, objective conceptual form), to social and psychological realities. Religion 

establishes certain dispositions in people, in their moods and motivations (a distinction he 

discusses). Religions must affirm something - that the life we live in is comprehensible, that 

we are not living in total chaos in which everything is incomprehensible. He also raises the 

interesting question of how people come to accept the world view presented by religion? 

Geertz ‘basic answer seems to be that people come to accept this by doing - acting out and 

participating in religious rituals. In another word, for the participants, religious practices/ 

rituals are not merely the model of reality but also the model for reality. That is, not only does 

religion depict what they already believe, but it also sets examples in what to believe and 

is therefore the enactments, materializations, and the realizations of certain belief systems’ 

(Anon. 1998). 


Geertz raises the interesting question of how people come to accept the world view 

presented by religion? His basic answer seems to be that people come to accept this 

by doing - acting out and participating in religious activities (rituals) => the term 

Practice [the ‘doing’ of things] will commonly emerge through this module. 

Overall, he argues ‘that the power of religion largely stems from its ability to act upon and 

transform people’s conceptions of the everyday, common-sense world. That is, the moods and 

motivations induced by religion seem so powerful to believers that only they seem to be the 

sensible version of what things “really are” - and thus when people move out of the world of 

religious rituals and back into the common sense world it is the latter that is altered’ (Anon. 1998). 

But as a counterpoint to that you might also read an essay by Talal Asad (Asad 1983), who 

makes an important challenge to the sort of approach adopted by Geertz (and perhaps by us 

all) in pointing out a rather more fundamental problem with the notion of religion. He makes 

a very good case that the idea of religion being a distinct field of activity, which we can provide 

a universally applicable definition for, and which we can identify in all times and parts of the 

world throughout history, may be deeply flawed. He suggests that the idea of religion, as 

something separate from the rest of life, is very much a Western idea, and one he suggests 

developed in the modern West. It was a product of the very specific development within 

European life in that period. ..the point being that the idea of calling some things religious 

(and by implication others things not religious), is a result of a very particular/specific history: 

‘a unique post-Reformation history’. 

Figure 1.1 A Shinto shrine in 21st century Japan 


What you may take away from reading his essay is a sense that if this is indeed the case, 

this may explain many of the problems we encounter when trying to deal with religion and 

the religious in other cultures and other times – put simply, our particular understandings of 

religion (for example as a discrete area of activity) may not always work well .. Not uncommonly 

we may perhaps find this when we try to distinguish the religious from the secular [what is not 

religious]? Where do we go from here? This is not just quibbling. Similar debates about how 

helpful or useful it is to make such distinctions can be found in all periods (e.g. Bremmer 1998). 

In relation to studies of Ancient Greece Bremmer demonstrated how “the terms ‘religion’, 

‘ritual’ and the opposition ‘sacred vs. profane’ originated or became redefined around 1900” 

(1998: 31). This was the period when the study of religion was emerging as a field in its own 

right and the work of Durkheim (see below) and others was incredibly influential in all forms 

of academic research. 

Durkheim ? Elementary Forms of the Religious Life – The Sacred and the Profane? 

You will commonly find references to Durkheim in your readings, an influential 

figure in early sociology and anthropology. In one of his major works the Elementary 

Forms of the Religious Life (first published in French 1912), Durkheim defines the 

sacred as follows: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative 

to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices 

which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere 

to them” (Durkheim 1947: 47) 

Fundamental to this definition is the distinction Durkheim draws between the sacred 

and the profane: 

“The opposition of these two classes {the sacred and the profane} manifests itself 

outwardly with a visible sign by which we can easily recognize this very special 

classification, wherever it exists. Since the idea of the sacred is always and everywhere 

separated from the idea of the profane in the thought of men, and since we picture 

a sort of logical chasm between the two, the mind irresistibly refuses to allow the 

two corresponding things to be a promiscuity, or even to direct a contiguity, would 

contradict too violently the dissociation of these ideas in the mind. The sacred thing 

is par excellence that which the profane should not touch, and cannot touch with 

impunity. To be sure, this interdiction cannot go so far as to make all communication 

between the two worlds impossible; for if the profane could in no way enter into 

relations with the sacred, this latter could be good for nothing. But, in addition to 

the fact that this establishment of relations is always a delicate operation in itself, 

demanding great precautions and a more or less complicated initiation, it is quite 

impossible, unless the profane is to lose its specific characteristics and become sacred 

after a fashion and to a certain degree itself. The two classes cannot even approach 

each other and keep their own nature at the same time”. (Durkheim 1947:40) 


An online edition is available here: 

http://www.archive.org/details/elementaryformso00durk 

‘Religious’ and the ‘Secular’ .. ‘Sacred’ and ‘Profane’ 

If we take this aspect of thinking about religion and how we define it, we may commonly 

encounter the contrasts we may make between ‘religious’ and something else .. commonly 

defined as the ‘secular’. This distinction is also found in the very influential work of Durkheim 

in his Elementary forms of religious life and distinctions he made between the ‘sacred’ and 

‘profane’. These are terms you will commonly find being used, but often with not enough 

thought about whether such distinctions can in fact really be made (at various points in this 

modules, many researchers will suggest not)! .. 

In much of what you will read you will encounter people talking about the ‘religious’ and the 

‘secular’ as a contrasting pair, and commonly assuming that having used those terms, we all 

know what we are talking about, and that they do self-evidently represent two different things, 

which can be applied across time and space, wherever and whatever we happen to be studying 

(i.e. that these terms have a universal applicability). In understanding where we get the idea 

of the category of religion from, we also need to understand how it relates to other categories 

of thinking, and how those categories evolved – as we have seen not all languages and not all 

societies necessarily recognise what ‘religion’ is, in the ways that we do, and take for granted. 

The point will be made more fully in one of your readings, notably the paper by John Bossy 

(Bossy 1982). You need to read this in full, but we can draw out some key points first, as discussed 

by Fitzgerald (2003), a paper available online which you should read having read this brief piece 

of text and the Bossy article. 

Most crucially perhaps, Bossy argues – simply by looking at how the word was used at the time 

– that the word ‘religion’ changed its meaning quite significantly in the late sixteenth- early 

seventeenth century .. (this fits with what Talal Asad also argued) in effect taking on the sorts of 

meaning WE associate with it today: 

Religio in classical Latin is a sense of duty or reverence for sacred things; derivatively, some object 

which inspires this frame of mind; thence a cult, or worship in general. Essentially it is a feeling, 

a frame of mind…. In early Christianity it meant worship, a worshipful attitude….In medieval 

Christianity this usage disappeared. With very few exceptions, the word was used to describe 

different sorts of monastic or similar rule, and the way of life pursued under them: the ‘religious’ 

were those who pursued such a life…in the sixteenth century…where the Latin form Christiana 

religio is found, it must be translated “Christian religion”, not “the Christian religion” .. 

How then did the word come ….to get its capital ‘R’; to become a Great Something, a generic 


object .. so that we can identify a religion as a member of the class “Religions”, meaning…‘a 

particular system of faith and worship’? The suggestion is that what caused this to come 

about was a new need to describe one’s own or other people’s way of belief and life, as if from 

outside, in circumstances where a plurality of such ways had come into existence (see Bossy 

1982: 4-5) – in just this period when the emerging splits between Catholics and Protestants, 

and then many forms of Protestants (‘.. the simple existence of a plurality of embodied, and 

embattled, faiths…) - 

What Bossy also pointed out was that, since the unity of Christendom could no longer be 

assumed, it became apparent that a shared public sphere or space distinct from the areas 

of peoples’ lives called ‘religions’ became a necessity, otherwise there would be anarchy. For 

civil society to function there had to be something called Civil Society .. the point being that 

‘religion’ and ‘religions’ had to be invented for there to be ‘society’ and ‘societies’. 

To Reify – Reification: to make/making an abstract concept into a ‘thing’, making 

it ‘real’. Within many disciplines the issue (potential danger) with reification is that 

some ‘thing’ (e.g. the ‘State’, ‘religion’) takes on rigid ‘thinglike’ status, when in fact 

we know it really represents something which is much more complex and potentially 

changing. Especially when reading anthropological literature it is not uncommon for 

people to point out that what someone may call ‘religion’ in one society in one part 

of the world, really has virtually nothing in common with what is termed ‘religion’ 

in another part of the world .. except it is convenient to describe both in this way .. 

We can see from this that the idea of a religion and religions was not the only category to 

become reified (see Box), defined with words which were taking on new meanings. Previous 

to the early seventeenth century ‘society’ meant company or relationship, as when we might 

say “I enjoyed the society of Mr and Mrs Brown at on Saturday night”, or “society in this village 

is not congenial”. It refers to human relationships, but has not been objectified into the concept 

of a Society. However, this seems to change in this same period of the late sixteenth/early 

seventeenth century, ‘when there are examples of ‘a society’ or of ‘societies’ and ‘Society’ with 

a capital ‘S’. Like religion, society was being reified and constructed as a system of institutions 

and practices, things that can be studied, described, compared and so on’ (Fitzgerald 2003). 

(Interestingly, it may be noted that the word ‘secular’ only came to be used in the sense we 

now tend to use it and understand it in the nineteenth century, even more recently). 

If this is in general correct, then it should suggest a number of things to us. ‘One is that, 

if we want to try to understand the language game of ‘religion’, that is, to understand its 

contemporary uses, we have to be aware of its historical context. If we do not, then we 

will have a truncated picture of how it actually works as a category in relation to the other 


categories that have been evolving in tandem to form a different ideological system. This 

leads to another connected point, that religion as a concept does not stand alone simply as 

something given in the nature of things; it stands in relation to the specific western modern 

configuration of values and categories … that also has its own history’ (Fitzgerald 2003). 

Timothy Fitzgerald (2003, 2007) has similarly argued then that ‘religion’ and the ‘secular’ 

are two of our categories that have a specially close linkage, that they mutually define each 

other, and were all part of that new order which was developing in the seventeenth century 

to ‘construct a concept of secular society in which trade, law, government and science were 

freed from the arbitrary interferences of the Church or the King (a world involving people 

like Hobbes, John Locke, the writers of the American Constitution, the French Enlightenment 

philosophes), people who needed a new idea of ‘religion’ [or ‘religions’ in the plural] to help 

them do that job of making a new idea of secular society; that the problem as to what counts 

as religion is also the problem as to what counts as non-religion or the secular. New bourgeois 

classes had their own capital agendas which didn’t want interference from Church-legitimated 

authorities. This point connects the trial and execution of Charles I with the American demands 

of “no taxation without representation”. The principles were fundamentally the same. Political 

representation based on election (‘democracy’?) was a new form of legitimation incompatible 

with the traditional bases of authority and deference that increasingly seemed arbitrary’ 

(Fitzgerald 2003). 

‘Along with new categories, often coined from old words, there is a new kind of rationality, 

class formations, new ideas about capital and exchange, new forms of banking, new ideas 

about property, the state, new ways of legitimating authority. There were new ways for 

legitimating knowledge in ‘nature’ (natural science – the work of ‘scientists’), and of course 

the concept of secular civil society. The modern state and the idea of civil society are 

based on a different rationality, and science becomes increasingly unencumbered by the 

traditional knowledge of the Bible and the Church fathers. Science and rationality are 

subject to different forms of legitimation than traditional knowledge’ (Fitzgerald 2003). 

In this way the religion ⇔ secular idea can be seen as a new way of categorising/organising 

the world, and forms an important part of the emerging worldview of what, after many 

centuries, has today become western (democratic) capitalism. It should also be clear that this 

is not a simple dichotomy, with two simple and unchanging meanings. The more you read in 

this area the more you will hopefully appreciate how what constitutes ‘religion’ and what 

constitutes the ‘secular’ is debatable … as they say: ‘highly contested’. This is something to 

be investigated NOT something to take for granted. We may also have to accept that 

in many societies such a distinction would not make much sense .. Bear this in mind 

when you use the terms. 


When we see the phrase “religion is having an impact on political life” – the implicit separation 

of religion and politics is assumed. And yet we might suggest that there are lots of beliefs and 

practices in our own western cultures which we normally tend to categorize as ‘secular’, but 

might equally be ‘religious’. Nationalism, for example, is a kind of worship of an imaginary 

entity (the ‘nation’). The homes and memorials of dead political leaders become sites of 

‘pilgrimage’ (Lincoln Memorial), as do those of celebrities (Graceland – Elvis Presley), and 

sporting events (every year we read of the ‘annual pilgrimage’ to Wembley Stadium – which 

involves many curious rituals..). People make ‘pilgrimages’ to the battlefields and cemeteries 

of the World Wars. We have curious state ceremonies at the opening of a new Parliament, or 

the inauguration of a new President. People swear allegiance – hand on heart – to a country, 

facing its flag. Or are we just talking about ‘rituals’? If this is so, are these in fact rather different 

things? 

As Fitzgerald (2003) points out, what we also need to come to terms with then it that the 

decision about what is and is not categorised as religion is not at all straightforward. In fact it 

is highly ideological, yet the word is used freely and rather uncritically as though we can all 

easily find religions in any part of the world and at any period of history. The point to take away 

then is that many people (and certainly many archaeologists) use the word religion without 

much consciousness of the way that their usage is arranging historical and ethnographic data 

according to a pattern that fits into their own Western assumptions. These assumptions are 

also those of Western capitalism, or Western ideas about gender, Western ideas about the 

individual (and individualism, maybe?), about rights, or Western theories of exchange and 

markets. 

Once we recognize how much our categories are framed in a Western point of view, this 

takes on an even greater significance for our understanding of real life encounters with 

the non-Western world, which were also beginning in exactly this period, in the context 

of colonialism, where the West was encountering (and commonly misunderstanding) nonwestern 

cultures and ideologies .”‘Religions’, ‘societies’, ‘cultures’ all became reified entities 

as a result of the new worlds that needed to be demarcated, identified, described, reported, 

analysed, compared, explained, controlled, and used” (Fitzgerald 2003). 

This issue we will return to a number of times later in the module, within archaeologies of 

historical periods. However, even if you are more interested in earlier periods, it is important 

to come to terms with what we are talking about here. There are very obvious implications: 

if we know it is difficult to define exactly what we mean by ‘religions’ (or it might be what 

we mean by the ‘family’, ‘property’ , ‘economy’, ..) when encountering living peoples (or welldocumented 

peoples of the recent past) in non-Western contexts, then what can we really 

expect to do in the more distant prehistoric past, known only from archaeological evidence? 


This then is the challenge, and why we really need to have a clear sense of some of the 

theoretical underpinnings of what we are doing. We simply cannot ignore this .. 

If you have some interests in the European medieval period and wanted to follow up this issue 

a bit more, we would recommend a paper by Peter Biller (Biller 1986), which challenges (to a 

degree) as well as extends Bossy’s suggestions, looking a bit more closely at the use of the word 

religion (and related terms) in medieval Latin texts. Suffice to say here that he shows the issue 

is rather more complicated than Bossy suggests, but when looking at medieval texts discussing 

other forms of religiosity, an interesting range of terms may be used, each with their own 

particular nuances of meaning (e.g. ‘cult’… ‘faith’, ‘texts’.. ‘evil doctrines’ .. ‘errors’ .. ‘history’ 

.. ‘way of life’..) . 

You can find another discussion of some of these issues in the online paper by Fitzgerald 

dealing with Japan – in some ways a very good (as well as interesting) study of a society 

which is very different from Western society, which most of us know relatively little about.. 

so in many ways a good case-study to think about some issues which we might encounter in 

archaeological contexts dealing with ancient societies very different from our own, which we 

do not know much about … 

Fitzgerald, T. 2003. ‘Religion’ and ‘the Secular’ in Japan. Problems in history, social anthropology, 

and the study of religion, Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies http://www. 

japanesestudies.org.uk/discussionpapers/Fitzgerald.html 

A ladder of inference? 

In many archaeological texts which have an interest in exploring topics such as religion or 

ritual you will very commonly find a reference to a paper by Christopher Hawkes published in 

American Anthropologist (Hawkes 1954). This article is probably referenced/referred to more 

than it is actually read nowadays, but retains some interest as an attempt to define some of 

the parameters of what we can do as archaeologists, expressed in a more or less ‘commonsense’ 

sort of approach (as ’theory’ goes it pretty obviously lacks a systematic approach, largely 

relying on some more or less vague use of ethnographic analogy for helping us interpret the 

past.. where we lack historical sources). 

What this otherwise rather uninspiring paper is chiefly remembered for is his discussion of 

the sorts of inferences we can aspire to when doing archaeology… with the conclusion that 

understanding things like religion and beliefs is much the most difficult (although of course 

the sort of behaviour that it most essential to being human.. and being different from other 

animals ( we could study non-humans in relation to points 1-2.. could we not?.. while we know 

many animals have quite complex forms of social organisation ..) 


1. To infer from the archeological phenomena to the techniques producing them I 

take to be relatively easy. …. 

2. To infer to the subsistence-economics of the human groups concerned is fairly easy 

…. Operationally, of course, it is laborious .. But its logic is simple, and need never 

be anything but straightforward. 

3. To infer to the social/political institutions of the groups, however, is considerably 

harder …If you excavate a settlement in which one hut is bigger than all the 

others, is it a chief’s hut, so that you can infer chieftainship, or is it really a 

medicine lodge or a meeting hut for initiates, or a temple? Richly furnished 

graves may help you, but what if the graves are all poorly furnished? Or 

if the more richly furnished graves are women’s, does that mean female 

social predominance, or male predominance using the adornment of its 

subjected womenfolk for its own advertisement?.............. 

4. To infer to the religious institutions and spiritual life may seem superficially, 

perhaps, to be easier, and for the first few steps it may sometimes be so. Paleolithic 

art clearly has much to do with institutions of hunting-magic and, in the case 

of the so-called “Venuses,” with expressions of desire for human fertility. Grave 

goods, again, indicate a belief that the dead need material supplies or equipment, 

as though still alive. But how much further can one go than that? ……… What 

part were the dead, furnished with grave goods, supposed to play in the 

life of the community still living? You can use ethnological data obtained 

from modern primitives to stimulate your imagination by suggesting the sort of 

religious institutions and spiritual life your prehistoric people may or could have 

had, but you cannot this way demonstrate what they did have, and you know 

you cannot even hope to unless you can show some real connection between this 

modern and that prehistoric. I have heard the thing attempted, indeed, from the 

side of the modern South African Bushmen and the significance of their paintings, 

back to prehistoric African, and then maybe European, Stone Age paintings and 

their significance. But it is a very long shot, and even the possibility of it, in the Old 

World, is something very rare. In general, I believe, unaided inference from 

material remains to spiritual life is the hardest inference of all.” (Hawkes 

1954: 161-162) 

This rather common-sense approach to the archaeological study of religion is perhaps still 

with us today in some archaeological traditions. Taking a random example, in a quite recent 

overview of North American archaeology (Pauketat and Loren 2005) ‘religion’ does not get 

a mention in the index. So even if our more popular understandings of Native American 

populations would often have an interest in, or focus on, their religious understandings of 

the world, this is clearly not something that archaeologists are explicitly interested in. On the 


other hand the last decade has seen a significant number of new books/edited books focussed 

on exploring religion and ritual (see your bibliographies) which clearly show that there is a 

significant body of researchers who are willing to try and engage with this field of research. 

Archaeology, Modernity and Religion (?) 

In raising some of these questions our attention may be drawn to some wider debates about 

archaeology’s (and archaeologists’) relationship with religion when thinking about issues of 

archaeology as a particular product of ‘modernity’. Issues of ‘modernity’ (and ‘post-modernity’) 

were raised in our level 2 courses (AR2551) and we may want to briefly revisit them, to refresh 

our memory. A good way in to this is perhaps through an article by Julian Thomas (Thomas 

2004a) which distils down the main points of his book-length discussion of ‘Archaeology and 

Modernity’ (Thomas 2004b) 

Figure 1.2 The Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, Australia was built as a memorial 

to the men and women of Victoria who served in World War I and is now a memorial 

to all Australians who have served in war. The Shrine is designed in a classical style, 

being based on the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and the Parthenon in Athens. 

The sanctuary contains the ‘Stone of Remembrance’, upon which is engraved the words 

“Greater love hath no man”. Once a year, on 11 November at 11 a.m. (Remembrance 

Day), a ray of sunlight shines through an aperture in the roof to light up the word 

“Love” in the inscription. Such a monument encapsulates many of the themes we will 

be addressing in this module. When dedicated in 1934, some 300,000 people attended, 

claimed to be the “largest crowd ever to assemble in Australia to that date”. 

Discussions of ‘modernity’, as you should remember, tend to be framed around the European 

‘Enlightenment’.. the ‘Age of Reason’ as it is popularly termed, in which increasingly 

‘scientific’ questioning and reasoning came to shape the way in which people thought about 


the world, and classified and understood the world. One of its characteristics was the increasing 

division between the subject (the investigator, the scientist), and the object (what was being 

studied). In this division we find the belief that it is possible to do objective and dispassionate 

investigations .. the sorts of ways of doing things we tend to think of as ‘scientific’ (and indeed 

‘modern’!). 

While we do not need to explore this topic in too much depth, one thing that is worth 

remembering is that archaeology – (as we know it, as an academic discipline and a means 

of addressing the past) – must be seen as a product of that Enlightenment way of thinking. 

As Thomas puts it archaeology ‘distills a modern sensibility, embodying conceptions of time, 

humanity, nature, and science that have been widely adopted over the past half-millennium’ 

and ‘is steeped in the implicit and explicit presuppositions of modern thought’ (2004a: 17). As 

he goes on to suggest, one of the things we need to come to terms with is that when we are 

‘doing’ archaeology to understand past worlds and ways of living, the very idea of ‘archaeology’ 

would be inconceivable in those worlds and times. As he draws his ideas together at the end of 

the paper we are reminded that, of course, ‘this is why not all societies practice archaeology’ .. 

‘archaeology could only have been generated in the context of the modern world’ (2004a: 31). 

…….‘this is why not all societies practice archaeology’ …. ‘archaeology could only 

have been generated in the context of the modern world’ (Thomas 2004a: 31)… 

Changing attitudes in the Enlightenment 

That being said, we can turn back to things relating to religion. Of course, one major aspect 

of Enlightenment /modern thinking etc was a questioning approach to the old certainties 

offered by religion. Increasingly we encounter scientists and philosophers who are sceptical 

about religion – many of them just don’t ‘believe’ (something which was not really an option 

in the medieval world ..). This is the tradition which has led us towards ideas of secularism and 

secular society, and ideas which distinguish between the religious and the secular – something 

we tend to take for granted in today’s Western world, but, again, a distinction which in fact 

may only really be possible to make in the ‘modern’ world. 

A typical definition: ‘Secularization: the process in modern societies in which religious ideas 

and organizations may lose influence when faced with scientific and other forms of knowledge’. 

BUT 

Also note that modernity clearly does NOT mean secularization. Today - in the ‘modern’ world 

– we do again see religion being a powerful force. Religious groups have of course been 

powerful political forces in American politics since at least the 1980s (e.g. the ‘Moral Majority’ 

movement), while Islam has again come to be a powerful political force, from the Ayatollah’s 


evolution in Iran in 1979 to the politics of Salafi ‘fundamentalist’ Islam that is now so present 

in global politics. 

Ritual and religion 

When thinking about the relationship between ritual and religion (how are these related?, 

are these the same things?), a place we may start is in the introduction to a 1989 publication 

Sacred and Profane (sadly long out of print and today it is hard to find a copy to read),which 

represents one of the first attempts at a more theorised and systematic discussion of archaeology 

ritual and religion (Garwood et al 1991). Your other, more accessible key reading here will be 

&Fogelin ‘The Archaeology of Religious Ritual’, Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 55-71. 

(e-link). It is worth reading now, and this will doubtless be necessary to re-read this, and revisit 

its ideas at the end of the module. By that point in time, many of the points it is making should 

be much more familiar. 

One of the first problems it identifies is the relationship between Ritual and Religion? Is 

ritual a problematic idea? Or is it simply a distinct form of behaviour? As they suggested: 

“many of the problems archaeologists have found in the study or ritual stem from a basic 

confusion about the definition of the subject. The question of the nature of ritual as a kind of 

social practice, and the question of its material identification, have all too often been conflated, 

hence the abiding concern with the definition of particular material categories (eg. ‘ritual 

pits’, ‘ritual deposits’, etc). …. …….. “another abiding concern for archaeologists has been the 

credibility of the ritual/domestic (or sacred/profane) dichotomy that underlies so much of the 

archaeological categorization of material contexts … in the light of increasing recognition that 

all material culture is imbued with symbolic ‘meaning’ of one kind or another (complicated 

in some archaeological thinking by the confused equation of ritual and ‘symbolism’), it has 

become very difficult to distinguish materially between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘domestic’ …” 

(Garwood et al 1991: vii-viii) 

Here again we are seeing various terms such as ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’, ‘ritual’ and ‘domestic’ 

being used, while ‘religion’ is also implicated in all this, but we are not quite clear where! 

Again we have echoes of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ dichotomy, we encountered on some earlier 

pages of this section. Are these the same, or are these different? 

I think some of the key points to take away about the discussion of ritual is that Rituals are 

not seen as preserving or enacting stable sets of religious beliefs, but rather rituals construct, 

create, or modify religious beliefs [ the key references here are the work of Catherine Bell 

- Bell 1992, 1997] …people constantly choose to remember, forget, or recreate elements of 

their religion through ritual practices. …….. one implication being that while specific rituals 

may remain the same over long periods of time, their meaning(s) for society is/are constantly 


econtextualized => People transform and change underlying religious beliefs through the 

creation and practice of rituals. This of course takes us back to one of the points made by 

Geertz, where he pointed to the importance of performing rituals. 

This would seem to have implications for archaeologists, in further suggesting problems in 

identifying the meanings behind certain practices (the sorts of practices we can identify as 

‘ritual’ practices). Rather than focus on stable meanings of ritual actions, if we think of rituals 

in terms of practices (i.e. as ‘practice theorists’ do) and emphasize the experiential aspects of 

ritual and the effects of ritual on the social relations between those participating in rituals 

(ritual participants). As such, practice approaches tend to focus on ritual change and what 

ritual does rather than on what it means …. One of the issues we may need to come to 

terms with then is that we can’t really aspire to understand what the meanings of 

many of the practices we encounter are – and perhaps we just need to accept that. 

However, what also emerges is that of course not all rituals are ‘religious’, we can have all 

sorts of non-religious rituals (or secular rituals if you like!) .. rituals of kingship, a presidential 

inauguration ritual, sporting rituals, all sorts of ‘theatrical’ practices.. Another useful reading 

here is Smith 1980. (Jonathan Z. Smith is a leading authority on such questions: Smith, J. Z. 

(1980). “The Bare Facts of Ritual “ History of Religions 20(1/2): 112-12.) 

We might also reflect on such practices more generally. How do we learn religious and ritual 

behaviours, for example? For example, there is this fascinating article which points out how we 

learn the practical aspects of religious behaviour and ritual in a domestic environment, as part 

of general socialisation: this article by Maslak will hopefully prove interesting, and thoughtprovoking: 

Maslak, M. A. (2001). “A community of education: Nepalese children living and learning 

religious ritual “ Culture and Religion 2(1): 61-79. 

Different types of religions? 

One thing we might also bear in mind as the module progresses is whether there are different 

types of Religions, or Religiosity (a term you will be encountering in the more theoretical 

literature). Are there some regularities in the ways in which they ‘work’ across space and time? 

Are the ‘World Religions’ different from other sorts of religions? While we will not be trying to 

provide an answer here and now, this is a question you need to keep at the back of your mind 

as we move along through this module. 

One writer who has written extensively on religion/religiosity in terms of the idea of religious 

transmission, Harvey Whitehouse, has suggested it may be useful to focus on how religions are 

created, passed on, and changed. At the centre of his theory are two divergent ‘modes of 


eligiosity’: what he termed the imagistic and the doctrinal. WE do not need to examine 

his work in too much detail now, but he does draw attention to a few interesting points of 

discussion, which it would be helpful to introduce now. 

Drawing from recent advances in cognitive science, Whitehouse’s theory shows how religions 

tend to coalesce around one of these two poles depending on how religious behaviours are 

remembered:- 

In the ‘imagistic mode,’ rituals have a lasting impact on people’s minds, haunting not only our 

memories but influencing the way we conceive of religious topics. These psychological features 

are linked to the scale and structure of religious communities, fostering small, exclusive, and 

ideologically heterogeneous ritual groupings or factions. 

In the ‘doctrinal mode’, on the other hand, religious knowledge is primarily spread through 

intensive and repetitive teaching; religious communities are contrastingly large, inclusive, 

and centrally regulated. The crucial importance of literacy for the development of doctrinal 

modes of religiosity seems clear, something to think about when considering ‘religions of the 

book’ and ‘world religions’. This is something worth thinking about when we think about 

how religions change and how the religious world changed, especially when Christianity and 

Islam appeared in the first millennium CE. Were they really ‘different’ than what went before? 

At this point it may be useful to revisit the important theoretical issue concerning the impact(s) 

of literacy of past (and indeed present) societies, and the need for us to understand this when 

discussing religions in general, and in particular cases, across time and space. There are certainly 

some possibilities that doctrinal modes of religiosity were made possible (kickstarted?) by the 

advent of literacy. Certainly, literacy seems to appear /develop around the same time, and there 

are few known cases (historical or modern) of religious traditions dominated by a doctrinal 

mode that does not base its teachings on texts. In functional terms, literacy is also a valuable 

(perhaps essential?) tool to allow stabilisation and indeed standardisation of the religious 

canon, which may allow one group of religious specialists to squeeze out other religions which 

lack the means to regulate beliefs and practices. 

For some reviews of Whitehouse’s work see: http://www.pitt.edu/~strather/Review%20 

Forum%20Whitehouse.pdf 

Where we will be going with this 

In the following sections we will endeavour to cover a lot of ground. We will be looking a bit 

more at some of the basic issues about religious thinking. Is it helpful to describe all sorts of 

ancient religions as shamanistic? Were there really shamans in the Palaeolithic? We often 

see references to ancestors, and ancestor cults. What in fact do we mean by this? How do 


we think religions developed (or evolved, as some would say – is it helpful to think about the 

development of religion in such a way, with such a word?). Are we talking about religious 

objects. What forms do they take? How is religion manifested in space? How does it 

affect the world we live in – bearing in mind we may use terms like religious landscape? In 

earlier modules we have introduced topics such as religious pilgrimage (for example in the 

Medieval Mediterranean world). How may pilgrimage be manifested more generally? How 

may it be studied? May it be helpful to look at living pilgrimage traditions today? 

Figure 1.3 Pilgrimage traditions of course still thrive in the 21 st century. Their scale may be 

astonishing. Pilgrim festivals such as the Kumbh Mela in India may many millions of visitors. 

The Kumbh Mela at Allahbad in Jan 2007 attracted some 65 million Hindu pilgrims over 

45 days. You can find a Facebook site for it : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Haridwar- India/ 

Kumbh- ‐Mela- ‐Haridwar- ‐2010/208438745364 

We will also take the chance to look at issues surrounding Death, and dealing with death. 

Death and Burial may also commonly be seen as lying within the domain of the ‘religious’. 

In your past studies you will have encountered various references to religion being linked 

with forms of burial, while changing burials forms may also often be linked with changes in 

religion. Here we will spend some more time examining such issues in a little more depth, 

again exploring a range of examples in a number of different times and places. Apart from 

extending your knowledge of mortuary archaeologies across time and space, this also 

provides an opportunity to address a number of related topics. One obvious issue here is how 

we (and people in the past) relate to our bodies. One thing we can find out very quickly is that 

different peoples in different times have had very different ideas about their bodies, not least 

in how they thought dead bodies could be disposed of … this also gives us a chance to spend 

a little more time exploring some aspects of mortuary archaeologies – an almost ever-present 

part of archaeological research, but one that does not get enough systematic study. 


One of the potentially most interesting aspects of archaeologies concerned with religion, 

relates to religious change. How and where might we be able to detect changes in belief 

systems in the past? May this be detectable archeologically. If so, how, and in what ways? 

How may religious change be linked to more general issues of cultural change? We will be 

looking at various aspects of religious change in two sections. We will begin in prehistoric 

periods. What can we aspire to achieve? How might we go about this, or is it all speculative? 

As we enter periods with historical sources, in the classical world, we can begin to confront 

archaeological evidence with our first fragmentary textual records. If we think of the Greeks 

and Romans as other examples of Mediterranean Iron Age societies, how do they fit in to 

wider contemporary patterns in other parts of (‘prehistoric’) Europe? When the Romans were 

establishing their ever-growing Empire around the Mediterranean world, in what ways were 

ideas of religion and belief implicated in this process? In later periods and later imperial/ 

colonial contexts, how can we explore some archaeological dimensions of religious change as 

Christianity emerged in its many and varied forms? 

References and further reading 

Bell. C. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Bell, C. 1997. Ritual. Perspectives and dimensions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Biller, P. 1985. Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36: 

351-369. 

Bremmer, J. N. 1998. ‘Religion’, ‘Ritual’ and the Opposition ‘Sacred vs. Profane’. Notes towards a 

Terminological ‘Geneaology. In Graf, F. (ed.) Ansichten griechischer Rituale. Geburtstags- 

Symposium für Walter Burkert. Stuttgart : Teubner, 9-32. 

Brück, J. 1999. Ritual and Rationality: some problems of interpretation in European archaeology, 

European Journal of Archaeology 2: 313-344. Reprinted in Insoll, T. (ed.) The archaeology 

of identities: a reader, Abingdon: Routledge [available as ebook]. 

Bossy, J. 1982. Some Elementary Forms of Durkheim, Past & Present 95: 3-18. 

Carmichael, D. L., Hubert, J.,Reeves, B. and Schanche, A. (eds) 1994. Sacred Sites, Sacred Places, 

London: Routledge. 

Cohen, A. C. 2005. Death rituals, ideology, and the development of early Mesopotamian 

kingship : toward a new understanding of Iraq’s Royal Cemetery of Ur, Leiden: Brill. 

Coakley, S. (ed.) 1997. Religion and the body, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Eliade, M. 1980. History of Religions and “Popular” Cultures. History of Religions 20 (1/2): 1-26. 

Evans, C. J. 1998. Historicism, Chronology and Straw Men: Situating Hawkes’s ‘Ladder of 

Inference’, Antiquity 72: 398-4-4. 


Fitzgerald, T. 2003. Playing Language Games and Performing Rituals: Religious Studies as 

Ideological State Apparatus. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 15(3): 209-254. 

Fitzgerald, T. 2007. Introduction, In Fitzgerald, T. (ed.) Religion and the Secular. Historical and 

Colonial Formations. London: Equinox, 1-24. 

Fogelin, L. 2007. The Archaeology of Religious Ritual, Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 

55-71. 

Garwood, P., Jennings, D., Skeates, R. and Tomas, J. (eds) 1991. Sacred and Profane. Oxford: 

Oxford University Committee for Archaeology. 

Geertz, C. 1966. Religion as a Cultural System, in Banton, M. (ed.) Anthropological Approaches 

to the Study of Religion , New York: Praeger, 1-46 

Goody, J. 1961. Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem, The British Journal of Sociology 

12 (2): 142-164. 

Goody, J. 2004. Is image to doctrine as speech to writing? Modes of communication and the 

origins of religion. In Whitehouse, H. and J. Laidlaw, J. (eds) Ritual and Memory: Toward 

a Comparative Anthropology of Religion, Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 49-64. 

Grant, A. 1991. Economic or symbolic? Animals and ritual behaviour, In Garwood, P. et al. (eds) 

Sacred and Profane, Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 109-114. 

Hawkes, C. 1954. Archaeological theory and Method. Some Suggestions from the Old World. 

American Anthropologist 56: 155-168. 

Hunt, L. A., Jacob, M. C. and Mijnhardt, W. 2010.The Book That Changed Europe: Picart & 

Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

McClymond, K. 2008. Beyond Sacred Violence. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. 

Morris, J. 2008. Associated bone groups; one archaeologist’s rubbish is another’s ritual 

deposition, In Davis, O., Sharples, N. and Waddington, K. (eds) Changing perspective on 

the first millennium BC, Oxford: Oxbow, 83-98. 

Needham, R. 1972. Belief, language, and experience. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 

Pauketat, T. R. and Loren, D. D. (eds) 2005. North American archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell. 

Rappaport, R.A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. 

Smith, J. Z. 1980. The Bare Facts of Ritual, History of Religions 20 (1/2): 112-12. 

Stausberg, M. 2007. The study of religion(s) in Western Europe (I): Prehistory and history until 

World War II, Religion 37: 294-318. 


Thomas, J. 2004a. Archaeology’s Place in Modernity, Modernism/modernity 11(1): 17-34 

Thomas, J. 2004b. Archaeology and Modernity, London: Routledge 

Witmore, C. L. 2006. Archaeology and modernity, or archaeology and a modernist amnesia?, 

Norwegian Archaeology Review 39(1): 49-52. 

a DEFINITION OF RELIGION with some useful references: 

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/defreligion.htm 



SECTION 2 

Of Gods and Men, Ancestors 

and Relics 



Of Gods and Men, Ancestors and Relics 

Core Readings 

Parker Pearson, M. 2001. Death being and time, In Insoll, T. (ed.) Archaeology 

and World Religion, London: Routledge, 203-219. (in e-book) 

Hutton, R. 1997. The Neolithic great goddess: a study in modern tradition, 

Antiquity 71: 91–99. (paper) 

 

Whitley, J. 2002. Too many ancestors, Antiquity 76: 119–126 (paper) 

Antonaccio, C. M. 2002. Warriors, Traders, and ancestors: the “Heroes” of 

Lefkandi. In Højte, J. M. (ed.) Images of Ancestors, Aarhus: Aarhus University 

Press, 13-42. (paper) 

Meri, J. W. 2010. Relics of Piety and Power in Medieval Islam. Past & Present 206: 

97-120. (paper) 

Further Reading 

Fleming, A. 1969. The myth of the mother goddess. World Archaeology 1: 247- 

61. (e-link) 

Meskell, L. 1995. Goddesses, Gimbutas and ‘New Age’ archaeology, Antiquity 

69: 74-86. (e-link) 

Ucko, P. 1962. The interpretation of prehistoric anthropomorphic figurines. 

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92: 38-54. 

Introduction Parker Pearson 2001. 

On this section we will explore in a little more detail a few features of the ‘religious’ which 

require further attention. This includes some general reflections on ancient religions, and ancient 

gods, and how ancient religions worked. The chapter by Parker Pearson (2001) is quite helpful in 

this respect. You need to read this carefully (and critically – don’t assume he is necessarily ‘right’ 

about everything) as this provides a rare attempt to identify some general patterns through time 

and space and some of the more interesting issues we need to grapple with. 

Please do not think that the history of our ideas are not relevant here. It is certainly important 

(in fact essential?) to have a sense of where many of our general attitudes to religion come 


from, so the sections on late Victorian theories about religion etc are important to understand. 

In particular we might suggest that many popular and ‘common-sense’ understandings of 

religion have not moved on much from those early ideas. Ideas that some religions are ‘simple’ 

(‘elementary’) and some ‘complex’, for example, need to be seen within ideas of evolutionary 

development (in which Christianity was commonly seen as the highest form of religion, of 

course…). Sir James Frazer (one of the most famous anthropologists of his day) would suggest 

an evolutionary development moving through the stages of magic => religion => science 

(Parker Pearson 2001: 207). Equally there are all sorts of presumptions being made about 

‘primitive’ religions (usually in opposition to ‘advanced’ peoples – ‘advanced’ normally being 

taken to mean ‘like us’). 

Of course, what we need to bear in mind is that these were largely speculative schemes – 

there was little hard historical or archaeological evidence to support them, and ethnographic 

evidence from other parts of the world was only beginning to be systematically collected and 

analysed. This needs to be remembered, certainly when we start trying to fit our evidence into 

similar schemes which may be equally speculative. Certainly we need to be careful in the terms 

and ideas we present in relation to archaeological data. If we start talking about ‘offerings to 

the gods’ what do we actually mean by this? Can we assume all peoples actually have ‘gods’, 

in a similar way. Is this a universal feature of human experience? Are ‘gods/goddesses’, the 

same as ‘spirits’? Are ‘spirits’ the same, or different from ‘ancestors’? Typically we would 

suggest a need for care in using terms like ‘ancestors’. What are ‘ancestors’ all about? This 

is a term which is widely used, but all-too often with little explication of what the term may 

actually mean. Ancestors are commonly invoked in relation to more-or-less vaguely defined 

‘ancestor cults’ and ‘ancestor worship’………….. we will return to the Ancestors later. 

As well as exploring questions relating to how people relate to their ancestors, we will also 

look at some questions relating to how objects may acquire religious or sacred significance. 

This will introduce some of issues about sacred spaces and places, which are explored in later 

sections. 

Inventing the Gods? 

While we will not look in any depth at those ‘big’ issues about how and when religion/ religiosity 

may have developed, and whether there are some great landmarks in human religious 

behaviour? As ever, when dealing with such questions about origins, we are following in the 

footsteps of nineteenth century scholars also intrigued by these ‘big’ questions. You should be 

aware of some important strands of research focussed on the Neolithic, and whether it was 

in the Neolithic that something major happened in the way humans think about ‘gods’. Here 

the work of Jacques Cauvin (Cauvin 2000) is quite well-known. The essence of Cauvin’s theory 

is that a ‘symbolic revolution’ occurred with the appearance in the Near East of female and 


ull figurines, and special treatment of bulls (burying their horns in walls), at the time of the 

origin of plant domestication. For Cauvin this ‘revolution in symbols’ is a key to the collective 

psychology of the first farmers. In his interpretation, the female figurines show a goddess, the 

universal mother, while the bull signifies a brute force that is tamed and converted into the 

virile essence of the male. He sees both as divine, thus representing the moment (but surely 

a ‘long’ moment) in human history when - through the invention of the gods - a chasm was 

formed between gods and humanity. 

As a model, this raises some interesting issues, but as a general model has some major problems, 

not least in that this is a tale of the Near Eastern Neolithic which, as we know, does not in 

fact mean exactly the same thing as the ‘Neolithic’ world-wide and certainly does not need 

to be intimately linked to the origins of agriculture. It also requires a certain view of earlier 

Mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations, as being fundamentally different to farming Neolithic 

populations, which is something we are much less happy about in the light of recent research. 

Figure 2.1 ‘Mother Goddess’? Upper Paleolithic, ‘Venus of Willendorf’ 

(carved c.24,000–22,000 BC?) 

Mother Goddesses? & Hutton 1997 

Rather more popularly discussed are notions of a single ‘Mother Goddess’ as being central 

to the European Neolithic, commonly linked to more general ideas that Neolithic cultures 


were woman-centred. Since the nineteenth century there has been a consistent suggestion 

that early religiosity was framed around a Mother Goddess, whose worship (quite unlike the 

Cauvin theory) symbolizes a cultural continuity from the Palaeolithic era to modern times. 

In more modern archaeology the most influential advocate for this theory, the well-known 

archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, gave archaeological credibility to such ideas. 

However, as your readings will make clear, such ideas were in fact quite widely accepted 

amongst many main-stream archaeologists through the twentieth century, and goddess cults 

were linked with all sorts of prehistoric archaeology, from megalithic monuments to human 

figurines. It was not really until the 1960s that a more critical look was taken at the basis for 

ideas of goddess cult(s) and what evidence there might in fact be to support such an idea. 

Papers by Peter Ucko (1962) and Fleming (1969) provided important critical studies of specific 

groups of archaeological data which still provide good examples of exactly how research can 

proceed in a careful, critical and thoughtful way. They are available online and still worth 

reading. 

Whereas the academic study of figurines may seem quite specialist, the notion of the Goddess 

has assumed larger proportions to the wider community since the 1960s. Debates about the 

Goddess have moved far beyond academic research, moving into the domain of New Age 

beliefs, not least with women-centred (gynocentric) mythologized interpretations of the past. 

This developed (especially in USA) as a burgeoning field in women’s studies and New Age 

literature. Its books of course far outsell their scholarly counterparts. For a further discussion 

of this interesting area, the paper by Lynn Meskell (Meskell 1995) provides a good discussion, 

while reminding us of the great gap which may exist between academic/scholarly research, 

and popular understandings of the past. 

Who or What are ‘Ancestors’ ? & Whitley 

Moving on from the ‘Mother Goddess’, we may consider the notion of ‘ancestors’ and who they 

might be. During your reading, perhaps especially in relation to prehistoric (or non-European) 

contexts, you will commonly encounter references to generalised religious ideas relating to 

‘ancestors’, as well as more specific discussions relating to death and burial which are also 

framed in terms of ‘ancestors’, in one way or another. We probably all have some general 

idea what this term might mean (people – in general? – people who came before us? possible 

familial/genetic ancestors? Dead relatives whose relatedness gives us status?), although when 

we look a bit more closely, the term becomes a bit more problematic, and perhaps one to be 

used more carefully than we often do. 

As has been pointed out on many occasions, we may use ‘the deeds of illustrious ancestors .. 

to enhance one’s own status or justify an achieved position’… but if necessary ‘when one’s real 


ancestors did not suffice, a line of descent could be invented, preferably going all the way back 

to the gods’. This is a point worth bearing in mind: we can all invent ancestries for ourselves, 

and other people in the past could do so; this could be evident in a material way in reusing 

ancient monuments, for example. But also bear in mind that there is a huge variety of ways 

in which ancestors may be conceived, and may be studied. As such we just provide a couple 

of examples you may engage with, to provide a flavour of some of the possibilities. These 

readings may be suggestive in relation to other periods and contexts, and may prompt you to 

look afresh at archaeological data you are already aware of. We will also encounter some more 

case-studies relevant to the ancestors later in the module. 

In the ancient Greek world celebrated forefathers (and ‘heroes?’) provided models of behaviour 

and values, examples of glory and meritorious lives. Similar traditions are well-documented 

in the Roman world (or at least amongst the Roman elites). The forefathers (very rarely foremothers) 

could then be invoked by the living generations. We of course know about this only 

because Greek literature has brought down those stories to us. This suggests that we need to 

consider to what extent other contemporary (later prehistoric) societies – for whom we have 

no textual records - may have been similar. In the Greek world, ‘ancestors’ could certainly mean 

different things. At the personal level there was remembrance of forefathers within living 

memory – a memory which may in fact be quite short: two or three generations back. These 

may appear named on written funerary monuments. Over time however, such memories may 

change, or disappear. Images may of course change their meanings to succeeding generations. 

What were once parents or siblings, become increasingly distant ancestors known only through 

whatever collective memories survive. In classical archaeology much research of course focuses 

on the monuments created by the small numbers of the elite, those most likely to have and 

preserve extensive family trees, when the right ancestry was essential for political success. 

One reading we provide by Antonaccio (2002) provides a case-study in Iron Age Greece – in a 

study which makes clear the need to recognise the political nature of prestigious ancestors. 

Following the disruption of a more hierarchical palace-based Bronze Age societies in Mycenean 

Greece, the new leaders who emerged (the basileis - ‘king’s or ‘chieftains’) seem likely to have 

come from new elites, lacking long lineages. As such, in their rituals, and tombs, they found 

new ways to create links with the past, and indeed perhaps create prestigious ancestors for 

themselves. This will be an issue we return to later in the module in relation to how ancestors, 

and cemeteries, may play a role in political claims to owning land. 

Antonaccio discusses an example of an elite cemetery of this period at Lefkandi, where a 

massive tomb seems to have become a focus for rituals, while successive burials included exotic 

(e.g. Egyptian faience and bronze jugs, Phoenician bowls) and often ancient artefacts. The 

author suggests this was all part of a deliberate policy. Other related papers are also accessible 


online (Morris 1988; Antonaccio 1994). A useful WWW site with discussions of the Lefkandi 

site may also be found here: http://faculty.vassar.edu/jolott/old_courses/crosscurrents2001/ 

Lefkandi/heroic.htm 

Figure 2.2 Funerary stele of Thrasea and Euandria, c. 375-350 BC. Rather than seeing such 

monuments as art objects, these may be seen as both memorials but also representations of 

significant ancestors, whose memory and reputation they will sustain. And of course they 

‘work’ - as the names of Thrasea and Euandria survive in 2013 AD – we still remember them. 

A hopefully interesting anthropological ‘take’ on ancestors – looking at African examples, may 

be found in Kopytoff’s (1971) paper: “Ancestors as elders in Africa”. The paper draws attention 

to ways in which we need to be careful with our presumptions about ancestors, and what they 

may be. Reading about case studies in Africa may also be helpful as many African societies still 

maintain a strong sense of ancestors in their daily lives (in a way which we do not really do 

any more), and it may be helpful to see some of the implications of such beliefs. For a South 

American case-study see Hastorf (2003). 

The body – religion.. & Parker Pearson (2003 Ch.3) 

Another idea we may also introduce here (we will look at it again towards the end of the 

module), concerns the ways in which we view ourselves, and our bodies, ways which may also 

have a significant role to play in discussions about religion and beliefs. To take an example: 


we might think about how in later Bronze Age Central Europe there was a large-scale shift 

from inhumation to cremation burial. This is the so-called “Urnfield period”, known through 

numerous cemeteries of cremation burials in urns. As we will see, there was also a widespread 

shift from cremation (back?) to inhumation during the Roman period (early centuries CE/AD). 

In recent history, cremation again appeared in Europe during the nineteenth century, as a new 

(and often controversial) way of disposing of the dead. 

How do we explain this change? Might we think of this as a “religious revolution” (however 

defined), or in other ways - if so.. what other ways? As we will see when we come back to 

this topic, this might be interpreted in terms of new understandings of the body as much as 

about “religion” in a modern sense. What has been suggested is that this exceptional period 

presents us with a remarkable reflection of change in attitudes towards the body, which 

is where we may start … 

For a preview of this topic, which we return to later in the module, perhaps take a 

quick look at this WWW page relating to the Changing Social Practices of Death 

in Bronze Age Europe project, which http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/lrp/bronze.html 

Attitudes to the body, will emerge again and again in different parts of this course. For a 

useful overview of how we might think about the body in another (less familiar, to most of us) 

religious tradition, you can access this paper by Holdrege, B. A. (1998). “Hindu discourses of 

the body and the study of religion “ International Journal of Hindu Studies 2(3): 341-86. 

http://www.springerlink.com/content/8577t4212221230w/fulltext.pdf 

As she points out, such discussions can be discussed in various ways, scholars may speak of the 

phenomenology of the body, the anthropology of the body, the sociology of the body, the 

biopolitics of the body, the history of the body, thinking through the body, writing the body, 

ritualizing the body etc etc. This may include far more theoretical discussion than you wish to 

read, but it makes the point that there is huge scope for thinking about the body in a more 

critical way. Here we will just draw attention to this line of research – we will return to it in the 

second half of the module … 

Relics and sacred ‘things’ 

As a major part of this section we will look in more depth at some ways in which objects, of 

various kinds, may be or may become relics, commonly of a religious kind. Such objects may 

themselves become of special significance and interest. For archaeologists, with our special 

interest in material culture, this is surely an area we should all be interested in? In your earlier 

studies you will of course have encountered relics in various contexts, but probably mainly in 

relation to medieval Christendom, where religious relics were of considerable importance. The 


examples we will briefly mention here, and which are discussed at more length in a series of 

readings, span many different periods and contexts. These make clear how the assigning of 

religious significance to material objects is a very widespread phenomenon within the human 

experience. It is perhaps quite difficult to identify many religions or forms of religiosity which 

do not share such attachments. 

Several papers mentioned here come from a recent themed volume of the journal 

Past & Present, (a key historical journal you need to be familiar with), which also 

includes a paper (Chau 2010) on a series of famous mangos which became ‘sacred’ 

relics (see below) , an interesting point of departure… 

Relics in secular societies? Food as Relic in Revolutionary China (Chau 2010) 

On 5 August 1968, the Chinese leader Mao received a basket of golden mangoes as 

gifts from the Pakistani foreign minister Mian Arshad Hussain. Instead of eating the 

mangoes, Mao decided to give them to the Capital Worker and Peasant Mao Zedong 

Thought Propaganda Team. Rather than eating them they were put on display. The 

mangoes became sacred relics, objects of veneration. The wax-covered fruit was 

placed on an altar in the factory auditorium, and workers lined up to file past it, 

solemnly bowing as they walked by. No one had thought to sterilize the mango 

before sealing it, however, and after a few days on display, it began to show signs of 

rot. The revolutionary committee of the factory retrieved the rotting mango, peeled 

it, then boiled the flesh in a huge pot of water. Mao again was greatly venerated, and 

the gift of the mango was praised as evidence of the Chairman’s deep concern for the 

workers. Then everyone in the factory filed by and each worker drank a spoonful of 

the water in which the sacred mango had been boiled. After that, the revolutionary 

committee ordered a wax model of the original mango. The replica was duly made 

and placed on the altar to replace the real fruit, and workers continued to file by, 

their veneration for the sacred object in no apparent way diminished. 

Images of the mangoes, and a mango reliquary may be seen here:- 

http://chineseposters.net/themes/mao-mangoes.php 


Christian beliefs and practices 

Figure 2.3 Chairman Mao’s Mango as Relic 

Cults of relics have been an integral part of Christian beliefs and practices since the earliest 

days of the church. We will be looking at that early period of Christianity in a bit more depth 

in a later section, but here we will spend a bit of time looking at some facets of medieval (and 

more recent) beliefs and practices concerning sacred objects and relics. 

While perhaps not fully compatible with rationalist understandings of the world, such beliefs 

continue to be shared by nearly a billion members of the Catholic church in the twenty-first 

century, and indeed other branches of Christian churches. Relics remain in the modern 

world. The academic literature on medieval relics and their use (notably in relation to 

pilgrimage) is enormous. This is possibly some reflection of its medieval significance, but also 

perhaps a taphonomic outcome of the kinds of things we know about in the middle ages. 

Studies range from archaeological analyses of shrines and reliquaries, through geographies 

of sacred space, to considerations of the economic and political importance of the relic trade. 

The cult of relics was contained within a ritual system anchored on the concepts of pilgrimage, 

sacred or holy places (which we will return to), various pious or devotional practices, and 

a belief in miracles, which were all linked through biographical narratives of the lives of 

individual saints. This wealth of material means that in presenting any summary it is almost 

impossible to avoid generalising, simplifying and conflating time periods. Here we will look 

at one particular aspect of relics, relating to the specific signification of body parts, exploring 

both their immediate signification and the way in which their veneration was incorporated 

into wider cultural practice. 


Figure 2.4 This is a relic extracted in 1995 from the tomb of the Franciscan saint, Anthony of 

Padua, and sent as a gift to the Franciscan friars of the Province of St Anthony in the USA. 

New relics of the saint were obtained when the saint’s tomb was opened in anticipation 

of his 800th birthday, which was celebrated in 1995. The American friars observe on their 

website that “as the property was developing as a shrine the decision to place the relic in the 

chapel seemed appropriate, and this took place in a special ceremony in the fall of 2000” a 

wonderful juxtaposition of modern and medieval value systems. 

Saints, miracles, relics and pilgrimage were concepts with quite explicit meanings in the middle 

ages, which we need to clarify. First, a saint. This was someone who was now dead and in 

heaven, one of God’s Elect. Two things were explicitly regarded as essential for this designation: 

• Virtue of morals 

• Truth of signs (Innocent III, 1199) 

The demonstration of ‘Virtue of morals’ was initially that made by martyrs, those who had 

chosen death rather than renege on their beliefs; apart from figures of the Apostolic period, 

these were the only recognised saints in the Early Church. From the fourth century, the quality 

could also be recognised in people who died in less dramatic ways but were of exemplary 

virtue, serving as models of Christian living. 

As saints had special intercessory powers with the Almighty, ‘Truth of signs’ required the 

performance of miracles, which were simply visible signs of God’s direct intervention in 

the human world. Prayers to a saint could bring about such interventions. These were not 

necessarily major events: simply a demonstration that the natural order of things had been 

set aside. An obvious example would be unexpected recovery from ill health, but accounts of 


saints’ lives (or vitae) are full of very trivial events which were nonetheless deemed miraculous 

because they were beyond the power of normal human agency. 

The formal process of canonization, or saint-making, now closely controlled by the Vatican, 

developed in the eleventh century, and was only finalised in 1234 (Vauchez 1997: 11-57). Up to 

this time, saints were recognised locally. Before the seventh century such processes are often 

obscure, but by then local bishops had an increasingly powerful role. The ‘recognition’ of a 

saint was often accomplished through the process of ‘translation’. After a number of miracles 

brought about through the intercession of a holy person had been identified, their remains 

were disinterred and enshrined. A famous, early example of this is the English Saint Cuthbert, 

whose body, originally buried in the monastic churchyard on Lindisfarne, was dug up eleven 

years after his death in 687, and placed in an elevated box inside the monastic church. This 

represented the formal inauguration of his cult. If it did not coincide with it, the celebration 

of the translation of a saint’s body could assume a greater importance than the date of their 

death. 

Once the process became fixed, a surprisingly small number of saints were canonised; only 37 

official canonisations were made between the end of the twelfth century and 1431; most of 

these were members of the clergy. Canonisations were also quite geographically restricted, 

the majority coming from England, France and Italy (but 2010 has seen the canonisation of an 

Australian saint.. Mary MacKillop) 

A ‘relic’ within Catholicism has quite a precise significance. Primary relics are the physical 

remains of saints, their bones or body parts. Secondary relics are objects with which they 

are intimately associated; their personal possessions, items of clothing etc. Tertiary relics are 

objects which have come into immediate contact with usually primary, although sometimes 

also secondary relics; unlike the first two categories, they can be created anew at any time. By 

virtue of their association with saints, corporeal or primary relics created a locus or place of 

sanctity, to which pilgrimage could be made, something we will be looking at in more detail 

in later sections. 

From the ninth century, canon legislation [Canon law is the body of laws and regulations made 

by church authorities] required that the celebration of the service of the Eucharist in a church 

necessitated that relics of saints were present. The catacombs, believed to be full of the bodies 

of early Christian martyrs, became a major source of relics, and the relics of most churches were 

not complete bodies of saints, but parts of them. Major relics in major churches were often 

kept in crypts underneath the high altar, but they could also be enshrined in precious metal 

containers, stored in a treasury and brought out on special occasions. Indeed their ceremonial 

use often required that they could be moved. From the eighth century, portable house-shaped 

shrines were often used. 


Figure 2.5 House-shaped shrine from Conques, dated c. 1000 

More unusual to the modernising eye however is the enshrinement of relics within metal 

containers that mirrored their original form. Thus we have hand reliquaries, foot reliquaries 

and head reliquaries … 

Figure 2.6 Sacred foot reliquary, Basel 

That from Basel (fig. 2.6), of c. 1450 manufacture, originally contained a foot of one of the 

innocents massacred at the order of Herod , allegedly given by the seventh century saint, 

Columbanus. That of St Oswald (fig.2.7) is one of four medieval heads of the saint. 


Figure 2.7 Representation of one of the four known heads of St Oswald. 

Improbable survival, and the existence of multiple examples of what is normally a unique body 

part are both obvious challenges to modern ideas of the credibility of these relics. However, 

this is perhaps looking at things the wrong way round. In medieval terms Faith preceded 

Function, and saints would assist the believer because of the sincerity of their devotion rather 

than because of the authenticity of the relic. Relics acted as a powerful focus for devotion, but 

they did not possess power in themselves, although the credulous might think that they did. It 

was not essential that the bones within were the real thing, as long as the commitment of the 

believer was genuine. 

Figure 2.8 Plan of Lincoln Minster – with separation of lay people (in Nave) and clerics. 


Sacred context - the context of relics 

Moving on now from signifiers, to context, we can begin to think about the ways in which the 

contextual associations of objects may be a factor in ritual practices associated with them (we 

will explore issues of space in more detail in later sections). This is an issue which you will often 

encounter when people are discussing what makes something sacred, or how ritual practices 

may be distinguished from non-ritual/mundane practices. 

One thing that the modern Catholic will not share with their medieval predecessor is the way 

in which lay people accessed space inside a church. Churches were physically divided into 

areas for lay people and clerics, in a much more concrete and impermeable way than their 

present use indicates. The east end, the chancel, or in a major church, the quire, where most 

ceremonial took place was physically blocked from the nave by a rood screen and usually only 

the clergy had access to it. (If you are unclear about this, look at a plan of a large church/ 

minster/cathedral and see how it is divided up). 

Notwithstanding, the secular calendar was closely linked to saints’ feasts, and a large number 

of these were regularly celebrated. On such occasions the laity would come into more 

immediate contact with the sacred; images and relics were brought out for public veneration, 

and notwithstanding their very special qualities, they could be touched. It is this tactility 

which rendered the experience both intimate and important. Generally excluded from most 

of the ceremonial of the mass, the lay believer who was literally in touch with a relic had 

an immediate and powerful contact with a saint, in which nothing needed to be explained 

or translated. An intimacy with the holy was created that was of considerable potency for 

ordinary people. 

That special feeling – auratic objects 

This experience might perhaps be compared with that enjoyed by archaeologists 

and historians, who likewise have privileged access to special/auratic objects. The 

University of Leicester used to run a training excavation on a ninth century site on 

Lindisfarne island, in NE England. When the students had cleared away the deep 

deposits of blown sand from the stone floor of the building, it could be claimed, 

with sincerity, that the last people to walk across it would actually have known real 

Vikings. For a more dramatic example: take a Palaeolithic hand axe, actually made 

by a different species of human being: – they have made it; you have touched it. 

The fact that such objects are commonplace, and that the act of touching is not in 

itself actually very enlightening, is irrelevant to the sense of intimacy created by the 

contact. Even if we are not impressed by medieval relics, we may have to admit that 

other objects can be very special. 


Even if it is not universally facilitated, the intimacy of relics is intentional. A significant number 

show repairs. It is also no coincidence that so many of the surviving examples are quite late 

medieval in date probably replacing, although interestingly, also often incorporating, earlier 

enshrinements. One well known Irish archaeological find, the Moylough belt shrine (a 

sacred belt?), an eighth century gilt-bronze girdle of four jointed segments, was intended 

to be placed physically around the devotee; in a corresponding miracle story, the saint’s belt 

had thaumaturgic (i.e. miraculous/magical) powers. A quick search on the WWW will tell you 

more about this unique object. 

There are other insights to be obtained from the way in which relics were used. In this 

final example, concerning the relics and shrine of St Thomas Beckett, we can look in more 

detail at one particular set of relics, to illustrate the powerful and in this case very tangible 

metaphors engendered by their veneration. You can find more illustrations for this on 

the Blackboard site for this course – please take the time to look at them. 

The shrine of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the most important in 

England, and a major focus of pilgrimage. Elevated to the See of Canterbury because Henry 

II thought he would prove a ‘safe pair of hands’ at a time when the king was looking to limit 

the influence of the clergy, and particularly the papacy in government, he transformed himself 

into a loyal servant of the pope. After spending some time in exile, he returned to Canterbury 

only to be assassinated in his cathedral. 

The story of Thomas’ murder is familiar. Four loyal knights of Henry, fired by his infamous wish 

to be ‘rid of this turbulent priest’ rode to Canterbury and attacked the archbishop on the steps 

leading to the high altar. One of them cut his head with a sword, removing the front part of 

his skull, his brains spilling on the floor; and representations of the assassination are usually 

quite explicit about this. 

Thomas was a ‘fast track’ saint, canonised in 1173, within three years of his death, and his cult 

was actively promoted by the papacy all over Europe as both saint and martyr. Many ‘lives’ 

were produced, including an Icelandic saga. As luck would have it, the east end of Canterbury 

Cathedral was damaged by fire shortly after his death, and this gave the opportunity to 

‘develop the property’ as an important shrine. Canterbury Cathedral is an enormous church, 

built over a subterranean crypt; the original crypt was built shortly after the Norman Conquest, 

but after the fire this was extended to the east to create the eastern crypt, initially used for 

Beckett’s body. Above this, the Trinity and Corona chapels were extensions of the church to 

the east. 


Figure 2.9 Ground plan of Canterbury cathedral, with additional chapels added to east end 

You might think that after his death Beckett’s body would have been reassembled; not a bit of 

it! The severed crown was enshrined in the Corona chapel, purpose-built both to contain it, and 

to represent it, its form mirroring that of the crown of the top-sliced saint. The metaphorical 

significance is very obvious. Thomas had exchanged his earthly mitre for a heavenly crown; his 

martyrdom is underlined by the physical separation of the two parts of his head. 

Originally Thomas’ body was kept in the eastern crypt, but in 1220, presumably as a result of 

the volume of pilgrimage, it was moved to the Trinity Chapel. The visiting pilgrim had a very 

full experience, for in addition to the body of Thomas, divided into saint and martyr, he or she 

could also visit the place of martyrdom, at the foot of the stairs. They could also make their 

own tertiary relics, by placing objects in contact with the shrine, and a substantial business 

grew up around the manufacture of ecclesiastical memorabilia associated with the shrine. 

The martyrdom of St Thomas may be encountered in many different places, such as on caskets 

produced by the medieval enamel manufactory at Limoges, on the seal of Arbroath Abbey 

(which adopted Thomas as patron), and on the well known pilgrim badges – acquired in 

Canterbury, but found all over Britain, and further afield. The shrine itself, originally covered 

in jewelled and golden ornaments, was dismantled at the Reformation, and is now marked by 

candles, which still serve as a focus and a reminder of the See of Canterbury’s most important 

medieval occupant. 

By contrast: Another famous figure lies nearby (fig.2.10): Edward, Prince of Wales, better 

known as the Black Prince, who died in 1376, just before his father Edward III and therefore 

never becoming king of England, although that would have been his life’s expectancy. In 

medieval terms he occupies prime burial space, behind the high altar of the great cathedral 

and to the left of Beckett’s shrine. Archaeologically, one might make the mistake of thinking 

that something similar is going on here. His gauntlets, shield, sword and helmet, with a rather 

striking fashion addition on top, were preserved over his tomb. Although they might have 

reminded the passing pilgrim of his military achievements, they carried no special charge; 


no benefit could be expected from touching them, although they are clearly fair game for 

modern replication. 

Belief in the power of bones needs to be understood within the context of an understanding 

of the world which not only allowed, but even expected, divine intervention on a regular basis. 

However, medieval Christians did not necessarily expect that their own supplications to saints 

would have a miraculous outcome. Contemplation and contact with relics was also a pious 

act. Shrines served as a focus for individual devotion, linking the supernatural with human 

concerns. Notwithstanding many current conceptions, sanctity was quite hard to come by; and 

new saints fairly rare phenomena. This explains the enormous success of Beckett’s tomb. Relic 

cults could be large, powerful and acquisitive; but the widespread veneration of the bones of 

saints was also emotional, personal, small scale and intimate. 

Islam & Meri 

Figure 2.10 Tomb of the Black Prince, Canterbury 

As will be clear from reading the next text by &Meri (Meri 2010) relics and shrines have an 

equally prominent part in the Islamic world. The veneration of the Companions of the Prophet 

and other holy persons and making ziyara to their tombs and shrines became normal practice 

throughout the Islamic world – while of course pilgrimage (to Mecca) was a fundamental 

part of the religion. While attitudes to the human body may be rather different than found 

in many Christian contexts (mainly in the inviolability of human remains and the sanctity of 

the body – as such, the bodies of the dead should not be disturbed), this ‘did not preclude the 

emergence ... among Muslims of a variety of forms of ‘corporeal’ and ‘non-corporeal’ relics 

belonging to or coming into contact with a holy person which demonstrate reverence for the 


holy dead and honouring their memory. The twelfth century marked an historic turning point 

for the proliferation of relics in Islam and western Christianity. As we have seen, in the West 

the fragmentation of the bodies of saints became the norm. This is in marked contrast with 

the Islamic world where from around the time of the Crusades ... there was a marked increase 

in the veneration of saints, including the foundation of shrines and the veneration of relics in 

many parts of the Islamic world, Greater Syria, Iraq and elsewhere’ (Meri 2010: 99) 

Meri provides a useful introduction to issues concerning the nature of relics in Islam and the 

roles they may play in ‘the devotional life of Muslims? In Islam as in Christianity relics embody 

religious experience, connections with the Creator and more immediately with the holy person 

(‘saint’) to whom the relics once belonged. Relics are also receptacles for individual and 

collective memory. Muslim devotees yearned to preserve the memory of holy persons in objects 

which symbolized a tangible link between them and the holy person. Through the mere act of 

remembrance of holy persons and their miracles and memorializing the past, memory becomes 

lived and shared experience. The use of relics by medieval Muslims again focused memories on 

sacred objects’ (Meri 2010: 99), creating contexts for their veneration. The text by Taylor (Taylor 

1990) provides further discussion of Egyptian material, much more fully discussed in a really 

interesting book (Taylor 1999) – a key text if you wanted to follow up this topic some more. 

‘Footprints of the Prophet’ 

The paper by &Meri identifies how the sandal(s) of the Prophet Muhammed became a powerful 

relic, while manifestations of his ‘footprints’/sandalprints also became quite common sacred 

markers, throughout the Islamic world. This serves to explain various carved foot/sandal prints 

encountered during archaeological survey in Sudanese Nubia (e.g. fig.2.11). Islamic prohibitions 

against figural representation largely exclude the continued attribution of significance to most 

earlier rock drawings. One exception, however, may be found in relation to various natural 

and artificial landscape features of which carved ‘footprints’, are perhaps some of the most 

common in Middle Nubia. In the Third Cataract region of north Sudan area such ‘iconatrophic’ 

explanations for natural features have been noted in several locations, where unusual stone 

features, usually identified by their Nobiin name as nebinoy, are identified as the ‘prophets 

footprints’. Examples have also been found however, where ancient drawings of feet/sandals 

have – as confirmed by local informants - also been reinterpreted in this way and given a new 

Islamic meaning as ‘nebinoy’ [Nubian: nebi=prophet; oy=foot]. 

Iconatrophy – a process in which oral traditions originate as explanations for objects 

which, due the passage of time, no longer make sense to their viewers. This term may 

be encountered in studies of ethnohistory where a class of spurious explanations are 

created by contemporary observers as they attempt to explain a historic object or 

relationship without a direct observational link between himself or herself and the 


place or event (e.g. in Vansina 1985). That archaeologist may also indulge in such 

practices might be borne in mind! 

Figure 2.11 Carved foot/sandalprints on rock outcrops, northern Sudan, 

interpreted (today) as footprints of the Prophet Muhammed 

Examples of similar sites, with similar interpretations of natural features can readily be found 

throughout the Middle Nile, although explicit records of such reinterpretations of carved 

footprints are less common. Drawings of feet and footprints generally show a distinctive 

patterning, being commonly found in small groups, often several kilometres from the river, at 

locations which were identified as ‘shrines’ or ‘holy places’, possibly in several different periods. 

One example of an Islamicization of such sites was recorded at a small hill east of Wadi Halfa, 

named after Sheikh Abu Bakr es-Sadiq (a Companion of the Prophet), where ancient carved 

footprints were (in the 1960s) reputed to be those of Abu Bakr himself. In that case, a long 

history of that hill as a place of special significance was perhaps indicated by the accumulation 

of other drawings dating back several millennia (including a boat, bovine and human figures 

as well as a hieroglyphic text). 

Buddhism, & Coningham 

Despite sometimes being depicted as an atheistic creed that rejects superstition, magic, 

ritualism, and idolatry (a picture derived from canonical texts), Buddhist practice also shows 

a similar engagement with material objects, relics, and indeed sacred places. This began 

immediately after the cremation of the Buddha, when 10 relics were distributed (8 portions 

of ashes, the cremation urn and embers from the cremation fire). All were built into stupa 

monuments and became objects (and places within sacred landscapes) of veneration. This is 

discussed in a little more depth in the &Coningham chapter 


Here again, we may encounter a tension between what people supposedly believed/oughtto-believe, 

and actual practice. A reconstruction of an ‘essential’ Buddhist teaching on the 

basis of canonical sources - sources that were often compiled and edited in the West – may 

look increasingly a Western fiction (not least in exposing the problems of imagining a single 

‘Buddhism’, instead of multiple regional Buddhisms). As is discussed in more detail in the paper 

by Scharf (1999), in the reappraisal of Buddhism “on the ground,” perhaps the most fruitful 

development has been the discovery of the seminal role that images and relics have played in 

the history of Buddhist culture. Rather than envisaging the spread of Buddhism as the 

propagation of a sacred creed or set of canonical beliefs, the movement of Buddhism 

might be better understood in terms of the diffusion of sacred objects (most notably 

icons and relics), along with the esoteric technical knowledge required to manipulate 

them. ‘There is, in fact, considerable evidence that the mobility of relics contributed to the 

success of Buddhism as a missionary religion; relics facilitated and legitimized the Buddhist 

appropriation of indigenous religious centers throughout Asia, transforming the landscape 

into a sacred Buddhist domain’ (Scharf 1999: 78). At the same time, the popularity of relics was 

easily exploited by the various authorities who oversaw their dissemination. There are obvious 

parallels with the well-documented manipulation and exploitation of relics by the clergy in 

medieval Christendom. 

Against relics 

On the other hand it is of course worth remembering that in various religions (certainly amongst 

‘world religions’), in various periods, there have been movements against such beliefs (and 

related practices). One potentially useful way of thinking about this is to always be aware of 

the potential gap between ‘beliefs’, and ‘practices’, what people believe (or ought to believe) 

and what they actually do. You might also note that this might have implications for how 

historians may encounter the past (working from texts – commonly written by those concerned 

with correct thinking and belief – orthodoxy), and what archaeologists may encounter, which 

is much more derived from what people were/are ‘doing’. Just something to keep in your mind 

… 

In the Protestant Reformation at the end of the medieval period, one of the defining 

characteristics of many Protestant groups was their rejection of all sorts of ‘superstitious 

practices’, notably those associated with relics, which were an integral part of the Roman 

Catholic church (see Walsham 2010). The Genevan reformer Jean Calvin in a 1561 tract 

attacked relics as a most ‘execrable sacrilege’, a ‘filthy polution the which ought in no wise 

to be suffered in the church’. He went on to cast contempt on the huge numbers of sacred 

bones, blood, shirts, caps, and assorted other ‘baggage’ and ‘geare’ that filled the churches of 

Europe – which he saw being used by the by the devil and the papists to pervert the simple. 


Among ‘the seae full of lyes’ he sought to expose was the brain of St Peter, which was actually 

a pumice stone, and the vast numbers of fragments of relics of Christ’s Cross and Mary’s milk. 

This questioning of the vast numbers of fragments of the True Cross remains widely repeated 

in the present day: if a man gathered together all the splinters of the former that were said 

to exist ‘there would be inough to fraighte a great ship’. (Martin Luther mocked ponderously 

that Three hundred men would not have sufficed to carry off all the fragments of the One 

True Cross). 

As Walsham (2010) points out, ‘the ease with which the populace had been deceived by these 

tricks was itself a just punishment from God for its gullibility and natural addiction to ‘this 

most perverse kinde of superstition’ and to a carnal worldly Church, obsessed with visible, 

physical things. Calvin’s vicious outburst against relics was a violent rejection of the assumptions 

about the immanence of the holy that underpinned traditional Catholic devotional practices. 

The notion that the body parts and possessions of Christ and the saints were sources of 

supernatural power and conduits of heavenly grace ostensibly flew in the face of a system of 

faith that powerfully re-emphasized the transcendence of the sacred and the incorporeality 

of the divine.’ 

In sixteenth century England, the exposure of medieval relics as forgeries and fakes also took 

on more political dimensions when used as one of the centrepieces of the propaganda war that 

Thomas Cromwell launched against the Church of Rome on behalf of King Henry VIII. Ironically, 

the subsequent persecution, and execution of Catholic opponents of the Reformation (and 

elsewhere) only served to generate a new range of relics – from a new group of Catholic 

martyrs - which circulated amongst secret Catholic groups. A recent study on Philip II of Spain 

and his collection of nearly 7,500 holy artefacts has illustrated how the king manipulated 

these items to bolster royal authority and help construct a coherent spiritual and territorial 

identity for his realm (Lazare 2007). Here it would be worth reading a more extensive and 

interesting discussion of what happened to relics in post-Reformation England by Walsham 

(Walsham 2010). 

The superstitious worship of saints’ relics, and belief in their miraculous powers, were both 

prime targets of the modernising movement known as the Protestant Reformation, when, in 

many parts of Europe, they were stripped of their symbolic capital and physically discarded, as 

meaningless and worthless objects in the new world order. BUT, this particular Reformation 

perspective, though undoubtedly fully compatible with rationalist approaches, is not one 

shared by nearly a billion members of the Catholic church in the twentyfirst century. Whilst 

contemporary Catholic understandings cannot be directly mapped onto pre-Reformation 

beliefs, it is important to recognise that there has been no closure about relics in the modern 

world. 


Similar movements may be encountered in other religions, notably Islam, where a comparable 

so-called ‘fundamentalist’ movement is of course very present in today’s world. A modern 

intolerance of practices relating to such shrines and relics is an important part of some 

‘fundamentalist’ radical (Salafi or Wahhabi) forms of Islam today. While in part derived from a 

particular form of Islam which came to dominate (Saudi) Arabia in recent centuries, this is part 

of a much older tradition which in various periods has challenged what it has seen as impure 

or idolatrous practices. In the thirteenth century there was concerted debate, led by a famous 

Syrian scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) attacking the cult of saints and related ‘wrong’ or 

‘ignorant’ practices, especially those focussed on visits to cemeteries, and specifically venerated 

tombs. He argued that Muslims should only seek out special places for prayer in mosques and 

ritual sites of the Hajj pilgrimage. Praying in graveyards was too similar to pagan practices 

(and ‘innovations’, as he termed them) of the kind which the prophet condemned. This is also 

depicted as a notoriously Christian practice – of venerating saints and turning their tombs into 

shrines. He and his followers also challenged practices of building monuments over tombs – 

widely condemned by Islamic legal theory – but in practice incredibly common, and widespread 

(again, the tension/contradictions between theory and practice!). His works were the central 

inspiration for the Wahhabi movement in eighteenth and nineteenth century Arabia, and 

again today amongst radical Islamists. Shi’ite Muslims are seen as particularly guilty of such 

‘wrong’ behaviour, by this Sunni Muslim school of thought. 

Conclusion 

In this section we have raised some issues about some of the history of the study of religion 

and their origins. We hope the point has been made that we certainly need to be careful 

how we think about terms such as ‘ancestors’, and how we talk about them. We also need 

to be aware of the history of some of the more popular ideas about ancient religions, for 

example in relation to ‘mother goddesses’. What is the basis for interpreting figurines in this 

way? Might there be equally plausible interpretations? How much in fact are interpretations 

really reflecting presumptions and preconceptions of the interpreters? Are they/we simply 

making the past as they/we would like it to have been? Clearly we need to be careful, 

and critical in the way we look at archaeological data. 

On the other hand, traditions of sacred objects (and shrines) are clearly encountered in nearly 

all religions. We have also looked at some varied traditions of how objects becoming sacred, in 

various religious traditions, and some of the complexities which may surround them. That such 

objects may have complex histories (biographies) is also an interesting way of looking at them, 

which is receiving more attention in recent years. The special qualities of saints, and similarly 

holy/sacred/special individuals in various traditions, also takes us into the field of burial and 

mortuary archaeology, as well as establishing one of the main bases of traditions of pilgrimage 

– both topics we will be exploring in more detail later in the module. 


Self-assessed exercise 

• Can you identify more examples of material objects which have acquired ‘sacred’ 

qualities, as relics. Can you identify examples in a number of different time periods 

and contexts? Do they perhaps have ‘biographies’ – as they have developed their 

meanings over time? 

• Do you have or do you come in contact with more personal ‘relics’? Perhaps relics 

of family members. Can you identify anything about them that which might be 

related to some of the objects and practices alluded to in this section? 

Bibliography and other references 

Antonaccio, C. M. 1994. Contesting the Past: Hero Cult, Tomb Cult, and Epic in Early Greece. 

American Journal of Archaeology 98(3): 389-410. (e-link) 

Antonaccio, C. M. 1995. An Archaeology of Ancestors: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Early Greece, 

Rowman & Littlefield. 

Antonaccio, C. M. 2002. Warriors, Traders, and ancestors: the “Heroes” of Lefkandi. In Højte, 

J. M. (ed.) Images of Ancestors, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 13-42. 

Barrett, J. 1988. The Living, the Dead and the Ancestors: Neolithic and Early Bronze Age 

Mortuary Practices. In Barrett, J. and Kinnes, I. (eds)The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age 

Recent Trends, Sheffield, 30-41. 

Bradley, R. 1998. The Significance of Monuments, London: Routledge. 

Carroll, M. and Rempel, J. 2010. Living through the dead, Oxford: Oxbow. 

Cauvin, J. 2000. The birth of the gods and the origins of agriculture, Cambridge: Cambridge 


Chau, A. Y. 2010. Mao’s Travelling Mangoes: Food as Relic in Revolutionary China. Past & 

Present 206: 256-275. 

Coningham, R.A.E. 2001. The archaeology of Buddhism. In Insoll, T. (ed.) Archaeology and 

World Religion. London: Routledge, 61-95 

Fleming, A. 1969. The myth of the mother goddess. World Archaeology 1: 247-61. 

Goody, J. 1962. Death, Property and the Ancestors : a study of the mortuary customs of the 

LoDagaa of West Africa. London: Tavistock Publications. 

Hastorf, C. 2003. Community with the Ancestors: Ceremonies and Social Memory in the Middle 

formative at Chiripa, Bolivia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22: 305-332 

Højte, J.M. (ed.) 2002. Images of Ancestors, Århus: Aarhus University Press. 


Holdrege, B. A. 1998. Hindu discourses of the body and the study of religion, International 

Journal of Hindu Studies 2(3): 341-86. 

Hutton, R. 1997. The Neolithic great goddess: a study in modern tradition, Antiquity 71: 91–99 

Kopytoff, I. 1971. Ancestors as elders in Africa. Africa 41: 129-42. 

Laneri, N. 2007. Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient 

Mediterranean. Chicago: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago 

Lazare, G. 2007. Possessing the Sacred: Monarchy and Identity in Philip II’s Relic Collection at 

the Escorial, Renaissance Quarterly 60: 58–93 

Lee, A. D. 2000. Pagans and Christians in late antiquity : a sourcebook, London: Routledge. 

Marks, R. 2004. Image and devotion in late medieval England, Stroud: Sutton. 

Meri, J. W. 2002. The cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria. Oxford: Oxford 


Meri, J. W. 2010. Relics of Piety and Power in Medieval Islam. Past & Present 206: 97-120. 

Meskell, L. 1995. Goddesses, Gimbutas and ‘New Age’ archaeology, Antiquity 69: 74-86. 

Morris, I. 1988. Tomb Cult and the “Greek Renaissance:” The Past in the Present in the 8th c. 

B.C. Antiquity 63: 750-61 

Osborne, R. 2010. Relics and Remains in an Ancient Greek World full of Anthropomorphic 

Gods, Past & Present 206: 56-72. 

Scharff, R. H. 1999. On the Allure of Buddhist Relics, Representations 66: 75-99. 

Taylor, C. S. 1990. Sacred history and the cult of Muslim saints in late medieval Egypt, Muslim 

World 80: 72-80. 

Taylor , C. S. 1999. In the Vicinity of the Righteous. Ziyara and the Veneration of Muslim Saints 

in Late Medieval Egypt, Leiden: Brill. 

Ucko, P. 1962. The interpretation of prehistoric anthropomorphic figurines. Journal of the 

Royal Anthropological Institute 92: 38-54. 

Vauchez, A. 1997. Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Walsham, A. 2010. Skeletons in the Cupboard: Relics after the English Reformation. Past & 

Present 206: 121-143. 


SECTION 3 





Core Readings 

Chippendale, P., and Tacon, P. (eds) 1998. The Archaeology of Rock-Art, 

Cambridge: CUP. 

 

Whitley, D. S. 2005. Introduction to Rock Art Research, Walnut Creek: Left Coast 

Press, Ch. 6: 79-107. (paper) 

Further Readings 

 

 

 

David, B., McNiven, I., Attenbrow, V., Flood, J. and Collins, J. 1994. Of Lightning 

Brothers and White Cockatoos: dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the 

Northern Territory, Australia, Antiquity 68: 241–251. (paper) 

Flood, J. 2004. Linkage between rock-art and landscape in Aboriginal Australia, 

In Chippindale, C. and Nash, G. (eds.) The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art. 

Looking at Pictures in Place, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 182-200. 

(paper) 

Tacon, P. 1999. Identifying Ancient Sacred landscapes in Australia: from Physical 

to Social, In Ashmore, W. and Knapp, B. (eds) Archaeologies of Landscape, 

Oxford: Blackwell, 33-57. 

Jolly, P. 1996. Symbiotic Interaction Between Black Farmers and South-Eastern 

San: Implications for Southern African Rock Art Studies, Ethnographic Analogy, 

and Hunter-Gatherer Cultural Identity, Current Anthropology 37(2): 277-305. 

(paper) 

Lewis-Williams, J. D., Dowson, T. and Janette Deacon, J. 1993. Rock art and 

changing perceptions of southern Africa’s past: Ezeljagdspoort reviewed, 

Antiquity 67: 273–291 

 

 

McCall, G. 2007. Add shamans and stir? A critical review of the shamanism model 

of forager rock art production, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26(2): 

224-233. 

Sidky, H. 2010. On the Antiquity of Shamanism and its Role in Human Religiosity, 

Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 22(1): 68-92. 

Mitchell, P. 2005. Modelling Later Stone Age Societies in Southern Africa, In 

Stahl, A. (ed.) African Archaeology, Oxford: Blackwell, 150-173. (paper) 


Introduction 

In this section we will look at two areas of archaeological research which are commonly linked 

with discussion of ancient religions, and how they were practiced. Most tangibly, we have 

what is commonly called ‘rock-art’, encountered in most parts of the world, and commonly 

presumed to relate to ancient systems of belief and religious practice. Due to the great antiquity 

of some forms of rock-art, such material is also commonly considered to provide some of the 

earliest evidence for human belief systems. You are not expected at this stage to have had 

much contact with this field of research; this in itself is one reason we thought it might be 

a useful element of this module. However, as you will see, there are good reasons to believe 

that ‘rock-art’ commonly does relate to the more general theme of the module, and its study 

has certainly opened up a number of interesting debates in various fields of archaeological 

research. These may range from early (even Palaeolithic) contexts to much more recent times, 

firmly situated within current historical archaeological research (e.g. Clegg 1998). It is certainly 

a field of research which can be of relevance to most of us, wherever our research interests lie. 

Figure 3.1 Bronze Age drawings of boats close to the rapids of the Third Cataract, Nubia – a 

major landscape feature, and a dangerous place. There are several clusters of boat drawings 

in the immediate area, perhaps relating to the dangers of the river at this point. Most 

drawings at this point are however of animals, both wild animals and domestic cattle. 

Here, your core readings Chippendale & Tacon (1998) and Whitley (2005) will 

provide you with a useful introduction and several case studies dealing with many aspects 

of rock-art studies in many different contexts, and many of the key archaeological debates 

surrounding it. We will try and supplement and expand on that with a more selective use of 


other readings from other archaeological contexts which can provide some idea of where 

we may go with such work. When reading this material, do try and bear in mind some of the 

more general issues being covered in this module, most especially in how rock-art, as a form of 

archaeological evidence, may be related to other forms of evidence. How does it fit together? 

One of the particular issues to bear in mind is the dangers of studying rock-art in isolation. 

If rock-art may provide us with insights into early aspects of religious belief (and of course more 

recent beliefs), one particular feature of such research, relating to shamans/ shamanism may 

be looked at in a little more detail, as shamanism has come to be seen as a peculiarly ancient 

religious form and, as such, one commonly invoked in relation to ancient human populations. 

Our special interest in this topic is to look at the ongoing debates in a critical way, and see 

to what extent this may in fact be justified (or at least convincing) – the point being that this 

represents an excellent case to further engage with interpretative and theoretical debates 

(this is of course not just when thinking about ancient religion, but in archaeology (and related 

disciplines) more generally). 

Figure 3.2 An earlier (third millennium BC?) depiction of a boat near the rapids of the Third 

Cataract, Nubia. Stylistically very different from the boats seen in fig.3.1 and thought to be 

significantly earlier, but presumably relating to similar meanings. 

What can we do with Rock Art? 

Your main texts provide quite full coverage of many aspects of rock-art research, and how it 

is done. What is perhaps surprising though (as you may notice when reading it) is that it is 

only in the latter part of the book that we really get to grips with the core academic questions 

of why we research rock-art and what we hope to learn from this? The especially tricky 


questions of how we can interpret rock-art (can rock-art be interpreted?), are also rather 

glossed over (to my mind at least). As is often made clear, rock-art research has tended to 

occupy a rather marginal position in many archaeological traditions, largely for the reason 

that while archaeologists were well aware of the existence of rock-art in most parts of the 

world, it was very difficult to make much sense out of most of it, assumed to be concerned with 

problematic areas such as ‘mythology and social and religious practices’ (Vinnicombe 1972: 

195). As is also clear, we can make sense of some rock-art, in at least some contexts. In the last 

30 years or so, rock-art research has however been transformed, becoming much more highprofile, 

and academically rigorous. One particular contribution here was perhaps the growing 

interest in indigenous archaeologies – notably in Australia, South Africa and North America 

– where archaeologists were engaging with populations who made (or had recently made) 

rock-art, and were more systematically exploring the art – especially aided by ethnographic 

information. It was not to the late 1980s that indigenous people first got directly involved in 

academic rock-art conferences, for example (Ross 2001: 543). 

How it can be studied? Different Methods & Whitley Ch.6 

Informed methods – these depend on insights provided by those who made or used the 

rock-art, e.g. from ethnography, ethnohistory, historical accounts, or indeed modern practice. 

This has worked well in Australian contexts … Because iconographic meanings seem to be so 

variable and idiosyncratic, ethnographic insights are often essential. When is a crocodile not 

a crocodile, but a Crocodile Ancestor? When is an elephant an elephant, or a metaphor for 

seasonal rains? Is a big-horn sheep just a big-horn sheep, or a specialised spirit associated with 

a rain-shaman (as ethnohistoric records in California suggest)? But, there are few rock-art 

traditions that survive today, and few that are well–recorded ethnographically. In some areas, 

such as southern Africa, rock-art is understood through the knowledge of San Bushmen who 

were not themselves rock artists/painters and live far away from the well-studied rock-art of 

the Drakensberg mountains (Lewis-Williams 1981, 2003). 

Formal methods – for most (especially prehistoric) rock-art we have no informed knowledge, 

leaving us dependant on formal methods, which depend on no inside knowledge – i.e. based 

on its outward forms/appearance/arrangement or other external qualities. Context and spatial 

arrangements are of course some of those qualities, hence discussions of where they are 

placed in the landscape are often one popular feature of such analyses. That rock-art needs 

to be explored in relation to other forms of archaeological data is also becoming increasingly 

recognised – and is perhaps essential for such work to be taken seriously by other archaeologists. 

In particular we need to get as much evidence as possible regarding the context of rock-art 

sites – what else is going on at them, or around them? It cannot be isolated from other forms 

of archaeological data. In general, the success of such analyses is sometimes much less clear, 


and perhaps debatable, not least in terms of identifying meaningful spatial patterning in the 

distribution of rock-art, but you may also find many interesting and convincing studies. 

Analogy – the use of analogy (as widely used elsewhere in prehistoric archaeology) relates 

to formal methods: when we cannot observe such practices, but we can observe other ones, 

sufficiently similar to allow us to infer things based on what we can observe. Here you need to 

be clear about different types of analogies, and how while some are very weak, we may have 

more confidence in some others, e.g. when considering formal analogies, genetic analogies 

and functional analogies. One thing we need to be very wary of are any assumptions we make 

about supposedly ‘universal characteristics of human behaviour’ – which on close examination 

can frequently be seen to be nothing more than unproved assumptions about modern Western 

cultural behaviour Whitley (2005: 105-7). 

Rock Art I – Australia 

In Chippendale & Tacon (1998) you will find a few papers dealing with Australian rockart 

research, which are worth reading, but these are primarily focussed on establishing 

chronologies for different types of material. Australia has of course an exceptionally rich rockart 

heritage, largely (if not exclusively) linked to Aboriginal populations and their mythical 

and potential ‘religious’ worlds (popularly – if not entirely accurately - represented as the 

‘Dreamtime’/’Dreaming’). 

The Dreaming/Dreamtime 

The Dreaming is quite widely and popularly known as a central feature of Aboriginal 

understandings of the world. A few points may be made here, drawing on the work of 

Bruno David in particular. It is a pan-Australian cultural trait, although its expression 

(songs, stories, rock-art) varies through time and space. It should not be seen perhaps 

as a religious belief – but more in terms of a world-view (an ontological framework) 

– through which people relate to and understand the world. So even if we do not 

characterise this as ‘religion’, it relates to some very fundamental relationships, 

linking the people to the world around them, and very much a domain we need 

to be interested in. Perhaps the key point is that (unlike our Western notions of 

‘us’ and the ‘world’, ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’), people are not separate from what is 

‘out there’. The Dreaming relates to the creation of the world and a timeless past 

where ‘people’ and ‘animals’ were of the one, not yet having attained their defining 

features… through the Dreaming, Law, people, land and every aspect of ones life 

were positioned in relation to everything else. Animals were an important parts of 

one’s being – of one’s identity .. 


This has important implications for our consideration of rock-art, which can be 

understood not just in relation to meaning, but the ordering of the world and the 

position and relations between animals in the world-view …. (see David 2004 for a 

more extensive discussion if you need to follow this up). The more you read about 

the Dreamtime, the more questions it raises about the different ways that different 

peoples may relate to the world, and the likely importance of ethnographic 

information in informing our external understandings of rock-art .. In exploring 

Australian rock-art, this perhaps draws us much more to more generalised discussions 

not just of narrowly defined belief/religious systems but much more fundamental 

relationships with the world. Not surprisingly many research papers have a strong 

interest in landscapes and places, as we will see in Josephine Flood’s paper 

&Flood 2004. The importance of ‘special places’ and ‘sacred sites’ will be something 

we will return to at various occasions in this module. 

These papers present examples of the basic sort of work that needs to be done before more 

detailed studies are possible – not least concerning what the rock-art may ‘mean’. Their own 

chapter (Chippendale and Tacon 1998a) is a good example of a systematic approach which 

combines all sorts of data to try and investigate the development of rock-art in Arnhem Land, 

in northern Australia – with an explicit concern for different types of methods: informed 

methods, formal methods, and the use of analogies. There is also an explicit theoretical interest 

in the ‘habits of archaeological reasoning’ we may use – which is worth paying attention 

to. A second paper (McDonald 1998) explores dating issues in relation to rock-art in a very 

different part of Australia, around Sydney, where we see the first permanent contacts and 

confrontations between Europeans and Aboriginal populations, from 1788. It is interesting in 

raising various issues about the reliability of early ethnographic accounts, and certainly stresses 

the need for great caution in how it is used (an issue relevant to all parts of the world where 

we draw on ethnographic information). 

It also usefully reminds us that the Aboriginal populations in the Sydney area had their own 

dynamic and changing histories: “one must be wary of a ‘timeless ethnographic present’” – 

this part of Australia has clearly seen significant changes in life-ways during the preceding 

centuries and millennia, and McDonald’s work has suggested that some broad phasing may 

be applied to different types of art extending back over several millennia (1998: 330). This is 

an issue which a number of researchers have become interested in recent years: ‘when did the 

belief systems encountered today amongst Aborigines first develop?’. What can the rock-art 

tell us about the development of belief systems (the modern ontological system – be sure you 

are clear what we mean by that..). 


Another interesting paper David et al. (1994) provides a detailed study of more northern 

Australia rock-art, with some interesting interpretations. This is the time to read this, if you 

have not already. The main conclusions were quite interesting, suggesting that during the last 

2000 years significant changes in rock-art might be explained in at least three possible ways 

(or a combination of them, perhaps):- a change in world view (ontology), including ways of 

perceiving the land and the ‘Dreaming’; and/or a change in the practice of existing beliefs; 

and/or a change in the way the belief system was expressed (communicated). In this case, 

world views did not change, but people began to express them in rock painting, indicating a 

new way of expressing the land’s identity. Linkages may also be suggested with other known 

changes recognised in the archaeological record, not least that this period may have seen a 

significant increase in population. This in turn may be linked to previous suggestions (David 

1991) that a late Holocene regionalization of rock-art may reflect increases in population size, 

increases in conflict and a subsequent regionalization of social groups. The important thing 

to note here is how different strands of evidence are woven together – you yourselves may 

decide how convincing the interpretations may seem. 

In a second paper Flood 2004 further discussion is provided of the spiritual and social 

relationships of Aboriginal peoples to the land and the landscape. She describes this more in 

terms of ‘religious belief’ than some authors will, you may notice, but also draws attention to 

that fact that it may not be possible to draw clear distinctions between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ 

sites. This may not be a meaningful distinction: ‘rock-shelters may have pictures of Sacred 

Ancestor beings on the walls but are also used as family camping places’ (2004: 195). Bear this 

in mind; this is a point which you may encounter in other contexts – when it is all-too-often 

assumed that we can make such distinctions. This is a presumption that we should perhaps 

avoid. 

One of the roles of rock-art may be to explain and ‘map’ the country and its landscapes. As such 

these Australian case-studies are very useful for making us think about issues of ‘landscape’ 

more generally. Moving away from just thinking about ‘sites’, and indeed looking at the world 

(and its archaeology) from a rather different perspective. Some further reading on Australian 

landscape issues may also be found in the chapter by Tacon (Tacon 1999). There is plenty more 

material you can find in various online resources if so required. 

Rock Art II – North America 

In this part of the text we will briefly look a bit more at some North American examples of 

rock-art research, to develop some of the points in your core texts (Klassen 1998; Whitley 

1998). For those students who do not have much background knowledge of North American 

archaeology, this will hopefully be especially useful in confronting you with unfamiliar material 

in unfamiliar archaeological contexts, where you may be able to better judge how convincing 


the archaeological interpretations actually are, as well as see how interesting some of them 

are. The richness of the material, and its possible interpretations may also provide useful 

comparisons for the sorts of (prehistoric) studies we may encounter in Europe, for example. 

Here again we find an interesting mix of potentially religious linkages (‘religious’ trances, 

visions etc) and the marking of special places in the landscape. 

Figure 3.3 Where do we tend to find rock-art? Rock formations at Writing-On-Stone, 

Alberta, southern Canada. That strange or unusual landscapes features may ‘attract’ rock-art 

is a commonly encountered phenomenon. On the other hand – we only see such practices in 

areas where there is suitable exposed rock. 

Whitley’s paper, looking at the far west of North America (California, the Great Basin) 

deals with a region with a rich rock-art record, much enriched by substantial ethnographic 

records of the recent centuries. A particular interest lies in how the Californian Tradition and 

Great Basin Traditions differ, while introducing many of the general themes of recent rockart 

research, notably in relation to shamanism, and shamanistic practices, initiation rites etc. 

There are also interesting gender issues which emerge here, not least in that shaman’s rockart 

sites were ‘feminine-gendered places, even though they were primarily (although not 

exclusively) used by male shamans’ (Whitley 1998: 18). Some of the final conclusions are also 

noteworthy, not least in drawing attention to the unsatisfactory nature of assumptions that 

‘Native American groups maintained a conceptual organisation of the universe into sacred 

versus profane places’ (1998: 25), a point which will recur in later readings. 


Referring to work by Walker, Whitley again draws us back to the unhelpfulness of Durkheim’s 

definition of the sacred, and the distinction Durkheim draws between the sacred and the 

profane – this is a theme you may increasingly encounter in archaeological writings in many 

parts of the world, as people begin to recognize that such assumed dichotomies may in fact 

not necessarily be universally true: 

‘This classic distinction does not fit Native American conceptions of the sacred in Northwestern 

North American, because the sacred is not viewed as a domain set aside, distinct, and forbidden 

as Durkheim suggests. Instead, the sacred is an embedded, intrinsic attribute lying behind the 

external, empirical aspect of all things, but not a domain set aside or forbidden. The situation 

is both more complex and more subtle. Fox example, among the Lakota this embedded, 

intrinsic attribute is wakan: among the Algonkians it is manitou; among Ute-Aztecans it is 

puha; among the Sahptians it is weyekin; and among the Salishans sumesh. In this large region, 

accessing the sacred is a primary goal of ritual and entails actually entering into sacredness 

rather than merely propitiating it. Whereas certain cultures tend to create their own sacred 

space and sacred time somewhat arbitrarily by special rituals of sacralization, Native Americans 

of Northwestern North America more often attempt through ritual, visions, and dreams to 

discover embedded sacredness in nature and to locate geographical points that permit direct 

access to it in order to experience it on a personal level’ (Walker 2004). 

Klassen’s study of some Great Plains rock-art in southern Canada , provides an important 

demonstration of the possibility for very different traditions of rock-art to coexist. The Writing- 

On-Stone (as it is known) site - a place of strange and weird rock formations - has more 

rock-art than anywhere else in the Great Plains, clearly an important ceremonial centre, a 

locality associated with vision-quests, and a place to record human experiences (historical as 

well as vision-related). In this case, different types of imagery - iconic and narrative modes of 

expression - appear to be very distinct, albeit with some linking themes visible in them. In the 

narrative imagery we see depicted historical narratives, often reflecting cultures in contact as 

well as in conflict. Here again is an interesting example of rock-art being explored within the 

domain of historical archaeology. Interesting questions are asked about who was making the 

rock-art (can we discern the hands of different ‘ethnic’ styles here?). Again we also see the 

importance of landscape, landscape features, and connections between people and a sacred 

landscape. 


Figure 3.4 Writing-On-Stone; depictions of warriors with large shields (probably predating 

the arrival of horses. Images with horses post-date the arrival of Europeans. 

Rock Art III – southern Africa, San and Shamans.. 

Here we will look a bit more closely at some of the interesting southern African literature, where 

ethnographic analogies have been linked with what may be seen as more formal analogies to 

explain some aspects of rock-art – most famously in the work of David Lewis-Williams (Lewis- 

Williams 1988, 2003; Lewis-Williams et al 1993). You have plenty of reading on this field, and 

there is plenty more available, much of it with interesting critical analyses of past work (e.g. 

Solomon 1998). This includes much use of ethnographic knowledges in interpreting rock-art, as 

well as the use of more formal analogies. One aspect of this work concerns neuropsychological 

(N-P) models where it is claimed that certain sorts of art may be linked with hallucinatory 

imagery, which in turn may be linked with Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) which are 

considered a central feature of what are called shamanistic religions. As Whitley puts it: 

“the cross-cultural applicability of the N-P model is based on a simple fact: all modern 

humans are neurologically hard-wired in the same way. Hence we all react to an 

ASC .. in a similar fashion.. this does not imply that every trance experience will be 

identical to the next. In fact they vary, even for one individual. But there are a limited 

series of potential reactions..”… (Whitley 2005: 110-11). 

However, before we go further into that aspect of the studies, we will briefly introduce south 

African rock-art and some of its key elements, before moving on to some other texts which 

give you a flavour of the sorts of rock-art encountered in this part of the world, and the sorts 


of interpretation which is coming out of the research. Much of the following draws directly on 

Deacon et al.’s (2002) overview paper. 

By the late 1990s the quantity of rock-art in the region was becoming clear, with at least 14,000 

sites on record, with many more sites known to exist, with estimates of more than 50,000 sites 

in the region as a whole, with a conservative estimate of more than two million individual 

images. Few areas had been systematically searched and recorded (notably in the Drakensberg 

mountains in South Africa, Tsodilo in Botswana, and the Brandberg in Namibia). The densest 

known concentrations of rock-art occur in parts of Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, 

Zambia, and Zimbabwe, much less was/is known about their occurrence in Angola, Malawi, 

and Mozambique. 

The region has both rock engravings (petroglyphs) and rock paintings (pictographs), the latter 

are perhaps more common (but presumably more easily eroded, and hence survive less well). 

General studies suggest they tend not to differ greatly in their content, with similar themes 

and images, but the engravings tend to include less detail and fewer human figures. The 

distribution of the two techniques seems to relate to geology, with rock engravings being 

found occur out in the open (usually in areas of igneous rocks). Rock paintings, on the other 

hand, are most common in areas where there are caves or rock shelters (in outcrops of granite 

or in sedimentary rocks formations) – which has permitted their survival. 

There are probably three main rock-art traditions in the region with distinctive styles and 

content , reflecting differences between hunter-gatherers, early herding communities 

and ‘Iron Age’ agriculturalists, although these are often interconnected, and intersecting 

(in the same way that these different populations had complex intersecting histories). An 

interesting feature of these general traditions is the extent to which cultural contacts and 

change may be reflected in them. In southern Africa, the arrival of African farming communities 

and their contact with existing hunter-gatherer communities provided one scenario which 

may be explored in rock drawings. For some background on the archaeology, and some brief 

discussions of rock-art in relation to the archaeology, see the chapter by Mitchell, which you 

will have access to (Mitchell 2005). 

This topic is explored, for example, in research by Jolly (1996, 1998) where he expressly explores 

how contacts between farmers (in this case identified as Nguni and Sotho peoples) and huntergathering 

San can be detected in the rock-art, and, how the art changed in the wake of those 

contacts. ‘What was the effect of these people on the culture and art of the San? How does 

this contact affect the ways in which we study this art?’ (Jolly 1998: 247). Such contacts of 

course continued, and in later periods we can find rock drawings which relate to contacts with 

Europeans in the region, and indeed ‘European’ histories. Similar histories of contact can of 

course be identified in many times and many places .. 


Most of the art was done by hunter-gatherers whose traditions persisted in south-eastern 

South Africa until the nineteenth century AD. In some countries, such as Tanzania, Malawi, 

and Mozambique, where there are no reports of hunter-gatherer style paintings that include 

domesticated animals or images of the colonial era, this hunter-gatherer art is estimated to 

be older than AD 1000 (when such new animals first reached the region). It is only within the 

last 2000 years, herders and Iron Age agriculturist peoples entered the region from the north 

(reaching South Africa even more recently) and added to the corpus of rock-art with their own 

styles and content. The oldest art in these traditions is generally thought to be less than 1500 

years old and has continued into recent centuries – in some areas continuing to be created in 

relation to initiation rituals in the late twentieth century. 

Ethnographic information, mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is now 

commonly used to try to interpret many of the metaphors and symbols in hunter- gatherer 

and later agriculturist art, providing useful insights into the potential meaning and context 

of rock-art. An understanding of altered states of consciousness, and its role in shamanism 

and rock-art as developed by researchers David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson (Lewis- 

Williams 1990; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1989). With the exception of Australia and North 

America, very few rock-art regions elsewhere have such detailed sources for interpretation. 

The ethnographic records provide considerable evidence in Southern Africa that huntergatherer 

rock paintings and rock engravings were part of religious practices linked with rainmaking, 

healing, and some shamanistic activities such as out-of-body travel and the control of 

game animals. These practices involved altered states of consciousness that enabled medicine 

people/ shamans to access supernatural power through certain animals or through ancestral 

spirits. The wide distribution of this rock-art tradition, from South Africa to Tanzania, suggests 

general similarities in the cosmology of Southern African hunter-gatherer peoples across quite 

wide areas, but significant regional (and chronological?) differences must also be expected. 

For example, the beliefs of the /Xam San that were recorded in the 1870s led to an understanding 

in the 1970s of the reason why the eland was the animal most commonly depicted in the rockart 

in the south-eastern region in South Africa and perhaps the pivot around which the social 

organization and beliefs of the Drakensberg San revolved Vinnicombe (1976). The eland was 

also discussed by Lewis-Williams (1981) as playing a key role in boys’ and girls’ initiation, as well 

as in rainmaking and healing and rainmaking. It was believed that associating with the eland 

could bring the medicine-person/ shaman closer to god and supernatural power. Shamans in 

trance would feel that they were transformed into eland – something depicted in some rock 

paintings which showed human and eland body parts combined in one image. However this is 

not universal. In other areas (e.g. Zimbabwe and Namibia), however, the eland appears in rock 

much less, and less common than animals such as the kudu and the giraffe – which may well 

have had a much greater ritual significance in those regions. 


‘There is relatively little ethnography that has been applicable to the rock-art of animal 

herders, and it is not clear whether some schematic and highly stylized art with a wider range 

of geometric patterns, best represented at Tsodilo (Botswana), was done by early herders. 

This art is attributed to herders because it includes domesticated animals, and because in 

places where it occurs with the earlier tradition it tends to be superimposed on what is clearly 

hunter-gatherer art. Pastoralist art is also found above and below hunter-gatherer art. A good 

example is the Limpopo Valley, where there was a brief period of interaction between the two 

groups in the 1st millennium AD (Hall and Smith 2000). 

‘Agriculturist rock-art displays some general similarities within the region and is quite distinct 

from the hunter-gatherer art in several respects. It tends to be bolder, less detailed, more 

schematic, and with a smaller range of colours and subject matter. In some areas the paintings 

are called ‘late whites’ because where superimposition occurs they are always on top and they 

are done in white paint with a finger rather than a brush. Local traditions and ethnographic 

records in Zambia and Malawi indicate some of this art was part of secret male and female 

initiation practices and of rituals such as rainmaking. The meaning of the designs is known 

only to the initiated’ (Deacon et al. 2002). [a point always worth bearing in mind when reading 

ethnographic accounts – how much do we expect people to tell their religious secrets to 

strangers/outsiders? How reliable and/or complete do we expect this information to be?]. 

Figure 3.5 Giraffe and people rock paintings, southern Africa 


As a final example (Deacon 1988) of this southern African work we can look at a slightly 

different approach to south San rock drawings, which considers issues of context, place within 

the landscape, and some of the ‘meanings’ that may be attributed to some drawings. 

A particular interests of this text lies in demonstrating the potential dangers of literal 

interpretations of what particular figures may mean or represent, and the absolute necessity 

of having a good ethnographic understanding. Here, in an admittedly somewhat speculative 

discussion, Deacon raises some interesting points about how it may be possible to interpret the 

presence of various animal figures in rock drawings, particularly in relation to their roles in, 

and associations (direct or methaphorical) with rain-making cults. 

Southern African Rock Art Project: http://getty.edu/conservation/field_projects/sarap/index. 

html 

Rock Art IV – Europe .. 

Turning to European contexts we have a range of reading which provides an idea of the sort 

of approaches that are being adopted with rock-art, generally relating to a much more ancient 

and indeed prehistoric world(s). The texts which, in the first instance, you have at your disposal 

relate mainly to Iberia, and Scandinavia, two areas which have attracted a significant body of 

research, of some sophistication. Such work could be matched in many other regions, however, 

and working with the bibliographies you have here you should quickly be able to track down 

further reading in other parts of Europe, should you wish. As ever, searching online journals 

may prove productive, and an easy way to locate more literature. 

The chapter by Bradley (Bradley 1998) marks an early attempt to look at some of the content 

in the Bronze Age rock-art of NW Spain (Galicia especially). The study raises some interesting 

questions about how we can establish some context for the rock-art, in this case thinking 

about possible connections with other types of archaeological evidence (rather than 

looking at it in isolation). Comparisons with drawings in other areas also suggest some other 

possible lines of enquiry. What he also goes on to consider is the landscape setting of rockart 

(and potentially finds) – a theme which clearly needs to be explored in all our studies of 

rock-art. Where rock drawings are found, and who their possible audiences might be, are 

questions further considered in another paper by Bradley (Bradley 2002). 

Turning to the north, Scandinavian rock-art has also inspired much debate (the journal 

Norwegian Archaeological Review is one venue for such discussions) We also find discussions 

with parallels in African research, in relation to the transition from hunter-gathering life-ways 

to agriculture, as well as a variety of approaches to ‘meanings’. Scandinavia has also been a focus 

of research due to the (rare – in European contexts) presence of non-agricultural communities, 

the Sami (and related groups) reindeer herders, who may be characterised in similar ways 


to other so-called ‘indigenous peoples’, in other parts of the world (e.g. Lahelm 2007). In 

Soggnes (Soggnes 1998) some aspects of the different world of hunters and agriculturalists, 

represented by two separate rock-art traditions, are discussed. This chapter is also interesting 

in allowing for the possibility of change and transition through time - an issue which is not 

always well-addressed (after all, we are dealing with long time periods). The topographical 

setting of ‘Stone Age’ rock-art localities identifies two different types of localities being the 

site of rock-art. One type, found at landmarks, may relate to something like ‘transition rituals’, 

while the other type, located at less distinct topographical features, was probably linked to 

meeting/aggregation sites, being used for rituals attended by larger groups. However, Bronze 

Age types of rock-art are also found in the same area and during a period of transition rockart 

appears to have been executed representing contemporary groups of hunter-gatherers 

and farmers. Questions are also raised about older ideas that much of this rock-art relates to 

hunting-magic, for example (see also Soggnes 1994). 

That there is considerable scope for looking more closely at the landscape-setting of rock-art, 

and how this may vary, another paper by Bradley (Bradley 1997) is worth reading, looking at 

sites in SW Sweden. The paper compares the distribution of cairns on islands (off the west coast 

of Sweden) the distribution of similar cairn monuments on low hills surrounded by drawings 

of boats. These are often in areas which had previously been close to or near the sea. Various 

interpretations are presented – some more convincing than others (at least to my mind). It is 

worth reading this quite carefully and to try and follow where we are dealing with careful 

analysis, and when Bradley starts presenting more speculative interpretations (usually you 

note the greater use of words like ‘perhaps’.. ‘maybe’..’may be..’.etc). What do you think? 

One point when we might need to look more closely is where the presumption is made “It 

may be inappropriate to consider the ship carvings entirely in terms of the everyday” (1997: 

318-9), instead developing a series of other speculations, also linking boat drawings to carved 

footprints: ‘Perhaps the drawings of boats evoked an expanse of water separating the world 

of the living from the burial places of the dead. If so, the lines of footprints leading between 

these two areas may also refer to the passage between life and death’. Do you find this 

convincing? Do you agree with his point that “one contribution of recent research is to 

emphasise the sheer range of meanings that may attached to any particular image”. What 

does this in fact mean? Does this mean that if we invent (suggest) several meanings we are 

any more likely to be guessing the original meaning, or meanings? When he invokes Old Norse 

mythology about the dead (the hel-shoes; but note that not all footprints have shoes..), do we 

not just get another ethnographic analogy being invoked across maybe 2000 years (while so 

many other aspects of Old Norse mythology are of course not represented here). In view of the 

methodological issues discussed previously in this section, is this all convincing? 


Debates about Shamans and Shamanistic interpretation 

One thing you will have noted in your reading is the extent to which shamans/shamanism 

has come to be commonly invoked in many discussions of rock-art, in many continents. This 

has increasingly become controversial with various criticisms coming from varied directions. 

Has shamanism simply become a generic term for what are seen as primitive religious practices 

(even if shamanism itself was only described in recent centuries in parts of Siberia/Asia?. To 

what extent is likely to be helpful to project such recent (postmedieval/modern) practices back 

across millennia – sometimes back to the Palaeolithic? The problems with dealing with (and 

using) such a term perhaps reflect more general problems we find in using analogies, as well 

as thinking about ‘religion’ more generally. 

Critiques of Eliade 

If we are going to think seriously about shamanism, then it is certainly necessary to take a 

critical view of the work of Mircea Eliade, whose book Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of 

Ecstacy has defined much academic and indeed more popular perceptions of ‘shamanism’ in 

recent years. You can get a flavour of Eliade’s viewpoints in reading his 1961 paper. His status 

as a leading figure in this field is perhaps suggested in the invitation to write on this topic for 

the first volume of a new journal: See Eliade, M. 1961. Ancient religion and Shamanism? 

History of Religions 1(1): 152-186 

Despite his popularity there is a considerable body of critical studies which would seem to 

suggest some flaws and problems in his work, or at least how it is commonly used. Some key 

aspects of this are summarised in a review article in the journal Antiquity by &Whitley and 

Keyser ‘Faith in the past: debating an archaeology of religion’ (Whitley and Keyser 2003: 

385-393), although note that they also point out how that Eliade is/was by no means the 

only influence on Shamanism, just one of the better-known [but it perhaps not unrelated 

to developments in later 1960s alternative cultures when experimental use of psychoactive 

substances and alternative religions started to become fashionable!]. This can be accessed 

online and is worth looking at. 

Using Ethnographic Analogies 

The problem we encounter in linking historical/ethnographically recorded shamanism 

with much more ancient (possibly Palaeolithic) practices is one we always need to 

consider. Some people would argue that we just cannot do it. The point emerges 

in a review of Hayden’s book on the prehistory of religion (Hayden 2003) where 

he suggests contemporary descriptions of Aboriginal Australian ceremony as being 

analogous to ‘rituals from the very dawn of humanity’ (2003: 88), illustrated with 

photographs of Arunta Aboriginal men partaking in ceremony. Hayden goes on to 


state that: ‘Ethnographic observations among hunter-gatherers and other traditional 

groups provide archaeologists with some inkling of what ritual life may have been 

like in the distant past. If the ecological conditions and adaptations of the present 

and past groups are relatively similar, reasonably persuasive arguments can be made 

that the ritual life of the past may have been similar to the present (2003:89)’. Note 

the use of the term ‘may’ – which might suggest we could also say ‘may not’, perhaps? 

This temporal and spatial conflation of behaviour works within a cultural 

ecological framework which assumes that if hunters and gatherers live in a 

particular environment they will have similar cultural adaptations – time and place 

are subordinate to ecological conditions. What many would see as a problem is that 

there is little place within this framework for the idea of cultural practice as an 

internally driven ‘independent system of ideas’ which may be have its own history, 

specific to place and time. Such a portrayal of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies 

also evokes the image of contemporary Aboriginal people as some kind of living 

fossils; the living template of stone-age Europeans. In just the same way, nineteenth 

century unilineal evolutionary theorists such as Lubbock state, observations of the 

life of these ‘miserable savages’ would ‘throw light on the ancient remains found 

in Europe, and on the condition of the early races which inhabited our continent’ 

(Lubbock 1865:336-337, 354). 

Not least of our problems is the lack of empirical and historical evidence to support some of 

Eliada’s suppositions about shamanism and ‘early religions’. It certainly might seem to look 

back to an earlier tradition of speculative writing in the nineteenth century. Never having met 

a shaman or having personal ethnographic experience of cultures where shamans existed, he 

had to rely on the accounts of others, generally materials from the early twentieth century, if 

not before, often of very variable quality and reliability. It was a very intuitive process, in which 

Eliade collected lots of fragments of information from different cultures in different regions 

and periods to create an archaic religious system called ‘shamanism’ (a name borrowed from 

some accounts of Siberian practices). Above all, we encounter the usual problems of using (or 

misusing) ethnographic analogies across time and space. 

One obvious feature here was the extent to which this had to fit with an evolutionary 

scheme of the development of religion, in this case ‘shamanism’ being perceived to be an 

especially ancient and primitive form of religion (with the usual assumptions that strangely 

these very ancient forms still survived in modern times, amongst ‘primitive’ peoples..). 

In Eliade’s thought, at least, there is a constant reference to the “primitive mind” and its 

“intuitions”… which presumably raises questions about modern people (i.e. people living 

today) who have shamanistic religions .. As Alice Kehoe notes, this description embraces, in 


Eliade’s words, “the Siberian hunters, and … the primitive peoples of Australia, the Malay 

Archipelago, South America, North America, and other regions” (see Kehoe 2002), all part of 

a wider characterisation of different races/peoples. These are also in a hierarchy.. hence he 

identifies ‘the most archaic societies (Australia, Fuegians)’ .. and ‘more developed societies 

(Melanesia, Africa, North America)..’ (Eliade 1961: 154). 

As Beyer (2007) notes, ‘ because Eliade simply ignored facts that did not fit his theories, what 

we certainly need to recognize is that many of his generalizations turn out to be just plain 

wrong. He emphasised, for example, that shamans as essentially characterized by celestial 

ascent, ecstasy, soul flight, and out-of-body journeys to the spirit realm. His treatise on 

shamanism is thus filled with references to the sky, to ascent and to the vertical … so the 

shaman communicates with the sky, ascends through the central opening, ascends the sacred 

mountain, ascends to the sky etc etc. Eliade was also willing to denigrate (as ‘decadent’ or 

‘aberrant’ ) any examples of shamanism in which the ascent to the sky plays an insufficiently 

important role (a conclusion he reached about Tungus shamanism as reported in the 1930s, 

which he considered could not be shamanism in its classic form, because, among other things, 

of “the small role played by the ascent to the sky.” ). He also stated that spirit possession 

played no part in shamanism, distinguishing between a supposed ‘true’, archaic shamanism 

from spirit possession, which he saw as a corrupt, more recent development, subject to 

decline, degeneration, and decadence. In Northern Eurasian shamanism, we do however seem 

to find the same three modes of spirit interaction — journey, possession, and summoning. 

The threefold pattern in Siberian shamanism has been confirmed by historian Ronald Hutton 

in a thorough review of the literature (Hutton 2001). Similarly, anthropologists Larry Peters 

and Douglass Price-Williams surveyed forty-two societies from four different culture areas and 

found that shamans in ten of those societies engaged in out-of-body experience or journeying, 

eighteen in spirit “incorporation,” eleven in both, and three in some different state’. 

Another interesting critique on the nature of shamanism may be found in an article by Sidky 

(Sidky 2010) which you can access on-line. Written within the academic milieu of people 

who study religion, in all its forms (rather than archaeology, where we may be rather less 

well-informed about the theory and method of studying religions), this is well-worth a read, 

providing a lot of material to think about. It certainly challenges any easy suppositions that 

‘shamanism’ can be seen as an ancient and universal archaic religion. 

For another critique, see McCall (McCall 2007) who looks at the relationship between 

some of the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the overarching cosmological 

structures on which they are based in both Northern Eurasia and southern Africa. In both 

cases it is suggested that many cosmological beliefs may be highly persistent and durable 

over time, extending into prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are 


variable, changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities in specific 

historical contexts. This suggests that rock-art may be easier to relate to the more general and 

overarching cosmological dispositions of the people that produced it, while specific meanings 

may be more problematic – a point which has been previously made. It suggests that the 

content of rock-art at regional scales is probably easier to relate to the durable and persistent 

cosmological structures of forager societies than to the variable, flexible, and transitory social 

practices of shamanism (2007: 231). For another discussion of shamanistic problems in relation 

to some Iberian rock-art, see the work of Díaz-Andreu (Díaz-Andreu 2001a). 

Where are we now and where may we be going? 

To round this off, be sure to have read the brief paper by Ross (Ross 1991) which usefully 

summarises some interesting points about different treads running through rock-art research 

(albeit some years ago now). She also raises some more interesting questions concerning 

shamanism, not least in the obvious gender biases encountered in many archaeological 

discussions. She also highlights the next to investigate rock-art not in isolation, but within the 

context of much wider ranging studies, dealing with other forms of archaeological evidence, 

and with an explicit concern for the place of rock-art in the wider landscape. To follow up 

particular areas, the texts you have will provide plenty of pointers, and new bibliography to 

explore. Be aware of some further important edited volumes on the topic, notably Chippindale 

(2002) and Chippindale and Nash (2004). These are essential reading before moving further 

into this kind of research. 

Bibliography and references: 

Bahn, P. G. 1997. Membrane and numb brain: a close look at a recent claim for shamanism in 

Palaeolithic art. Rock Art Research 14(1): 62–68. 

Bahn, P. G. 2001. Save the Last Trance for Me: An Assessment of the Misuse of Shamanism in 

Rock Art Studies, In Francfort, H.P. and Hamayon, R.N. (eds) The Concept of Shamanism: 

Uses and Abuses, Bibliotheca Shamanistica, 51–93. 

Beyer, S. 2007. Eliade’s shamanism. (In Singing to the Plants blog) http://www.singingtotheplants. 

com/2007/12/eliades-shamanism/comment-page-1/ 

Boivin, N. 2005. Grasping the Elusive and Unknowable: material culture in ritual practice, 

Material Religion 5 (3): 266-287. 

Bradley, R. J. 1991. Rock Art and the Perception of Landscape, Cambridge Archaeological 

Journal 1(1): 77-101. 

Bradley, R. 1997. Rock art and the prehistory of Atlantic Europe : signing the land, London: 

Routledge. 


Bradley, R. 1998. Daggers drawn: depictions of Bronze Age weapons in Atlantic Europe, In 

Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) The Archaeology of Rock-Art, Cambridge: CUP, 130-145. 

Bradley, R. J. 2000. The Archaeology of Natural Places, London: Routledge. 

Bradley, R. 2002. Access, Style and Imagery: The Audience for Prehistoric Rock Art in Atlantic 

Spain and Portugal, 4000–2000 BC, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21(3): 231–247. 



of identities : a reader, Abingdon: Routledge [available as ebook]. 

Chippindale, C. (ed.) 2002. European Landscapes of Rock-Art, London: Routledge. 

Chippindale, C. and Nash, G. (eds.) 2004. The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art. Looking at 

Pictures in Place, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 


Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. 1998a. The many ways of dating Arnhem land rock-art, north 

Australia, In Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) The Archaeology of Rock-Art, Cambridge: 

CUP, 90-111. 

Clegg, J. 1998. Making sense of obscure pictures from our own history: exotic images from 

Callan Park, Australia. In Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) 1998. The Archaeology of 

Rock-Art, Cambridge: CUP, 336-45. 

Conkey, M. 1997. Making a Mark, Rock Art Research, American Anthropologist 99 (1):168-72. 

(review of recent work) 

Cruz Berrocal, M. 2011. Analogical Evidence and Shamanism in Archaeological Interpretation: 

South African and European Palaeolithic Rock Art, Norwegian Archaeological Review 

44(1): 1-20. 

David, B. 1991. Fern Cave, rock art and social formations: rock art regionalisation and 

demographic models in southeastern Cape York Peninsula, Archaeology in Oceania 26: 

41-57. 

David, B. 2002. Landscapes, Rock-Art and the Dreaming: an Archaeology of Preunderstanding, 

London: Continuum. 

David, B., McNiven, I., Attenbrow, V., Flood, J. and Collins, J. 1994. Of Lightning Brothers and 

White Cockatoos: dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the Northern Territory, 

Australia, Antiquity 68: 241–251. 

David, B. and Wilson, M. 1999. Re-reading the landscape: place and identity in NE Australia 

during the late Holocene, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9 (2): 163-88. 

Deacon, J. 1988. The power of place in understanding southern San rock engravings, World 

Archaeology 20: 129-40. 


Deacon, J. et al. 2002. Southern African rock-art sites. ICOMOS (International Council on 

Monuments and Sites). Available at: http://www.icomos.org/en/component/content/ 

article/116-english-categories/resources/publications/227-southern-african-rock-art-sites 

Díaz-Andreu, M. 2001a. An all-embracing universal hunter-gatherer religion? Discussing 

shamanism and Levantine rock-art. In Francfort, H.P. and Hamayon, R. (eds) The Concept 

Shamanism. Uses and abuses. Bibliotheca Shamanistica.Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 

117-134. (available online http://www.dur.ac.uk/m.diaz-andreu/publications/arte/2001_ 

shamanism_levantine_art__Diaz-Andreu.pdf) 

Díaz-Andreu, M. 2001b. Marking the landscape. Iberian post-paleolithic art, identities and the 

sacred. In Nash, G. and Chippindale, C. (eds) European Landscapes of Rock-art. London: 

Routledge, 158-175. Available online: http://www.dur.ac.uk/m.diaz-andreu/publications/ 

arte/2001_Marking_the_landscape__Diaz-Andreu.pdf 

Díaz-Andreu, M. 2003. Rock art and ritual landscape in Central Spain: the rock carvings of La 

Hinojosa (Cuenca). Oxford Journal of Archaeology 59(1): 35-51 

Dowson, T. 1988. Revelations of religious reality: the individual in San rock art, World 


Dowson, T. 1994. Reading art, writing history: rock art and social change in southern Africa. 

World Archaeology 25(3): 332–345. 

Eliade, M. 1961. Ancient religion and Shamanism? History of Religions 1(1): 152-186 

Flood, J. 2004. Linkage between rock-art and landscape in Aboriginal Australia, In Chippindale, 

C. and Nash, G. (eds) The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art. Looking at Pictures in Place, 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 182-200. 

Fuller, C. J. 2004. The camphor flame : popular Hinduism and society in India. Princeton, N.J.; 

Princeton University Press. 

Harvey, G. 2003. Shamanism: A Reader, London: Routledge. 

Hayden, B. 2003. Shamans, Sorcerers and Saints: A prehistory of religion, Washington: 

Smithsonian. 

Hutton, R. 1997. The Neolithic great goddess: a study in modern tradition, Antiquity 71: 91–99. 

Hutton, R. 2001. Shamans, Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination, Hambledon. 

Hodder, I. (ed.) 2010. Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study, 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Jolly, P. 1996. Symbiotic Interaction Between Black Farmers and South-Eastern San: Implications 

for Southern African Rock Art Studies, Ethnographic Analogy, and Hunter-Gatherer 

Cultural Identity, Current Anthropology 37(2): 277-305. 


Jolly, P. 1998. Modelling Change in the contact art of the south-eastern San, southern Africa, 

In Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) The Archaeology of Rock-Art, Cambridge: CUP, 

247-367. 

Kehoe, A. B. 2002. Emerging trends versus the popular paradigm in rock-art research , Antiquity 

76: 384–385. 

Klassen, M. A. 1998. Icon and narrative in transition: contact period rock-art at Writing-On- 

Stone, southern Alberta, Canada, In Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) The Archaeology 

of Rock-Art, Cambridge: CUP, 42-72. 

Lahelma, A. 2005. Between the Worlds. Rock Art, Landscape and Shamanism in Subneolithic 

Finland, Norwegian Archaeological Review 38(1): 29-47. 

Lahelm, L. 2007. ‘On the Back of a Blue Elk’: Recent Ethnohistorical Sources and ‘Ambiguous’ 

Stone Age Rock Art at Pyhänpää, Central Finland, Norwegian Archaeological Review 

40(2): 113-137. 

Lane, P. 1994. The Use and Abuse of Ethnography in the Study of the Southern African Iron 

Age, Azania 29(1): 51 - 64. 

Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1981. Believing and seeing : symbolic meanings in southern San rock 

paintings, London : Academic Press. 

Lewis-Williams, J. D. 1987. A Dream of Eland: An Unexplored Component of San Shamanism 

and Rock Art, World Archaeology 19(2): 165-177 

Lewis-Williams, J. D. 2003. Putting the record straight: Rock art and shamanism, Antiquity 77: 

165–170 

Lewis-Williams, J. D., Dowson, T. and Janette Deacon, J. 1993. Rock art and changing perceptions 

of southern Africa’s past: Ezeljagdspoort reviewed, Antiquity 67: 273–291 

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different influences on stylistic change, In Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) The 

Archaeology of Rock-Art, Cambridge: CUP, 319-335. 

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African Archaeology, Oxford: Blackwell, 150-173. 

Pearson, J. L. 2002. Shamanism and the Ancient Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Archaeology, 

Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. 

Peters, L. and Price-Williams, D. 1980. Towards an Experiential Analysis of Shamanism. American 

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Price, N. S. 2001. Archaeology of Shamanism, London: Routledge 

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563-585. 


Quinlan, A. 2000. The Ventriloquist’s Dummy: A Critical Review of Shamanism and Rock Art 

in Far Western North America. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 22: 

92–108. 

Robinson, D. 2010. Land use, land ideology: an integrated Geographic Information Systems 

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Ross, M. 2001 Emerging trends in rock-art research: hunter-gatherer culture, land and 

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Sognnes, K. 1994. Ritual landscapes. Toward a reinterpretation of stone age rock art in 

Trøndelag, Norway, Norwegian Archaeological Review 27(1): 29-50. 

Sognnes, K. 1998. In Chippendale, P. and Tacon, P. (eds) The Archaeology of Rock-Art, Cambridge: 

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Solomon, A. 1998. Ethnography and method in southern African rock-art research, In Chippendale, 

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Whitley, D. S. and Keyser, J. D. 2003. Faith in the past: debating an archaeology of religion, 

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SECTION 4 





Core Readings 

Ashmore, W. and Knapp, A. B. (eds) 1999. Archaeologies of Landscape: 

contemporary perspectives, Oxford: Blackwell. 

 

Bradley, R. 2000. An Archaeology of Natural Places, London: Routledge. (Chapter 

2, pp. 18-32) (paper) 

Colson, E. 1997. Places of Power and Shrines of the Land, Paideuma 43: 47-57. 

(paper) 

Scarre, C. 2008. Shrines of the land and places of power: religion and the 

transition to farming in western Europe. In Whitley, D. S. and Hays-Gilpin, K. 

(eds) Belief in the Past. Theoretical approaches to the archaeology of religion. 

Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 209-226. (paper) 


 

Briault, C. 2007. Making mountains out of molehills in the Bronze Age Aegean: 

visibility, ritual kits, and the idea of the peak sanctuary, World Archaeology 39 

(1): 122-141. (paper) 

Fontijn, D. 2007. The significance of ‘invisible’ places, World Archaeology 39(1): 

70-83. (paper) 

 

Scullion, S. 2005. Pilgrimage and Greek Religion: Sacred and Secular in the Pagan 

Polis; In J. Elsner and I. Rutherford (eds) Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early 

Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 111-130. 

(paper) 

Smith, J. Z. 1980. The Bare Facts of Ritual, History of Religions 20(1/2): 112-12. 

(online) 

Grimes, R. L. 1999. Jonathan Z. Smith’s Theory of Ritual Space, Religion 29: 261- 

273. (online) 

Introduction 

In the next two sections we are going to focus a little more on some of the spatial aspects of 

religion and ritual – about places, spaces and landscapes. As we will see, there is a quite 

widespread recognition that space(s) and place(s), in various ways, is/are important in defining 

ritual and non-ritual domains. This has also been mentioned on a number of occasions in 

previous sections where we have seen how people are thinking about religious practices and 

how they are manifested spatially – how they are placed in wider landscapes, for example. 


What is also clear is the ways that religion and the religious may have well-defined impacts on 

space at many different scales. As we have already seen, we may have sacred places, as well as 

sacred landscapes (as much as sacred objects). 

We will also look at some examples from very different contexts, in different times and places. 

We will take a broadly chronological approach to this, so in this section, after some introductory 

discussions, we will look at some case studies ranging through some prehistoric periods, later 

prehistory and through the Roman period. In the next section we will move on to consider Late 

Antiquity, the medieval and indeed postmedieval/ modern worlds. Looking at some recent 

case-studies, including ethnographics examples will also be useful in suggesting some different 

ways in which we may think about such issues. Here again, while we are choosing to focus on 

the ‘religious’, it is hoped these sections will be of more general use in introducing important 

issues of more general significance, about how we think about issues of space in archaeology, 

especially in relation to ‘places’ and ‘landscapes’. This is a field of research where there has 

been a great deal of research in recent years, in many disciplines, out of which has developed 

an important sub-field of ‘landscape archaeology’. 

So, in these sections we will want to think a bit more about sacred sites, shrines and 

sacred landscapes and how they are manifested in different ways, and indeed how we may 

recognize them. They may of course be features of urban landscapes, as much as the wider rural 

landscapes. This will also allow us to explore a bit more some of the key practices which may be 

associated with them, not least the practices of pilgrimage, which seems to be encountered 

in just about all periods and all places. Pilgrimage practices are of particular interest as social 

phenomena in that they may work at such a large scale, and transcend political and ethnic 

boundaries. What we will also be seeing is how practices of religion may be manifested at 

many different scales, from broadest (shared practices of Christendom, or Islam), to practices 

working at a much smaller, possibly domestic scale. Such practices may also be encountered in 

the AR3550 Household module. 

It may also be useful to think about this a little more in theoretical terms – to organise our 

thoughts about how we think about ritual, religion and space, and to be aware of some of 

the more general discussions amongst scholars who research religion as their primary research 

interest. In this respect, we suggest some additional readings, to be looked at now – or perhaps 

you may want to return to them later, once you have read more of the core text books. Readings 

by Jonathan Z. Smith (1980) and a more recent discussion/critique of his work in relation to 

ritual space (Grimes 1999) may be helpful. When reading these, it is important that you keep 

your own sense of how the material they are discussing may relate to archaeological research. 

In Smith’s work there is a great on emphasis on ‘place’ - what he described as ‘focusing lenses’. 

Some things that we can take out of it, however (as discussed in Grimes 1999: 266), is the 

importance of such questions: 


• Ritual being distinct from the non-ritual ? (is this always so; if so, how?) 

• an emphasis on ‘where’ (place, location) perhaps being more definitive than ‘how’ 

or ‘why’, in defining ritual 

• the ability of places to ‘act’ – not just to be an passive background 

• places may be geographical (in a literal sense) but also metaphorical (conceptual 

and social) 

• may metaphorical emplacement be more determinative than particular 

geographical place ? 

But… Grimes also identifies some potential problems here. In particular, he draws attention to 

the dangers of over-emphasising ‘place’, at the expense of many other dimensions of ritual. 

As he reminds us, there may be many components of ritual, in the actions which take place, 

in the time chosen, in objects used, in groups participating, in language used, in sounds and 

emotions, as well as the ‘place’ where it all happens (Grimes 1999: 267, Table 3). We certainly 

need to bear this in mind. 

One thing we can take away from this is an awareness than we need to be aware much more 

of the ‘doing’ or ritual; that ritual is a practice. The key theorist in this area has perhaps been 

Catherine Bell who, in two important books (Bell 1992, 1997) focussed attention of ritual 

as action, getting away from concerns with the meanings (thought) behind ritual (accessing 

thoughts and ideas is of course difficult for any researchers who cannot engage directly with 

people performing rituals). You will have seen her work referred to in the readings in Section 

1 in the Fogelin (2007) paper. Because ritual is meaningful, however, it can be considered as a 

fusion of thought and action, a resolution of the basic contradiction between the two. 

Bell attempts to overcome this dichotomy with a theory of practice (inspired by Bourdieu). 

Rather than continuing to try and define what ritual is (a seemingly pointless task..), Bell rejects 

the idea of a satisfactory definition and focuses on the notion of ritualization “as a way to 

distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian, 

activities” (1992: 74). This shift from ritual to ritualization allows her to consider ritual in 

terms of practice – what people do/did. For archaeologists, where what we find is of course 

the residues of those actions – of what people did - this then is perhaps a useful way forward. 

“Confronting the ritual act itself, and therein eschewing ritual as some object to be analysed 

.. would involve asking in how ritual activities, in their doing, generate distinctions between 

what is or is not acceptable ritual…” (1992: 80) 

The importance for us, as archaeologists, is then being able to recognise ritual, when we 

encounter it. This in fact is probably something we can do – is it not? The old cliché that when 

archaeologists uncover something unusual they call it ‘ritual’ is of course true – but the very 

fact that we do recognize something as ‘ritual’ would seem to confirm that ancient practices 


did indeed achieve their end in distinguishing certain actions from/practices from everyday/ 

mundane practice: because that is exactly what ritual is meant to do! 

Space, geography and religion 

That much of what we may be talking about closely relates to forms of geographical knowledge, 

some further comments on the relationships between geography and religion may be useful 

here. For further discussion of this there are some on-line articles you can access which review 

how academic geography has been researching aspects of religion in recent decades. This is 

the sort of material that Level 3 (and more advanced) geography students might be expected 

to engage with, so it should also be accessible to archaeology students working at this level. 

In reading such material you will recognize many areas of discussion which are in fact highly 

relevant to archaeological studies, so just because this is labelled ‘geography’ please do not 

think it irrelevant. One very useful place to start (and which the following draws closely) is Lily 

Kong’s (1990) overview paper on geography and religion. 

One strand of geographic thinking about religion, which you may recognise, has been quite 

environmentally deterministic trend. Ellen Semple (1911) argued, for instance, that the 

imagery and symbolism of a religion was affected by its place of birth: to the Eskimos, hell was 

a place of darkness, storm and intense cold; to the Jews, on the other hand, hell was a place of 

eternal fire. Objects of worship were also thought to be frequently determined by geographical 

factors (Ellsworth Huntington 1945). For example, the Rain God was one of the most important 

deities in India because rain there was uncertain. An offshoot of this strictly environmentalistic 

outlook emerged in ecological approach to religion (e.g. Hultkrantz 1966), which looked for 

more ‘indirect and complicated’ ways in which environment influenced religion. For example, 

the natural environment provides materials for religious actions and religious conceptions: 

rites, beliefs and myths make use of the natural setting in different ways. Spirits, for example, 

may take the form of important animals in a society; nature in the afterworld may replicate 

nature in the living world. 

The most significant change probably occurred in the 1920s when Max Weber’s influence 

marked a major turning point by inverting the earlier environmentally deterministic doctrine. 

Instead of examining the influence of environment on religion, the perspective was shifted to 

focus on religion’s influence on social and economic structures. For archaeologists and others, 

this is clearly very important – in that religion is allowed an active role in shaping the world. 

Since the mid-twentieth century such ideas have been much more influential, as for example in 

famous studies which linked the rise of Capitalism to certain aspects of Protestant Christianity 

(Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism is the classic study). It was in just such 

a spirit that many studies dealing with religion as a motivational force in environmental and 

landscape change emerged. Such an idealist (i.e the focus is on ideas..) approach highlighting 


the motivational role of religion in environmental and landscape change has remained 

prominent since, although it has also been realised in more recent years that this relationship 

is more complex and subtle, and may work both ways ( as seen in texts like Sopher 1967; Levine 

1986). We also find here a growing interest in the ways in which landscape are altered by 

people – all part of the developing interests in ‘landscape’ issues, linked with the American 

approaches to cultural geography, in which the landscape is the primary object of research. 

Here it might be noted that another strand of research from the 1960s was framed round ideas 

that the world was becoming more secularised, and religion was in decline (by 2013 – this 

obviously looks like a quite mistaken idea). Some thought that with increasing secularisation, 

religion’s impact on the landscape would become minimal when compared to the historic past 

when it played much more important roles in the patterning of the landscape. Some people 

became interested in processes of secularisation, while others became more interested in the 

study of past landscapes, an essentially ethnological and historical study. This notion that religion 

was disappearing in an increasingly secular world is an idea which you may become aware of in 

much older writing – in that researchers were simply not very interested in the topic. 

The first interest which we may then share with cultural geographical interests is therefore 

religion’s impact on the landscape. A second interest includes work which links with 

concerns in the ‘new’ cultural geography which deals variously with notions of conflict and 

symbolism, also attempting to link the religious from the social, economic and ethnic aspects 

of societies. We may also look at spatial patterns arising from religious influences. These 

include for example the largely descriptive study of the spatial diffusion and expansion and 

the territorial demise of religious groups. 

Related to these studies on spatial distributions of religion are a distinct group of writings that 

use religion as the criterion for defining culture regions. This might well have similarities 

to what we are doing in archaeological contexts, might it not? After all, certain aspects of 

culture we encounter in (especially prehistoric) archaeology may well relate to aspects of 

religious belief and practice. Different traditions of burial practice, for example, may well 

relate to different belief systems – which may be defined by us as different ‘cultures’, perhaps? 

This is something we will return to later in the module. 

When looking at the impact of religion on the physical form of the landscape, it is interesting to 

note how one focus of interest for geographers has been the cemetery, which has been studied 

in two major ways. Such work may be of interest for those working in more recent periods/ 

historical archaeology. The first treats cemeteries as ‘space-utilising phenomena’ looking 

at issues such as their location, their urban land value, and the demands they may impose 

on space in modern (usually urban) communities. These might strike chords in more recent 

periods of archaeological studies. The second category of studies has focused on cemeteries as 


cultural features which reflect, like other cultural phenomena, cultural and historical values. 

For example, Jackson (1967-8) points out how the cemetery in America reflects the changes in 

cultural values over time, changing from being a ‘monument’ commemorating the individual, 

to part of a cemetery location (landscape?) that now inspires emotion and offers ‘a kind of 

luxuriating in a solemn and picturesque environment’. In fact cemeteries may play many social 

roles, not least in simply providing open space, as a sanctuary for wildlife, or in the more 

general provision of human recreation space. This may equally have been the case in the past. 

We certainly need to examine how our modern perceptions of what cemeteries ‘ought’ to be 

like may influence the way we think about and approach ancient cemeteries. 

Cemeteries may in fact clearly be many things:- Norman Lewis – writing of his 

wartime experiences in Naples in 1944, noted: “It turned out that the cemetery is the 

lover’s lane of Naples, and custom is such that one becomes invisible as soon as one 

passes through the gates. If a visitor runs into anyone he knows neither a sign nor a 

glance can be exchanged, nor does one recognize a friend encountered on the 133 

bus which goes to the cemetery..” Norman Lewis, “Naples ’44” (1978. Collins, p.58) 

Apart from cemeteries, there has also been an interest in describing the sacred structures 

of particular groups, illustrating the unique imprint that each group leaves on the landscape. 

These have focused on the sacred structures of both world religions, from Buddhist and Hindu 

temples, of the shrines of folk religions, ancient and modern. Although such descriptions have 

been characteristic of geographers’ interests in sacred structures, an increasing amount of 

research is being done that deals with the changing meanings of these places, their symbolic 

values, and indeed how they may become sites of conflict. (e.g. exploring sites/places sacred 

to different religions, Jerusalem?; Bamiyan Buddha statues, Afghanistan). As you will see in 

other Level 3, and indeed Level 2 modules, one fascinating area of research is how urban 

landscapes changed over time, especially through periods of major religious change (e.g. with 

the Christianisation of the Roman world, or the Islamicisation of the large parts of the eastern 

Roman Empire, through the Crusades, or with the introduction of Christianity to other parts 

of the world in postmedieval colonial contexts). We will return to such issues in some later 

sections of this module. 

The ‘new’ cultural approaches 

While traditional cultural geographies (and archaeologies) tended to assume a unitary culture 

(people’ X ‘ have a certain kind of culture) , there is today a greater awareness that societies 

include many different cultures (sub-cultures?) relating to different social groups within that 

society – some more dominant than others. These may of course have different, and indeed 

conflicting interests. In the religious context, this view lends itself to abundant opportunities 


for research, when we recognise that we cannot generalise about religious traditions, or how 

they work in practice. That official (orthodox) ‘beliefs’, defined by official interpretations of 

religious texts may in fact differ from what people actually ‘do’ (what they practice), is certainly 

something with much scope for exploration. 

What is also increasingly discussed is the way that religion may be mobilised for political ends; 

and we need to think about how religion may be used to achieve political goals (the point 

being it is not just about matters of ‘belief’). This is something that archaeologists, as much as 

geographers, may wish to study. There is no problem in identifying examples of this in modern 

times. As one example, religion (Hinduism) has of course been central to the creation of India 

as a post-colonial Nation (and its national identity as distinct from a Muslim Pakistan). After 

independence the symbolism of Hinduism was used by the state in creating a functioning 

urban landscape, as well as to contribute to its own political legitimation; the renaming of 

places and the erection of statues in the city, with new folk and religious heroes, helped 

displace earlier colonial influences. 

Religion became an essential element in the creation of an Indian nation, as envisioned as a 

natural home for Hindus. A very interesting paper by Pandey (1999) provides a very thoughtprovoking 

discussion of how in modern history religion came to play such a (new) role, and 

its political consequences, not least in defining ‘minorities’ within India, along religious lines. 

Another approach, this time to a Christian basilica may be found in Harvey’s (1979) paper on 

“Monument and myth”, looking at the Basilica of Sacre-Couer in Montmartre Paris. Harvey 

argued that in as much as the Basilica evoked political responses at the time of its construction, 

it was for many years also seen as a provocation to civil war, and still stands today as a very 

political symbol, albeit famous to outsiders more as a tourist destination. 

An increasing interest in the political symbolism of religious places also reflects the more general 

interest in the symbolic meanings of places, where again archaeology has been drawing on 

inspiration found in the work of geographers. Although this is often billed as part of the ‘new’ 

cultural geography, these interests may in fact sometimes be encountered in older work. For 

example, in the 1950s Deffontaines (1953) wrote a paper (“The place of believing”) examining 

the symbolic meanings of houses in religious terms. In a cross-cultural study he investigated 

the influence of religions on the shape, orientation, dimension, and degree of compactness of 

houses (we find for example that doors and windows for some religious groups may be very 

important – as they act as places of contact with evil spirits!). 

Another now classic study you will quite often find referred to (and indeed in other modules) 

is Wheatley’s ‘A Pivot of the Four Quarters’ (1971) which deals with the symbolic meanings 

of places, especially the religious underpinnings of cities, though the example of the cosmomagical 

symbolism of the Chinese city. In Chinese contexts, parallels between the macrocosmos 


(the universe) and the microcosmos (the city), suggest that the city’s symbolic role underpinned 

its functional unity. 

Meaningful spaces, meaningful landscapes? 

It may be an appropriate place to start with a few more observations about how places and 

spaces commonly have meanings, and perhaps special meanings, and how this may be played 

out in more specifically religious contexts. It may also, however, be appropriate to think a 

bit more carefully about the term landscape, and how we use it. As we will see, landscape 

archaeology is today a major field in general archaeological practice, and something you need 

to acquire a more structured understanding of at this level of study (MA courses in ‘Landscape 

Archaeology’ are now quite common). 

Figure 4.1 The main Stupa of the Borobudur Buddhist monument in Java, Indonesia, the 

largest Buddhist monument in the world; it was built in the 8th century. (see Coningham 

2001 for a more general discussion of Buddhist archaeology) 


The Ashmore and Knapp volume represents a good introduction to landscape archaeologies, 

which you will find is much cited. It therefore provides a useful point of departure for you, 

so now will be the time to read this more fully, starting at the beginning, if you have not 

already. Our discussions here will therefore also serve to introduce some fundamentals of 

such landscape studies, which will, hopefully, be more widely applicable in your studies. But 

as you will see, many of the chapters included in the volume deal with issues with ‘religious’ 

associations, more or less explicitly. As such they provide examples from many parts of the 

world, which may provide useful introductions to those areas of research, and of course useful 

bibliographies which may be followed up. 

At this point we may get side-tracked for a little, to look a little harder at the word landscape 

and in so doing are going to begin to explore some of the different meanings that archaeologists 

(and others) have attached to the term. As you will quickly realise, our aim is not to provide 

you with a concise or clear-cut definition (even if we could). Landscape is, by its very nature, 

an elusive and slippery term. It is a word that means (and has meant over time) many different 

things to many different people and as a result it has been wielded in many different ways 

in a wide variety of contexts. Looking a little more closely may be useful for us to unsettle 

over-comfortable understandings we might have of what we mean when we are talking about 

landscapes more generally; but also recognising that religion and religious practices (like 

other sorts of practice ) are manifested in landscapes, in many interesting ways. They may in 

fact shape the world in very practical ways. 

Where does Landscape Archaeology come from? 

At this point will make a small diversion to introduce a few points relating to Landscape 

Archaeology. The first point to make is that ‘Landscape Archaeology’ (as a distinct sub-discipline 

with its own characteristic modes of practice and enquiry) is a relatively new phenomenon. 

In British archaeology, it would seem to arrive with the publication in 1974 of Aston and 

Rowley’s seminal ‘Landscape Archaeology’. Since then its popularity has risen remarkably. 

From the 1980s we can see ‘Landscape Archaeology/Archaeologist’ appearing more and more 

frequently in the titles of journal articles. It is common to discuss ‘sacred landscapes’ today, 

in a way it was not common 30 or 40 years ago. We also start to see more inter-disciplinary 

approaches developing, especially to the study of cultural landscapes (something we will discuss 

a little more later on) embracing works by archaeologists, geographers, ecologists and social 

historians (amongst others). It is now a recognised sub-discipline of archaeology with a host of 

supporting text-books, journals, taught undergraduate and graduate courses (not to mention 

a host of practitioners who describe themselves first and foremost as Landscape Archaeologists 

). It may also be noted that such a classification also suggests that it is something different 

from the other fields of archaeology …. So landscape archaeology is presumably NOT the same 

as ‘environmental archaeology’ or ‘settlement archaeology’, for example. 


What is Landscape? What do you think? 

What is ‘landscape’ to you, and why? 

Are there distinctively different types of landscape? 

If so, how many and how do they differ? 

Where do ‘sacred landscapes’, for example, fit in here? 

The first key point that should emerge from considering such questions is one we alluded to 

earlier - ‘landscape’ is a slippery term that despite its ubiquity and familiarity means many 

different things to many different people. And that includes archaeologists. As a point of 

departure (and this is important)– it is helpful that we have some awareness of how the 

term has developed and entered everyday usage. Where does it come from, and how has it 

been used? What has been meant by it? Do scholars working in other disciplines mean the 

same by it as archaeologists, remembering that many disciplines have an interest in various 

aspects of ‘landscape’? Are we all talking about the same thing? Is ‘landscape’ a universal 

category which ‘works’ in all periods and all cultures? 

The origins of the word in the English language lay with the sixteenth century Dutch term 

‘landschap’, itself derived from the German word ‘Landschaft’. Landschap was a term used by 

painters to refer to the object of a certain type of depiction, whereas Landschaft (in its original 

form) was more legalistic, referring to a discrete area of human occupation. Landscape was 

therefore a profoundly schizophrenic term from the start, with two distinctive meanings – an 

object to be viewed and depicted, or the spatial context of human life. 

What we will also encounter – and you have probably already recognised this in your own 

reading of archaeological literature – is that the term is often taken for granted in an uncritical 

way. Its meaning is regarded as self-evident and therefore needs no definition or qualification. 

What is more, it is regarded as a universal, applying equally to all places at all times; as a 

result we read about prehistoric landscapes and medieval landscapes, African landscapes and 

Scottish ones. 


Box 4.1 – what does the term ‘landscape’ intuitively mean to you? 

Landscape is… 

…a painting 

…the environment 

.. Nature? 

…a picturesque scene 

…something fashioned by people from the natural environment 

…a way of orienting a sheet of paper 

…the lived world as it is understood by those living in it 

…a map 

…something that is practiced and performed 

…all of the above (quite possibly!) 

But these different understandings raise lots of questions – do they not? 

- Is landscape something that is ‘out there’, or is it about representation 

(as in maps or paintings?), is it something that is ‘represented’ 

- Does it have to involve people ? .... or can it just be ‘Nature’? 

- Might it is fact be something that is made by people? 

- Does it have an objective existence without people? If so, how do we 

account for people experiencing the landscape differently (hence a New 

Yorker will perceive an Arctic landscape differently from a Sami reindeer 

herder; certain religious groups may view their ‘lived’ spaces differently 

from others) 

- If landscapes are ‘made’, are they always changing – in flux? 

Approach 1: Palimpsests – Landscape as a (objective?) form of material 

record 

One approach which found favour with the first generation of British landscape archaeology 

was that structured around the idea of the palimpsest. Following O.G. S. Crawford, amongst 

others, Aston and Rowley (1974) developed the idea of the landscape as palimpsest, which has 

since become much-used: 


“the surface of England is a palimpsest, a document that was written on and erased over and 

over again; and its is the business of archaeology to decipher it” (Crawford 1953: 51) 

“The landscape is a palimpsest on to which each generation inscribes its own impressions and 

removes some of the marks of earlier generations’. They then expand this by going on to claim 

that ‘essentially the landscape reflects the past’ … ‘our towns, villages, roads and fields are, 

to a greater or lesser extent, all relict features from earlier periods” (Aston and Rowley 1974: 

14-15). 

Within such an approach, we can presumably just pick out the bits which we think may have 

something to do with religion. 

Approach 2: One Landscape or Many Landscapes? 

A second set of approaches have focused instead upon the problem of classifying landscape, 

acknowledging the problem that the term may in fact refer to a range of very different 

phenomena. Landscapes become recognised as part of ‘heritage’. By 1992 the World Heritage 

Committee adopted categories of World Heritage cultural landscapes and revised the cultural 

criteria used to justify inscription of properties on the ‘World Heritage List’. This immediately 

introduces a distinction between two fundamentally different types of landscape – natural 

ones and cultural ones that we will encounter again and again in later chapters. Within the 

class of cultural landscape three categories of World Heritage cultural landscapes were 

adopted by the Committee in 1992 (these may be found in Paragraph 39 of the Operational 

Guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention):- 

i) clearly defined landscape 

ii) 

organically evolved landscape 

iii) 

associative cultural landscape 

Here then we have got to the idea of cultural landscapes including various forms of 

landscapes with varied cultural attributes. Since 1992, various cultural landscapes have been 

inscribed on the World Heritage List. These range from the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park 

Australia 1987/1994 (the very first – including what Europeans had named ‘Ayers Rock’ when 

they first saw it in 1872), through the ‘Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations 

in the Southeast of Cuba’ ( 2000) to the ‘Blaenavon Industrial Landscape United’ in S.W. Wales 

(2001). At the time of writing there are 66 ‘properties’ on the World Heritage List that have 

been included as cultural landscapes: http://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape 


i 

The most easily identifiable is the clearly defined landscape designed and created 

intentionally by man (sic). This embraces garden and parkland landscapes constructed 

for aesthetic reasons which are often (but not always) associated with religious or 

other monumental buildings and ensembles. 

ii 

The second category is the organically evolved landscape. This results from an 

initial social, economic, administrative, and/or religious imperative and has developed 

its present form by association with and in response to its natural environment. Such 

landscapes reflect that process of evolution in their form and component features. 

They fall into two sub-categories: 

- a relict (or fossil) landscape is one in which an evolutionary process came to 

an end at some time in the past, either abruptly or over a period. Its significant 

distinguishing features are, however, still visible in material form. 

- a continuing landscape is one which retains an active social role in contemporary 

society closely associated with the traditional way of life, and in which the evolutionary 

process is still in progress. At the same time it exhibits significant material evidence 

of its evolution over time. 

iii 

The final category is the associative cultural landscape. The inclusion of such 

landscapes on the World Heritage List is justifiable by virtue of the powerful 

religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element rather than 

material cultural evidence, which may be insignificant or even absent. 


Figure 4.2 Sacred landscape – Uluru, or ‘Ayers Rock’, in the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park 

Australia 1987/1994 (the very first cultural landscape on the World Heritage list). 

Just to recap, here some of the main features of different categories of landscapes 

i) clearly defined landscape: these landscapes were intentionally created, so 

landscape gardens and formal parklands would be excellent examples, as well and 

religious or other monumental constructions). 

ii) organically evolved landscape: by contrast to the above, such landscapes 

were seen as having evolved organically as a result of socio-economic or religious 

imperatives, giving a characteristic form to the natural environment. Such 

landscapes might include agricultural (the vineyards of Bordeaux) or industrial 

landscapes 

iii) associative cultural landscape: these are considered as essentially ‘natural’ 

landscapes imbued with religious or other forms of sacred meaning. The first 

‘listed’ landscapes of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in Australia is one such 

(reflecting religious beliefs of aboriginal peoples), while the monastic landscape 

of Mount Athos in northern Greece is another, although having a considerable 

material culture component in its medieval buildings 


Figure 4.3 Sacred city and pilgrimage centre, par excellence. The heart of al- 

Quds/Jerusalem, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. 

In all these three categories we can see some place for religious landscapes. Such classifications 

also had an obvious impact upon the ways in which academic archaeologists began to organise 

their ideas on landscape. Take for example the introduction to Ashmore and Knapp’s (1999) 

influential Archaeologies of Landscape - at this point you need to be sure you read their 

introductory chapter. You may need to return to that chapter to re-read it at later points in 

the module – if only to reflect on the extent to which their approach may, or may not (to your 

mind) be helpful, or useful. Influenced (to a degree) by existing ‘public policy’ (if we care to 

think of UNESCO’s pronouncements in such a way) they also adopted a tripartite definition, 

incorporating:- 

(1) Constructed landscapes 

(2) Conceptualized landscapes 

(3) Ideational landscapes 

Constructed landscapes 

Many different forms of ‘construction’ may be found within landscapes, which may transform 

their meanings. Put simply, people may create their own landscapes. How they do so may 

vary widely, depending on how they live their lives – for example, mobile peoples create and 

inhabit very different landscapes from sedentary farmers whose lives revolve around their 

farms and villages, or those who live with the sea (who may in fact relate to sea-scapes more 

than the land). In UNESCO terms there are clear links between ‘constructed landscapes’ and 

their ‘clearly defined’ and ‘organically evolved’ categories. 


Conceptualized landscapes 

Conceptualized landscapes are very similar to the ‘associative cultural’ landscapes of UNESCO, 

where monuments or material culture remain limited. In this category we may find features 

such as sacred rocks and mountains. 

Ideational landscapes 

Here again we have a wide-ranging but vague term – often taken to equate with symbolic 

or sacred (themselves not necessarily easy terms to work with) – and potentially linked to the 

imagination and emotion. It is perhaps best thought of as a bridge between the other two: 

‘conceptualized’ and ‘constructed’, though a more cynical reader may see it as little more than 

a repository for landscapes that do not fit comfortably in any of the other carefully defined 

categories. 

A different twist to the classification conundrum is given by Peter van Dommelen (1999), 

building upon a stimulating study by Robert Johnston (Johnston1998b) into the nature of 

Landscape perception and its implications for the archaeological study of past landscapes. 

Extending Johnston’s characterisation of archaeological approaches to landscape perception 

to refer to landscapes themselves, van Dommelen highlighted two basic types: 

• Inherent landscapes 

• Explicit Landscapes 

Inherent landscapes are landscapes as they are understood by those dwelling and living within 

them – people are an integral part of what we think of as landscape and cannot profitably be 

separated from it. This is what we might think of as an insider perspective. In contrast, Explicit 

landscapes result from the exploitation of the natural world by culture – people are exploiting 

and effectively creating what we think of as landscape (fashioning it from the raw natural 

world). This is what we might think of as an outsider perspective. Presumably these can be 

used to further finesses classifications such as those of UNESCO and Ashmore and Knapp – for 

example a conceptualised or associative-cultural landscape can be simultaneously thought of 

as inherent (Uluru-Kata Tjuta) and explicit (Ayers rock), depending upon who you ask. 


Archaeological Approaches I 

Moving on from this general discussion of how places (and especially landscapes) may have 

meanings, religious or otherwise, we will move on to more explicit archaeological discussions. 

There is a growing literature in this field in relation to the prehistoric archaeology in Europe, 

(e.g. Bradley 1998, 2000) which are concerned with more explicit investigations of places and 

landscapes. Richard Bradley’s work, of which we will encounter a few examples, has been 

important in this field, not least in raising interesting questions of the possible relationships 

(and differences) between various forms of ritual practice (e.g. ritual deposits). See also the 

paper by Fontijn which develop some of those ideas in a Bronze Age context, in the Netherlands 

(Fontijn 2007) 

A reading we provide here [Bradley’s Chapter 2 -Sacred Places in a Classical Landscape] however 

also draws attention to how similar features can be identified in the classical world – a world 

where the familiar presence of monumental temples and the like, may obscure the fact that 

they maintain similar concerns for ‘place’. As such it is important for us not to lose sight of 

the possible shared characteristics of religious sites and landscapes across time and space (in 

prehistoric or historic periods). There is an extensive literature on religious aspects of the 

Mediterranean world in later prehistory and classical periods (e.g. Alcock and Osborne 1994). 

If you have potential interests in that sort of archaeology, you might want to explore this more 

in your own reading. 

To take just one interesting example which can be easily accessed is a paper by Briault 

investigating the much-discussed ‘peak sanctuaries’ of Minoan Crete, with a special interest in 

their mountain-top landscape setting (Briault 2007). As you will see when reading this paper, 

we again encounter a discussion where ‘place’ (the mountain-top location) is not the only 

aspect of important rituals which actual define the sites. In fact we can detect other material 

elements of the (peak) sanctuary ‘kit’ which mark off the finds assemblages as a distinctly 

‘ritual’ kind of assemblage, of the kind discussed in the work of Grimes; or recognizable as 

‘ritual’ by a distinctive form of practice. In terms of the ritual practices identifiable at various 

sites, they may contain most of the attributes of ‘peak sanctuaries’, if not exactly located on 

mountain peaks! 


BOX 4. 2 Visibility and View-sheds 

As an aside, the Briault article explicit raises the issue of visibility/inter-visibility as 

potentially being of significance in understanding landscapes, including religious 

landscapes. You will also see similar issues raised in many landscapes studies. In 

recent years, such issues have taken on a new life with the increasing use of GIS 

(Geographical Information Systems) in archaeology, which allow such issues to 

be explored in computer studies. Should you have interests in this area, a useful 

introduction may be found in Chapter 10 of Wheatley and Gillings (2002: 204-216), 

with an emphasis on GIS, and another, more general discussion and review is available 

online by Lake and Woodman (2003). 

The latter is very useful for reminding us that visibility studies are not necessarily 

totally new, and did exist prior to the arrival of GIS-based studies. What is essential 

is that if you encounter people discussing view-sheds or other aspects of visibility 

in their work, you have a clear and critical understanding of what they are aiming 

to achieve. Just because certain sites are inter-visible, what does this mean? Is it a 

matter of chance? Is it just because they are all on hilltops? Would they have been 

inter-visible if the hills had been covered with woodland? Is this likely to be of key 

significance in an environment where the hills are masked in cloud for much of 

the year? Even if we can detect some possible associations across the choice of site 

locations, it this necessarily a causal one? 

This paper also raises questions about some of the sorts of significance we may assign to sites, 

for example on the basis of their visibility/inter-visibility. This is often assumed to be of 

significance, although the reasoning why this may be the case if perhaps rather less often 

made explicit. That mountain-top locations are, by their nature, widely visible, is perhaps a 

self-evident truth rather than an explanation for anything much, and such assumptions require 

numerous further assumptions to really make sense of them. In an interesting suggestion, 

Briault asks whether ‘the experience, rather than the view, of a peak sanctuary landscape 

seems to be the key feature’ (2007: 137) 

An ongoing exercise with your reading 

At this stage, and through the following section 5, as you work through all these 

readings, take the time to focus on one particular case-study, in a field where you may 

have more specific interest (the general field where you might be doing your dissertation, 

perhaps?), and think through in your own mind the possible significance of places and 

landscapes, and linkages to aspects of religion or ritual, in the associated archaeology. 

If we were doing this course on campus, we might ask you to make a brief 10 minute 

presentation on a topic of your choice for your fellow students. Can you identify/locate 

relevant literature? What have other people been writing on the topic? 


Making a shrine (&Colson 1997; &Scarre 2008) 

As a final point in this section, you need to have read, together, two more papers, one 

ethnographic (Colson 1997), and one archaeological (Scarre 2008), drawing on that ethnographic 

perspective. One of the interesting issues raised in these papers is the distinction that may be 

made between the meanings that may be associated with natural places, and those associated 

with cultural monuments. The Colson paper is of course dealing with an African context which 

you may not be very familiar with. On the other hand there is no reason to believe that it is 

less familiar than contexts 4000 or 5000 years ago, albeit geographically in a more familiar 

European context. It does however provide many interesting pointers to how we might think 

about religion and ritual practices in the landscape. 

In the second paper, Scarre raises some interesting questions about whether we might think 

about megalithic monuments (or are they megalithic tombs?) and how they might be seen as 

something similar to ‘shrines of the land’. In fact this might go further and we might wonder 

if the emphasis should be put on them as ‘shrines’ and less emphasis on their roles as burial 

monuments – in this case, shrines that also happen to contain human burials. Whether this is a 

suitable way to look at them is a matter to be discussed, in relation to the archaeological data. 

We may raise the question, at least. The point here being that we need at least to be open to 

the possibility of looking at such monuments in rather different ways. 

Figure 4.4 Meaningful landscape features; incorporated into myth. 


Pilgrimage in the Classical World & Scullion 

The chapter of Bradley introduces some aspects of pilgrimage in the classical world. If 

you have interests in this period, there is a large literature that you can follow up through 

materials available the Library. Religious festivals, which may in turn be linked to wide-ranging 

pilgrimage practices may be encountered everywhere. The Parthenon (and the Parthenon 

friezes) was a focus for the Great Panathenaea festival, a festival of the greatest importance 

for Athens and Athenians. To ‘be’ Athenian required participation in such festivals, and the 

festivals fulfilled an explicitly political purpose of binding together the citizens of Athens (i.e. 

in Athenian identity). Such rituals of course also serve to exclude those who cannot participate 

(non-citizens, foreigners, slaves..). Other cities had their own gods: Hera at Argos, and Artemis 

at Ephesus. 

In contrast to the city-focussed festival and pilgrimage model, one interesting feature of 

Greek pilgrimage is the development of the pan-Hellenic pilgrimage, sacred to all those who 

considered themselves ‘Greek’. The greatest of these was the festival of Zeus, held at Olympia, 

from the eighth century BC [the Olympics]. However while being a pan-Hellenic event, victory 

in its sporting events were seen in terms of particular states/cities. The Pythian games were in 

a similar way held every four years at Delphi. As well as their festivals, such sites could also be 

visited for their healing qualities, or for their oracles (see also Rutherford 2000). Some aspects 

of the relationship between pilgrimage and Greek religion are further discussed in the 

Scullion chapter (part of the important edited book collection of Elsner and Rutherford 

2005 – an essential read if you were to explore this topic in more detail). 

Figure 4.5 Delphi – sacred pilgrimage centre and oracle. 


Pilgrimage and Tourism 

At this point we may also draw attention to not uncommon discussions about the similarities 

between pilgrimage and tourism. This topic is further discussed in a paper you can access online 

(Elsner 1992). This paper looked at the writings of Pausanias (second century AD) who wrote 

a 10-volume Guide to Greece (Periegesis Hellados) comprising descriptions of sites, buildings, 

monuments and artworks as well as historical and mythical stories associated with the places 

and objects he encountered – in fact a very rare first-hand account of his various journeys to 

different parts of Greece. Pausanias’s descriptions of natural places are also mentioned in the 

Bradley chapter (2000: 20-21). Elsner pointed out that in part we might think of his travels 

in relation to pilgrimage activities, as much as tourism. That the two practices may merge is 

quite interesting (and of course this is something that happens very frequently in more recent 

centuries. There is a very interesting study of the extent to which this was the case in Graeco- 

Roman Egypt by Foertmeyer (Foertmeyer 1989) – again, essential reading if you were to 

pursue this topic in more detail in more advanced studies 

Looking back on ancient pilgrimage practices 

From what you will have seen and read here, you will be getting a greater sense of how 

widespread pilgrimage practices were (and still are), and how they may well be visible and 

traceable in perhaps most archaeological contexts which we may be dealing with. It would 

probably be hard to find many historical contexts in which there were not holy places, or one 

form or another, and these did not become foci for pilgrimage practices of one sort or another. 

Their material traces may of course also vary hugely in scale, from massive monumental 

complexes (potentially whole towns), to much more discrete and unelaborated sites, often 

more ‘natural’, than constructed. As you will also have seen, the supposed boundaries between 

natural and constructed places (and landscapes) may often be difficult to define. This certainly 

suggests we need to be flexible in our own thinking. By this stage, a useful exercise will be 

to locate more reading materials relevant to pilgrimages and their sacred landscapes in areas 

where you have you own particular areas of interest. Do they have any specific characteristics 

which may mark them off from examples you have seen elsewhere? What characteristics may 

they share with other times and places. 

Bibliography and References 

Adams, C. and Laurence, R. (eds) 2001. Travel and geography in the Roman Empire. London, 

Routledge. 

Alcock, S. E. and Osborne, R. (eds) 2004. Placing the gods : sanctuaries and sacred space in 

ancient Greece, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Bell, C. 1992. Ritual theory, ritual practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 


Bell, C. 1997. Ritual: perspectives and dimensions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Bradley, R. 1998. Ruined buildings, ruined stones: enclosures, tombs and natural places in the 

Neolithic of south-west England, World Archaeology 30: 13-22. 

Bradley, R. 2000. An Archaeology of Natural Places, London: Routledge 

Briault, C. 2007. Making mountains out of molehills in the Bronze Age Aegean: visibility, ritual 

kits, and the idea of the peak sanctuary. World Archaeology 39 (1): 122-141. 

Brown, P. 1971. The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, Journal of Roman 

Studies 61: 80-101. 


European Journal of Archaeology 2: 313-344. [Reprinted in Insoll, T. (ed.) The archaeology 

of identities : a reader, Abingdon: Routledge — available as ebook]. 

Cameron, A. 1978. The Theotokos in sixth-century Constantinople: a city finds its symbol, 

Journal of Theological Studies 29: 79-108. 

Coleman, S. and Elsner, J. 1995. Pilgrimage. Past and Present. London: British Museum Press. 

Colson, E. 1997. Places of Power and Shrines of the Land, Paideuma 43: 47-57. 

Crook, J. 2000. The architectural setting of the cult of saints in the early Christian West, c.300- 

1200, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Curran, J. R. 1999. Pagan city and Christian capital: Rome in the fourth century. Oxford: Oxford 


Curtis, J.R. 1980: Miami’s Little Havana: yard shrines, cult religion and landscape. Journal of 

Cultural Geography 1: 1-15. 

Dillon, M. 1997. Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece, London: Routledge. 

Elsner, J. 1992. Pausanias: a Greek Pilgrim in the Roman world, Past and Present 135: 3-29. 

Elsner, J. and I. Rutherford (eds) Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: 

Seeing the Gods. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 

Greene, S. E. 2002. Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter. A History of Meaning and Memory 

in Ghana, Bloomington. 

Harvey, D. 1979. Monument and myth. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69: 

362-81. 

Howard-Johnston, J. and Hayward, P. (eds) 1999. The Cult of Saints in late antiquity and the 

early middle ages. Oxford: OUP. 

Hultkrantz, A. 1966. An ecological approach to religion. Ethnos 31: 131-50. 


Jackson, J.B. 1967-8: From monument to place. Landscape 17: 22-6. 

Kong, L. 1990. Geography and religion: trends and prospects. Progress in Human Geography 

14(3): 355-371. 

Lake, M. W. and Woodman, P. E. 2003. Visibility studies in archaeology: a review and case-study. 

Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 30: 689-707. 

Lee, A. D. 2000. Pagans and Christians in late antiquity : a sourcebook, London: Routledge.. 

Levine, G.J. 1986: On the geography of religion. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 

(ns) 11: 428-40. 

Markus, R. 1994. How on Earth could Places become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy 

Places, Journal of Early Church History 2: 258-71. 

Meri, J. W. 2002. The cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria. Oxford, Oxford 


Pandey, G. 1999. Can a Muslim Be an Indian? Comparative Studies in Society and History 41: 

608-629. 

Papaconstantinou, A. 2007. The cult of saints: a haven of continuity in a changing world, In 

Bagnall, R. (ed.) Egypt in the Byzantine World, Cambridge, CUP: 350-367. 

Park, C. C. 1994. Sacred world : an introduction to geography and religion, London: Routledge. 

Price, S. 1984. Rituals and Power: The Imperial Roman Cult in Asia Minor, Cambridge: CUP. 

Rutherford, I. 1998. Island of the Extremity: Space, Language and Power in the Pilgrimage 

Traditions of Philae. In Frankfurter, D. (ed.) Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique 

Egypt. Leiden: Brill, 229-56. 

Rutherford, I. 2000. Theoria and Darś an: Pilgrimage and Vision in Greece and India, The 

Classical Quarterly 50(1): 133-146. 

Scarre, C. 2008. Shrines of the land and places of power: religion and the transition to farming 

in western Europe. In Whitley D. S. and Hays-Gilpin, K. (eds) Belief in the Past. Theoretical 

approaches to the archaeology of religion, Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 209-226. 

Scullion, S. 2005. Pilgrimage and Greek Religion: Sacred and Secular in the Pagan Polis; In Elsner, 

J. and Rutherford, I. (eds) Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: 

Seeing the Gods. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 111-130. 

Semple, E. 1911. Influences of geographic environment: on the basis of Ratzel’s system of 

anthropo-geography, London: Constable and Co. 

Sopher, D. 1967. Geography of Religions, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. 


Stump, R.W. 2008. The geography of religion: faith, place, and space. Lanham, MD: Rowman 

and Littlefield. 

Taylor , C. S. 1999. In the Vicinity of the Righteous. Ziyara and the Veneration of Muslim Saints 

in Late Medieval Egypt, Leiden: Brill. 

Wheatley, D. W. 2004. Making Space for an Archaeology of Place, Internet Archaeology 15 

Wheatley, D.W. and Gillings, M. 2002. Spatial Technology and Archaeology: a guide to the 

archaeological applications of GIS. London: Taylor & Francis. (e-book) 

Wheatley, P. 1971. The Pivot of the Four Quarters; a preliminary enquiry into the origins and 

character of the Chinese city. Chicago: Aldine. 

Whitley, J. 2002. The Archaeology of Ancient Greece, Cambridge: CUP. 

Wilson, B. 1999. Displayed or Concealed? Cross Cultural Evidence for Symbolic and Ritual 

Activity Depositing Iron Age Animal Bones, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 18(3): 297- 

305. 


SECTION 5 





Core Readings 

Caseau, B. 1999. Sacred landscapes, In Bowersock, G. W., Brown, P. and Grabar, 

O. (eds) Late Antiquity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 21-59 (paper) 

Markus, R. 1994. How on Earth could Places become Holy? Origins of the 

Christian Idea of Holy Places. Journal of Early Christian Studies 2: 258-71 (e-link) 

 

Davis, S. J. 1998. Pilgrimage and the Cult of Saint Thecla in Late Antique Egypt. 

In Frankfurter, D. (ed.) Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt. Leiden: 

Brill, 303-339. (paper) 

Meri, J. W. 2002. The cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria, 

Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Chapter 1 – Sacred Topography, pp.12-58). 

(paper) 

Petersen, A.D. 1999. The Archaeology of Muslim Pilgrimage and Shrines in 

Palestine, In Insoll, T. (ed.) Case Studies in Archaeology & World Religion. 

Oxford: Tempus Reparatum, 116-127. (paper) 

O’Connell, E. R. 2007. Transforming Monumental Landscapes in Late Antique 

Egypt, Journal of Early Christian Studies 15: 239-74. 


 

Bolman, E. S., David, S. J. and Pyke, G. 2010. Shenoute and a recently Discovered 

Tomb Chapel at the White Monastery, Journal of Early Christian Studies 18(3): 

453-62. 

Petersen, A. 1994. The archaeology of the Syrian and Iraqi Hajj routes, World 

Archaeology 26(1): 47 – 56. (access via e-link) 

Ranger, T. 1987. Taking Hold of the Land: Holy Places and Pilgrimage in 

Twentieth-Century Zimbabwe, Past and Present 117: 158-94. (access via e-link) 

Brown, L. 2004. Dangerous Places and Wild Spaces: Creating Meaning with 

Materials and Space at Contemporary Maya Shrines on El Duende Mountain, 

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 11: 31-58. (access via e-link) 

Kraft, S. E. 2010. The making of a sacred mountain. Meanings of nature and 

sacredness in Sápmi and northern Norway, Religion 40(1): 53-61. (access via 

e-link) 


Introduction 

In this second section devoted to spatial aspects of religion, we will move forward in time to 

look at some more examples relating to practices within World Religions, as well as within 

other traditions. In the latter case we can also spend a little time thinking about such practices 

in relation to more recent periods, which may fall within the field of historical archaeology. 

This is a huge topic with a huge literature, so we can only provide here a few case-studies 

to begin your work. Your own reading will have to direct you to more examples, perhaps 

with particular foci which reflect the ways in which your own archaeological interests are 

developing. We will also remind you of a few points covered in earlier modules. 

Making Christian sacred spaces 

As a point of departure however, our first readings Caseau and Markus (Caseau 1999; 

Markus 1994) raise many interesting questions about how, in the early centuries of a new 

religion, Christians came to have their own sacred spaces, and how they understood them, and 

how they related to what came before. Their attached bibliographies will also provide many 

pointers to other important literature, which can be followed up. In addition there is of course 

much more recent literature. 

While we might take for granted (with hindsight) that of course Christians would have their 

own holy places, it is worth noting that there were in fact various strands of Christian thought 

that were quite against such an idea. One interesting point raised by Markus is that we (like 

Eliade) commonly assume that all religions possessed such holy places, despite the fact that for 

the first few centuries of the existence of Christianity (in the many and varied forms it took in 

those early centuries), the new religion did not in fact have holy places, and many argued that 

as a spiritual religion it did not need them: “Eusebius thought holy places were what Jews and 

pagan had; Christians, he thought, knew better” (1994: 258). 

One of the key points Markus makes is how far Christianity changed during those early centuries 

- and in the fourth century it became very receptive to ideas of ‘holy places’. In the following 

centuries it continued to further transform itself from a threatened and beleaguered minority 

spiritual religion, to create a new identity in which the faith had become a source of privilege 

and power (this transformation is discussed in Markus 1990). 

In the early years of Christianity in the Roman Empire, an appropriate sacred focus for all 

towns was required. We may think of this as the Christianisation of Space – as there was 

a Christianisation of Time, with the creation of new calendars, filled with Christian festivals. 

Rome, heir to the old pagan religion itself took several centuries for its pagan heritage to be 


fully submerged; the old senatorial elites fully embracing Christianity only in the fifth century 

(Curran 2000). We may identify a symbolic break with its pagan past in the early seventh 

century when the old Senate House became the Church of St. Adriano. Older scholarship 

tended to see this process in terms of a Christian ‘triumph’ over paganism (effectively taking 

the same perspective as the Church fathers of the fifth century, who wished to present the 

century from Constantine to Theodosius in just such terms). However, as is evident in from 

Curran’s work on the transformation of Rome from a pagan to a Christian city, the process 

was neither steady nor inevitable, and closely tied to the personalities of the successive fourthcentury 

emperors, as he put it, a “catalogue of compromise, inconsistency, and contradiction” 

(2000: viii). We will return to Rome in a later section… 

Similar processes can commonly be detected in most provincial towns and cities of the Roman 

world. As we have seen, one key focus in new Christian religious landscapes were saints 

cults. These brought new religious meanings to places, and were also often to find wider 

meanings as pilgrimage centres. Obviously we can only look at a few specific examples here, 

but such practices could be found in all parts of the Christian world, and with their own local 

manifestations. The examples we look at here will hopefully just provide some indication of 

the sorts of approaches which can be taken to pilgrimage and related phenomena – to be 

more widely explored by you in your wider reading. Note that there exist quite extensive 

theoretical discussions of pilgrimage, as well as large literatures concerning pilgrimage 

traditions within Christianity (e.g. Turner and Turner 1978), as well as other religions. If you 

find this an interesting topic there will be no shortage of material to read. 

One famous example we have come across before of such a Christian cult in Francia was that 

of St. Martin at Tours (also home of the famous sixth century bishop, Gregory of Tours). The 

presence of a bishop, and the development of a very successful cult around the tomb of St. 

Martin (d.397), was instrumental in the survival of this small town and in its later development. 

Similar stories are found all over the Mediterranean world and we will look at some more of 

these. You have, for example recent papers on the variable Christianisation of various towns in 

Sicily (Sami 2010), and how the classical debris (such as statuary) of the eastern Mediterranean 

city of Gaza was reworked in a Christian form. 


Figure 5.1 St Menas flask. Such moulded ceramic bottles were popular 

acquisitions for pilgrims to his shrine. They are common finds across Egypt, and 

as far away as western Europe; examples have been found in Cheshire. You may 

well find an example in a museum near you! Pilgrim tokens are perhaps the most 

obvious and abundant markers of engagement with pilgrimage. 

The new imperial capital of Constantinople had also to create its own sacred focus. Unlike 

Rome, which created new religious foci around the relics of two Apostles (St. Peter and St. 

Paul) and numerous local martyrs, Byzantium/Constantinople was the home of only two minor 

martyrs (Acacius and Moca). During the fourth century, this situation was changed with the 

collection and transfer (‘translation’ is the more technical term) of the relics of Saints Andrew, 

Luke and Timothy to Constantinople. Constantine was reputed to have left 12 empty reliquaries 

in his Church of the Holy Apostles to house the relics of all the Apostles. More source materials 

relating to Byzantine shrines are listed below. 

The Christian Parthenon? 

One interesting example of the way in which all sorts of towns were finding new 

Christian manifestations has been made clear in a recent study of Byzantine Athens 

(Kaldellis 2009). His book argues that what we have rather forgotten (during 

the celebration of Athen’s classical past) is the way in which the Parthenon (and 

indeed other parts of Athens) emerged as a significant pilgrimage centre between 

the seventh and tenth centuries and a major centre of the cult of the Theotokos 

(Mother of God). There were also several other Christian establishments on top of 

or around the rock of the Acropolis (e.g. the Asklepieion – a healing temple – was re 

dedicated to the healing Saints Kosmas and Damianos). 

One aspect of this Christian presence is an extraordinary corpus of Christian 

inscriptions on the Parthenon: prayers, epitaphs of prominent ecclesiastics, and names 


of laymen started being inscribed on the monument c.600, thus attesting to (but also 

shaping) the building’s centrality in Athenian cultic life for several centuries. It may 

also be continuing more ancient habits: “the insistence of the Parthenon inscriptions 

on personal names has more in common with ancient habits than with those of 

Christians in late antiquity” (Kaldellis 2009:79). 

While it has been suggested that Kaldellis has rather exaggerated the importance of 

the Christian Parthenon, we have better evidence from c.1100. Kaldellis makes good 

use of an ecclesiastical register of properties πρáκτικου) in order to reconstruct the 

topography of the city at the beginning of the twelfth century. This was a period 

of prosperity for Athens, one which witnessed the establishment of a many new 

churches—which while often not large have been seen to rival in subtle, yet distinct, 

ways some of the more grandiose creations of Constantinople. These were all part 

of the urban landscape in which the Parthenon enjoyed a formidable status as home 

to the Theotokos (now crystallized as “Athenaïs” or “Atheniotissa”), her cathedral, 

and a famous pilgrimage. Historical sources tell us pious ecclesiastic leaders from 

Constantinople arrived in Athens (armed with metropolitan snobbery and a very 

sophisticated apparatus of classical scholarship), only to find the harsh reality of ruins 

and a glory long gone. Some of them found solace in experiencing the Parthenon/ 

church as a material affirmation of Christian triumph while others escaped to 

the irresistible magnetism of its classical aura and finesse. It is this idiosyncratic 

character of the building, Kaldellis argues, that accounts for the exceptionality of 

the Atheniotissa, her popularity and attractiveness, her fame and universal appeal. 

The ancient building was “...not merely the flagship of the Theotokos cult but the 

very reason for its existence” (2009: 144). 

Kalkellis sees the very materiality of the Parthenon as the indispensable, yet at the 

same time unattestable, precondition for the cult of the Atheniotissa. To what extent 

and how could this superb relic fit in the established theological symbolism of Eastern 

Roman empires’ world order? It was in this period that a new apse was constructed 

and along with it a mosaic of the Theotokos. This new feature punctuated what must 

have been a truly bizarre interior. More importantly, the twelfth century witnessed 

the association of a frequently attested, yet frustratingly elusive, miraculous and everburning 

light with a “photocentric” conception of the Theotokos Atheniotissa—a well 

conceived attempt to enhance the cathedral’s mystical aura. Kaldellis hypothesizes that 

this may have been inspired by the ever-burning lamp by Kallimachos at the Erechtheion 

(another shrine on the Acropolis (built 421-407BC) dedicated to the legendary Greek 

hero Erichthonius). Kaldellis’ study ends grimly in 1204, but the Parthenon continued 

to live as a Latin Cathedral and later on as an impressive mosque. [Kaldellis, A. 2009. 

The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens, New York: 

Cambridge University Press] 


Pilgrimage 

One of the key aspects of the religious changes taking place in Late Antiquity is the development 

of new forms of pilgrimage, based on new Christian relationships with the landscape. You will 

already be familiar with some aspects of medieval pilgrimage and its practice in Christian 

world, in the Mediterranean and beyond (see Stopford 1994). Pilgrimage to the Holy Land was 

the most important pilgrimage activity which developed after the adoption of Christianity as 

the official religion of the Empire. From the time of Constantine, Jerusalem saw substantial 

imperial investments in the monumentalising of its sacred landscape. This was to transform 

the city from a relatively insignificant, provincial city to the focus of religious fervour and 

pilgrimage for the official religion of the Roman Empire (a rather more important role than as 

the centre for the local religion of Judaism). 

Figure 5.2 Jerusalem in the time of Justinian. Compare this with the view in the Madaba 

map, below. Most urban spaces of such religious centres may invite careful study to see how 

they developed and changed through time. 


Here we may start by revisiting some of the material covered in earlier modules – to refresh 

your memory. As you will recall, it was in the 320s, that Constantine’s mother Helena visited 

Jerusalem and shortly thereafter various religious relics and sacred sites began to be discovered/ 

identified in and around the city, including the ‘true cross’. The possibilities of Imperial 

patronage, and the ambitions of local bishops must of course be seen to play some role in 

these developments. The attitudes of Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem in the mid-fourth century, 

were very different from those of a generation or so earlier. One was to become the site of 

Christianity’s holiest shrine in Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Constantine and 

Helena commissioned the construction of the Anastasis – (the Church of the Resurrection - 

the precursor of today’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre) and later the Eleona Church on the Mt. 

of Olives (marking the site where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer): see IRCJS (1997). 

These marked the first of a series of other churches, monasteries, convents and hostels which 

transformed the city’s physical landscape. Not least, was the shift in the focus of the city from 

the Jewish centre on the Temple Mount (that area became quite neglected). Since the time of 

Hadrian, Jews had been forbidden to live within Jerusalem (then known as Aelia Capitolina), 

but some presence in the area seems to have remained. 

The city continued to expand during the fifth century, despite political chaos in many parts 

of the Empire. In the reign of Theodosius II, the Empress Eudocia settled in Jerusalem and 

embarked on several major construction projects. Just outside of today’s Damascus gate she 

built a church dedicated to the first Christian martyr St. Stephen. A new church was also built 

at the Siloam Pool, and the city walls were extended southwards to enclose the area of Siloam 

and Mt. Zion. 


Madaba map 

Several WWW sites devoted to the Madaba map, some with very good colour images, 

for example: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/ofm/mad/ 

Figure 5.3 Detail of Jerusalem from the Madaba map showing some 

of the identifiable features. 

The Madaba mosaic is the oldest map of Jerusalem. The map depicts the entire Holy 

Land, with Jerusalem, at its centre, represented as an oval, surrounded by a wall, 

towers and gates. At the city’s northern gate is a plaza with a large pillar. The Cardo 

Maximus is shown as a great collonaded street leading away from the plaza, passing 

the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which is placed at the centre of the map (IRCJS 1997). 

In the sixth century, Justinian also added much to the city. Our first map of Jerusalem, in the 

form of the Madaba map (Donner 1995) dates to this period (a mosaic map in the floor of 

a Byzantine church in Madaba - Jordan). Justinian’s major additions were the Nea Church, 

officially called the New (Nea) Church of St. Mary and a new central street and market area, 

known as the Cardo (visible on the Madaba Map as a colonnaded street running through the 

city from north to south). This was to become a major processional route through the city, as 

well as a market– a requirement found in many pilgrimage centres. 

Moving on, we can now look at some of the variety of Byzantine traditions of pilgrimage, and 

the place of sacred spaces and places in the ‘eastern’ world. There is a large literature on the 

topic, some more historical, some more archaeological, and now is the time to explore this a bit 

more. One excellent collection of papers which we can make use of is to be found in a volume 

of the Dumbarton Oaks Papers (2002, volume 56), which came out of a conference devoted 

to Byzantine pilgrimage. These are rather more historical than archaeological, but provide a 


valuable insight into the variety of pilgrimage sites and practices which we may encounter, as 

well as their complex histories. This is available online through the Library – and the individual 

sections are listed here. Following on from earlier discussions the paper by Maraval (Maraval 

2002) may be a good place to start. 

Introduction (pp. 59-61) Alice-Mary Talbot Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291854 

The Earliest Phase of Christian Pilgrimage in the Near East (before the 7th Century) (pp. 63-74) 

Pierre Maraval Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291855 

Icons and the Object of Pilgrimage in Middle Byzantine Constantinople (pp. 75-92) Annemarie 

Weyl Carr Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291856 

Russian Pilgrims in Constantinople (pp. 93-108) George Majeska Stable URL: http://www.jstor. 

org/stable/1291857 

Les saints en pèlerinage à l’époque mésobyzantine (7e-12e siècles) (pp. 109-127) Michel Kaplan 

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291858 

Pilgrimage in Medieval Asia Minor (pp. 129-151) Clive Foss Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/ 

stable/1291859 

Pilgrimage to Healing Shrines: The Evidence of Miracle Accounts (pp. 153-173) Alice-Mary 

Talbot Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291860 

Pilgrimage to Thessalonike: The Tomb of St. Demetrios (pp. 175-192) Charalambos Bakirtzis 

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291861 

Local Worshipers, Imperial Patrons: Pilgrimage to St. Eugenios of Trebizond (pp. 193-212) Jan 

Olof Rosenqvist Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291862 

Visitors and Pilgrims to the Living Holy Man and the Case of Lazaros of Mount Galesion (pp. 

213-241) Richard Greenfield Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291863 

Christian pilgrimage in Egypt 

While Jerusalem may have been the greatest sacred location in the Christian world, its sacred 

character was mirrored throughout the Christian Mediterranean. In earlier modules we have 

encountered two great Late Antique pilgrimage centres in Egypt, Abu Mina and Menouthis. 

Both were located close to the Egyptian coast near Alexandria and enjoyed an international 

reputation during the sixth and seventh centuries. Both also seem likely to have been on the 

route of pilgrims from further west travelling to and from the Holy Land during this period. 

Such pilgrimages were already becoming quite well established during the 150 years after 

Constantine. Both are quite well documented in Egyptian Christian sources, but only about 

one of them, Abu Mina, do we have significant archaeological knowledge. 


Figure 5.4 Plan of the pilgrimage centre of Abu Menas (based on Grossmann 1998: 

diagram 1) this draws attention to the importance of thinking about space, and how it 

was used, at such sites. Many (most?) pilgrimage sites may well merit analysis of their 

use of space, looking at how it was organised, in a deliberate way. 

Excavations at Abu Mina have revealed a vast and complex site. The site has of course a 

complex building history, and the plan (Fig.5.4) can only give an idea of the scale and character 

of its later phases. The oldest remains found at the site relate to the tomb of St. Menas, and 

probably date to the late fourth century. A church was built over this during the first half of 

the fifth century, and a baptistery was added at the west end, followed by the Great Basilica 

(at that time the largest church in Egypt). 

An extensive ecclesiastical centre was also being constructed around the churches from the fifth 

century, structured around a colonnaded street, which led into the ‘Pilgrims’ Court’. Along its 

north side were some pilgrim rest houses/hostels and public baths (probably used mainly for 

ritual bathing). Outside this formal planned centre, there was a more irregular settlement of 

smaller mudbrick buildings, more typical of Egyptian domestic architecture of this period. 


Figure 5.5 Map of Egypt – note Abu Mena and Menouthis near Alexandria; 

Babylon became Fustat, became Cairo. The White Monastery is on the west bank 

on the Panopolis=Akhmim area 

Having been a flourishing centre in the 6th century, the town was reputedly ‘destroyed’ 

(whatever exactly that means) by Persian invaders in 619. Recent excavations have found 

evidence for considerable fire damage on the site to buildings of this period. However, no 

corpses were found amongst the ruins suggesting that the inhabitants had escaped. As far 

as can be determined, the site may have remained little occupied over the next 10 years 

(suggested by the virtual absence of coin finds from this period). However, sometime after the 

Persian withdrawal repairs began on the site. 

Pilgrimage to Menouthis 

A little to the east of Alexandria was the shrine of Saint Cyrus and St John at Menouthis 

(modern Aboukir). Menouthis was already a major cult centre in pre-Christian times, having 

been the site of a major Isis shrine, a place of healing and with a well-known oracle, which 


pilgrims went to consult. This pre-Christian shrine may have survived until the late fifth century 

(the 490s?), although there may have been a Christian presence at Menouthis since the 420s. 

A similar co-existence, sometimes in close proximity, of Christian and non-Christian presences 

(shrines, temples, churches) can be found in other places. If the early history of the Christian 

shrine is obscure, by the sixth century a Christian shrine seems to have been well-established, 

still maintaining the traditional functions of the place as a place of healing. Pilgrims could 

be cured by sleeping close to the relics of the saints (a practice known as incubation), while 

the saints might appear to the pilgrims in their dreams suggesting suitable treatments (the 

Patriarch Sophronius claimed to have been cured of an eye condition by the saints). 

How the shrine was established provides a useful example of a much more common process 

in the emerging Christian world. The first we hear of the two saints Cyrus (a doctor) and John 

(a soldier) is when their remains were moved (translated is the term used) from Alexandria to 

Menouthis by the Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria (c.375 – 444). It seems likely that this happened 

in the 420s, perhaps as a deliberate attempt to challenge the pagan shrine which was still 

flourishing, despite its proximity to Alexandria, which was such a major centre of ecclesiastical 

power and authority. A later account, thought to have been written around 489 describes 

the existence of a pagan temple still functioning in Menouthis, suggesting that the Christian 

shrine had not been able to oust the old religion by that date. 

Building on this we may look at some other further aspects of Coptic pilgrimage. In Egypt 

tensions clearly existed between what may be characterised as more ‘popular’ practices, and 

the beliefs of the Church leaders. What is also evident here is that some shrines may be multireligious, 

attracting both Christians and Muslims. What is also very evident is the extent to 

which these ancient practices are still active, or have been revived, in modern times. One of the 

interests of the Coptic examples is (I think) that we have here such direct links with the modern 

world, and modern practices. 

A classic work on the topic, with a series of studies is:- Frankfurter, D. (ed.) 1998. Pilgrimage 

and holy space in late antique Egypt. Leiden: Brill. We provide you with one chapter from this 

collection (Davis 1998), looking at just one of these cults – of Saint Thecla. 

Christian occupations of the landscape & O’Connell 

Another, although sometimes connected aspect of the Christian presence in the Egyptian 

landscape may be found in the material remains of hermits and monks who, quite literally, came 

to inhabit many parts of older monumental landscapes, not least through their occupation of 

ancient cemeteries of Egypt. Such later occupations of these places was once treated as an 

annoyance by Egyptologists interested in the ‘original’ Pharaonic remains. One interesting 

development in more recent archaeology has been the recognition that these can of course be 

studied in their own right, and may also be interesting. 


This is also a valuable study in demonstrating how our modern perceptions of cemeteries may 

not translate very well into other historical contexts. Cemeteries may in fact not be a place 

reserved for the dead (remember this when we look at death and burial in future sections) 

but may house active communities of the living – including religious communities, and indeed 

became a tourist destination (something we mentioned in the last section). There is also a 

vivid reminder of how we need to think of the landscapes of medieval Egypt (for example) as 

always marked by pre-existing monuments – they were ‘a fact of life’ and ‘actively influenced 

generations of Egyptians for millennia’ (2007: 243.) 

Inside the Monasteries & Bolman, David and Pyke 

A further brief paper which you can access relates to recent archaeological work which 

has encountered one of these early Christian holy figures, in the form of the famous Abba 

Shenoute, of the White Monastery (see http://www.yale.edu/egyptology/ae_white.htm), who 

died in 465. The ancient monastery of Shenoute is one of the most important historical sites, 

both for scholars and for the Coptic Orthodox Church. It was founded c. AD 350 and its third 

leader was the great saint Shenoute, who led the monastic federation from AD 385 to 465. 

His miraculous life is recorded in an ancient biography written by his successor Besa. This brief 

paper gives an idea of the sort of site specific archaeological work which is being carried out 

today in Egypt, often in close cooperation with the modern Coptic communities, who see such 

archaeological work as important for maintaining and promoting their religion, in sometimes 

difficult times. 

St Catherine’s Monastery 

For another major pilgrimage site in the Egypt, you might look at the famous monastery 

of St. Catherine, located in the mountains of southern Sinai. 

Coleman, S. and Elsner, J. 1994. The Pilgrim’s Progress: Art, Architecture and Ritual 

Movement at Sinai, World Archaeology 26 (1): 73-89 – available online through the e-link 

Islamic Pilgrimage and Ziyara & Meri 

To provide some perspective on some of these Christian practices, we will also briefly look a 

bit more at Islamic practices and the possibilities of archaeological studies of pilgrimage, for 

example. That there might also be shared ground (and shared sacred sites) with Jews is also 

something worth thinking about a bit more. We have already encountered one article by 

Meri (Meri 2010) which considers some aspects of holy objects and holy places, a topic which 

he has explored at greater length in relation to shared Muslim and Jewish cults in Syria (Meri 

2002) and practices of ziyara, as it is known (pilgrimage to saints’ tombs). These may be seen 


in relation to other pilgrimage practices, especially the Hajj – pilgrimage to Mecca and the 

holy sites - which all Muslims were meant to aspire to do at least one in their life. It may be 

suggested that one reason for the flourishing of ziyara/pilgrimage sites among Muslims was 

because they fulfilled a spiritual need for those who could not perform the hajj due to such 

reasons as poverty, age, or illness. Unsurprisingly, some religious leaders (the ulama), among 

them Ibn al-Qayyim, condemned such practices, which they saw as too closely resembling the 

hajj, since many of the pilgrims were guilty of imitating its rites (this is interesting perhaps 

in the way that people create and adapt existing rituals, in new circumstances). However, 

none of the clerics, including the Hanbalis, disapproved of visiting the graves of pious people 

altogether, for the purpose of acquiring blessings. The debate revolved around which practices 

were allowed, those sites to which one could pay homage, and the extent to which the dead 

profited the living. 

Within Islam there are of course many different positions and traditions. The Shi`ite positions 

tend of course to attach much greater importance to “lesser pilgrimages,” as well as the 

imams’ intercessory function, which most Sunni clerics would have been reluctant to accept. 

Similar debates also existed with Jewish traditions. In early Judaism, the legitimacy of erecting 

tombs over the graves of saints was contested, with the Palestinian Talmud categorically 

stating: “One erects no grave monuments to the dead” (2002: 275). In the tenth century, the 

Karaite theologian Sahl b. Masliah rebuked what he considered to be the excessive practices 

accompanying shrine visitations: “… the [Jewish] umma was uprooted from the Homeland 

because they visit the graves, perfume them with incense, believe in spirits and request 

fulfillment of their needs from the dead and spend the night at the tomb”. On the whole, the 

conservative voices within both traditions were unable to thwart the ziyarah culture, which 

was part and parcel of medieval Islamic civilization, of which Judaism was a component (and 

in fact part and parcel of medieval civilisation, embracing many religions..). In a twist of irony, 

even Ibn Taymiyya who condemned such practices so vehemently could not resist becoming 

the posthumous object of the kind of saint veneration he had campaigned against. According 

to one account of his death (Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi’s account), devotees drank the excess water 

and divided the remaining lotus fruits with which his body was washed. 

What we also encounter are significant historical displays of what we might call today 

‘interfaith solidarity’ at the shrines of shared revered figures, most notably at the prophet 

Ezekiel’s tomb in Iraq (also known as Hizqil and Dhu al-Kifl). Although the gravesite was within 

the vicinity of a synagogue, it attracted both Muslim and Jewish pilgrims from far and wide 

seeking Ezekiel’s blessings. The shrine’s Jewish and Muslim servants, who were loved by the 

population, ensured that a lamp was always burning so that the tomb would “glow with 

the light of holiness” (2002: 232). Meri astutely observes that whereas the neighbourhoods 

tended to isolate religious communities, such shrines drew them together. 


If you find this theme interesting that we strongly recommend extra-curricular reading of 

William Dalrymple’s book From the Holy Mountain (1997), which records his travels amongst 

Christian communities in the Near East, who have coexisted with other religions for millennia, 

and often shared sacred sites. This world is also fast disappearing, and many of the last religious 

communities of eastern Christianity are closing down in the face of a world less receptive 

to tolerance and shared religious traditions (in this respect having a sense of history should 

warn us that much religious intolerance may be as much a modern invention and something 

supposedly ‘medieval’, despite what the media may often tell us..). 

As a final reading we provide you with the field-based chapter by Petersen (Petersen 1999), 

relating to shrines in parts of Palestine – still parts of living traditions. Another paper by Petersen 

(Petersen 1994) is available online, and looks at another aspect of pilgrimage archaeology – in 

relation to the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and the Hajj routes. One thing you may realise 

here is that while many of the sites Petersen studied were well-known, in some ways, in other 

ways remarkably little was known about the history of official infrastructure which was put in 

place to support Hajj pilgrimage. This study was in that respect quite ground-breaking. 

Making sacred landscapes today & Kraft 2010 

We can now just draw your attention to a few examples of sacred places and sacred landscapes 

in the contemporary era. You might like to read these papers, or sometime in the future. The 

main point here is simply to develop your awareness of the sort of literature that is out there, 

and the sorts of topics which people are writing about. Kraft (2010) deals with a particular 

mountain and its rise to sacredness. Plans of ski-slope development provoked debates about 

the mountain in local newspapers, as well as a report issued by the Sami Parliament. The report 

connected sacredness to Sami traditions in the past and to current laws on the protection of 

Sami cultural memories. Here then was a case of sacredness constructed outside the context 

of organized religions and ongoing religious traditions, as well as a case of using secular laws 

as the primary basis for definitions of sacredness. Through this process, love for the mountain 

appears to have grown deeper and more religious, both for the Sami as well as for other 

northern Norwegians. Neither more nor less authentic than those of the past, these concepts 

of sacredness belong to the late modern world of law culture, nature romanticism, and to 

pan-indigenous spirituality as a ‘‘religion’’ in the making. The Ranger paper (Ranger 1987) 

explores something of how traditional religions and World Religions may come together in an 

African context, while Brown (2004) provides a case-study in the Americas. Pointers to other 

case-studies can be found in the bibliography of this section, and bibliographies of articles you 

read. There should be plenty you can access in online journals. 


An exercise – engaging with data http://finds.org.uk/ 

You will find mentions of pilgrims tokens and pilgrim badges associated with many Christian 

pilgrimage sites. As a brief practical exercise, engaging with some of the real data that is out 

there, log in to the Portable Antiquities Scheme website. http://finds.org.uk/ 

Once there, just try a few searches to see what they have found which may link to ‘religion’. 

An obvious place to start will be to see what in the way of ‘pilgrim badges’ have been added 

to their database. Try a search. My recent search produced a small (but interesting and varied) 

group of 168 registered finds (many thousands of course are registered in museum collections). 

Some seem likely to relate to local English sites (e.g. St. Thomas of Canterbury) , but we do 

see examples relating to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, to the shrine of Our Lady of 

Rocamadour (near Toulouse, France), St Brigid of Kildare (Ireland), and others. Even with this 

small group of finds, is there any pattern in the distributions (or does it just reflect where metal 

detectors are active)? 

Figure 5.6 Screen shot of PAS search. This is well worth trying out. 

This section has looked at a range of different pilgrimage and pilgrimage-related examples, 

relating to a number of religions. As you will now be appreciating there is a mass of academic 

literature in existence on this topic, ranging across time and space. We could study this topic 

in so many different contexts and, as we have seen, sacred places and sacred places continue 

to have a resonance in the modern world and the world we live in today. New ones continue 

to be called into existence. 


References and Bibliography 

Anderson, W. 2004. An Archaeology of Late Antique Pilgrim Flasks, Anatolian Studies 54: 79-93. 

Baines, J. and Lacovara, P. 2002. Burial and the dead in ancient Egyptian society: Respect, 

formalism, neglect. Journal of Social Archaeology 2: 5-32. 

Bhardwaj, S. M. 1973. Hindu places of pilgrimage in India: a study in cultural geography, 

Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Bolman, E. S., David, S. J. and Pyke, G. 2010. Shenoute and a recently Discovered Tomb Chapel 

at the White Monastery, Journal of Early Christian Studies 18(3): 453-62. http://muse.jhu. 

edu/journals/journal_of_early_christian_studies/toc/earl.18.3.html 

Bremmer, J. N. 1994. Greek religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Coleman, S. and Elsner, J. 1994. The Pilgrim’s Progress: Art, Architecture and Ritual Movement 

at Sinai, World Archaeology 26 (1): 73-89 

Curran, J. 2000. Pagan City and Christian Capital, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Davis, S. J. 1998. Pilgrimage and the Cult of Saint Thecla in Late Antique Egypt. In Frankfurter, 

D. (ed.) Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt. Leiden: Brill, 303-339. 

Dijkstra, J. 2005. Religious Encounters on the Southern Egyptian frontier in Late Antiquity. 

Groningen. PhD thesis, available online http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/ 

theology/2005/j.h.f.dijkstra/thesis.pdf 

Donner, H. 1995. The Mosaic Map of Madaba: an introductory guide, Kampen: Kok Pharos. 

Elsner, J. and Rutherford, I. (eds) 2005. Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian 

Antiquity. Seeing the Gods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Foertmeyer, V. A. 1989. Tourism in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Princeton University. PhD. 

Fowden, G. 1978. Bishops and temples in the eastern Roman Empire A.D. 320-435, Journal of 

Theological Studies 29: 53-78. 

Frankfurter, D. 1994. Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt, Journal of Early 

Christian Studies 11(3): 339-385. 

Frankfurter, D. (ed.) 1998. Pilgrimage and holy space in late antique Egypt. Leiden: Brill. 

Frankfurter, D. 2000. Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance, Princeton 


Gwynn, D. M. and Bangert, S. (eds) 2010. Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity. Leiden: Brill. 

Hamilton, S. and Spicer, A. (eds) 2005. Defining the holy: sacred space in medieval and early 

modern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate. 


Hunt, E. D. 1984. Holy Land pilgrimage in the later Roman Empire AD 312-460, Oxford: 

Clarendon Press. 

IRCJS 1997. Sancta Hierosolymitana - Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period (324 C.E. - 638 C.E.). 

Available from http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/rennert/history_7.html 

Kaldellis, A. 2009. The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage inByzantine Athens, New 

York: Cambridge University Press. 

Kraft, S. E. 2010. The making of a sacred mountain. Meanings of nature and sacredness in 

Sápmi and northern Norway, Religion 40(1): 53-61. 

Lalonde, G. V. 2005. Pagan Cult to Christian Ritual: The Case of Agia Marina Theseiou, Greek, 

Roman, and Byzantine Studies 45 (1): 91–117. Available online; http://www.duke.edu/ 

web/classics/grbs/FTexts/45/Lalonde.pdf 

Maraval, P. 2002. The Earliest Phase of Christian Pilgrimage in the Near East (before the 7th 

Century), Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56: 63-74. 

Markus, R. A. 1990. The end of ancient Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Markus, R. 1994. How on Earth could Places become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy 

Places. Journal of Early Christian Studies 2: 258-71. 

Meinardus, O. 2002. Coptic saints and pilgrims, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. 

Meri, J. W. 2002. The cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria, Oxford: Oxford 


Meri, J. W. 2010. Relics of Piety and Power in Medieval Islam, Past & Present 206: 97-120. 

Morinis, E. A. 1984. Pilgrimage in the Hindu tradition : a case study of West Bengal. Oxford 

Oxford University Press. 

Ó Carragáin, T. 2003. The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland, 

Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 133: 130-176 (online Stable URL: 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25509112) 

Petersen, A. 1994. The archaeology of the Syrian and Iraqi Hajj routes, World Archaeology 

26(1): 47 – 56. 

Petersen, A.D. 1999. The Archaeology of Muslim Pilgrimage and Shrines in Palestine, In Insoll, 

T. (ed.) Case Studies in Archaeology & World Religion. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum, 

pp.116-127. 

Ranger, T. 1987. Taking Hold of the Land: Holy Places and Pilgrimage in Twentieth-Century 

Zimbabwe, Past and Present 117: 158-94. 


Sallnow, M. J. 1981. Communitas Reconsidered: The Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage. Man 

16(2): 163-182 

Sami, D. 2010. Changing beliefs: The Transition from Pagan to Christian Town in Late Antique 

Sicily, In Sami, D. and Speed, G. (eds) Debating Urbanism, Leicester: Leicester Archaeology 

Monograph, 213-37. 

Spencer, B. 1998. Pilgrim souvenirs and secular badges, London: HMSO. [also 2010 Boydell 

edition] 

Stopford, J. 1994. Some Approaches to the Archaeology of Christian Pilgrimage, World 

Archaeology 26/1: 57-72. 

Taylor, C. S. 1998. Saints, Ziyara, Qissa, and the Social Construction of Moral Imagination in Late 

Medieval Egypt. Studia Islamica 88: 103-120. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1595699 

Turner, V. and E. Turner 1978. Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture: anthropological 

perspectives, New York: Columbia University Press. 



SECTION 6 

Life, Death & Burial I 



Section 6 Life, Death & Burial I 

Core Readings 

 


Ucko, P. J. 1969. Ethnography and Archaeological Interpretation of Funerary 

Remains, World Archaeology 1(2): 262-280 (paper) 

 

Jones, R. 1987. Burial Customs of Rome and the Provinces, In Wacher, J. (ed.) The 

Roman World (Volume II), London: Routledge, 813-844. [a useful introductory 

overview] (paper) 

Sorensen, M. and Rebay, K. 2008. From substantial bodies to the substance of 

bodies: analysis of the transition from inhumation to cremation during the 

Middle Bronze Age in central Europe, In Boric, D. and Robb, J. (eds) Past Bodies, 

Oxford: Oxbow, 59-68. (paper) 

Armit, I. 2010. Porticos, pillars and severed heads: the display and curation of 

human remains in the southern French Iron Age, In Rebay-Salisbury, K., Sorensen, 

M. L. S. and Hughes, J. (eds) Body Parts and Bodies Whole, Oxford: Oxbow, 90- 

100. (paper) 

Jones, A. M. 2008. How the dead live: mortuary practices, memory and the 

ancestors in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. In Pollard, J. 

(ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Oxford: Blackwell, 177-201. (paper) 

Additional Readings 

 

Boylston, A., C., J. J. Knüsel, et al. 2000. Investigation of a Romano-British rural 

ritual in Bedford, England. Journal of Archaeological Sciences 27: 241-254. 

(access online) 

Brandt, S. A. 1988. Early Holocene mortuary practices and hunter-gatherer 

adaptations in southern Somalia, World Archaeology 20 (1): 40 – 56. (available 

online) 

Silverman, H. 2002. Introduction: The Space and Place of Death, Archeological 

Papers of the American Anthropological Association 11(1): 1-11. (available 

online ) 

 

Reece, R. (ed.) 1977. Burial in the Roman World, London: CBA. Available online: 

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/library/cba/rr22.cfm 

Sørensen, T. F. and Bille, M. 2008. Flames of transformation: the role of fire in 

cremation practices, World Archaeology 40 (2): 253 — 267. (available online) 


Introduction 

In the next two sections we are going to explore various aspects of mortuary archaeology, a 

significant part of archaeological research, of course, and one which is commonly linked in one 

way or another with religion and matters of belief. 

What we would like to do is examine a range of different approaches to issues of death and 

burial, and how archaeologists may approach them. In particular we would like to explore in a 

little more detail how we may engage with different aspects of mortuary practices in the past. 

What aspects of such practices may indeed relate to matters of religion or belief? How much 

may religion come into this at all? On the other hand, as it is often assumed that burials may be 

able to tell us about all sorts of different aspects of past societies, what are these? This provides 

a useful opportunity to think a bit more about the research potential of mortuary archaeology, 

and what we might expect to learn from it … In this first of the two sections we will explore 

some of the more theoretical as well as methodological issues raised in studying mortuary 

practices, as well providing some related case studies, with an emphasis on earlier material. 

The essential point of departure here is Parker Pearson’s book which provides a good 

introduction to a wide range of approaches to mortuary archaeology, as well as providing a 

good sense of some of the different ways in which mortuary archaeology may be approached. 

It has examples and case-studies relating to many different contexts, so there should be 

some studies of particular interest to all of you. You may encounter in your reading some 

very different theoretical perspectives, from the neo-positivist `processual’ archaeology to a 

diverse, postmodernist and `post-processual’ archaeology. Can the way people were buried 

tell us things about how they lived and who they were in life? What else may we learn from 

burial practices? 

Here, Parker Pearson usefully summarizes some of the key points about the processual approach 

to burial archaeology in Chapter 2 (2003: 27-31 especially) – so pay close attention to that and 

be sure to get the key points organised in your own mind – as they will commonly re-emerge, 

in various ways, in your more general readings. 

Such differences of course bring very different perceptions of graves as `mirrors of life’: funerary 

practices may now be seen (in Parker Pearson’s words) as creating an idealized representation of 

the deceased’s life; the material remains of funerals and burials may better perhaps be thought 

of ‘a hall of mirrors’ (i.e. we are unlikely to be able to make straightforward interpretations). 

The structure of the volume leads you though some key fields. It starts with methods and 

the use of analogies (chapters 1 and 2); then there is a chapter on bodies and the body 

(chapter 3), a topic we have already mentioned. He then goes on to some of archaeologists’ 

key interests, such as what burials may tell us about social status, gender, kinship, what burial 

locations may tell us, and about the origins and evolution of funerary rituals. Issues of the 


ethics and politics of mortuary archaeology – something we need to be aware of – are also 

explored. That people may get buried in different ways is of course reflected in a growing 

interest in when children start being treated in the same way as adults (do we find very 

young children buried in cemeteries?) – hence mortuary evidence may tell us something about 

how particular societies view categories such as ‘child’ ‘adult’. See for example: https:// 

openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/1887/13203/1/Babies+Reborn+17_Rossenberg.pdf 

Processual approaches – the desire to generalize Brandt 

An example of a more processual approach to mortuary data may be found in a 

study of a burial site in NE Africa, in Somalia (Brandt 1988). This is worth reading as 

an example of a particular approach, which we may (or not?) think very helpful. The 

excavations of a large rockshelter at Buur Heybe, in southern Somalia, discovered 

fourteen human burials of early Holocene age: these were (and are) unusual both 

in their location, and very early date. The burials represent: 1) the first primary 

context prehistoric skeletal remains from Somalia; 2) the earliest chronometrically 

dated burials from the Horn of Africa (Somalia/Ethiopia/ Djibouti); and 3) the earliest 

definitive evidence in eastern Africa for grave goods. 

As he says: “The mortuary data are examined in light of an ecological model of 

hunter/gatherer socio/territorial organization which predicts that when critical 

human resources are spatio/temporally unpredictable and scarce, hunter/gatherers 

are unlikely to bury their dead in formal burial areas or build grave monuments. 

Conversely, when resources are abundant and predictable across time and space, 

conditions will arise that favour the construction of grave monuments and/or formal 

burial areas, possibly as a means of ritualizing corporate lineal descent.” 

So here we have the site being interpreted in relation to one of the primary issues 

concerning why and in what circumstances people start burying their dead in formal 

disposal areas/cemeteries, basically addressing the Saxe Hypothesis 8 issue discussed 

in Parker Pearson (2003: 136-138). As he says: ‘to reduce the significance of ancestors 

and tombs to a function of subsistence management is to relegate human aspiration 

and motivation to wondering where the next meal is coming from’. 

Two other general texts [Jones (1987) and Jones (2008)] provide some further general 

information on Roman, and prehistoric British burial archaeology. There is huge amount of 

data on individual sites as well as more synthetic studies of particular regions of periods which 

you can access online. A notable recent publication is that of some rich barrow cemeteries close 

to Stonehenge, which included some spectacular finds (Needham et al 2010). This is worth a 

look at. See also: Shennan, S. 1975. The social organisation at Branc, Antiquity 49: 279-288. [an 

important early paper for European prehistory – showing another approach to more recent 

papers] 


Some basic questions & Ucko 1969 

Perhaps one of the most influential papers of the last 50 years – which is still essential reading 

today - was this one written by Peter Ucko (Ucko 1969). This challenged many of the more 

commonly held assumptions archaeologists were making about mortuary archaeology. It also 

presented good reasons for having an awareness of ethnographic literature from around the 

world, not least “to widen the horizons of the interpreter”. The important point here being to 

move beyond our common-sense assumptions and realise how complex the realities of social 

worlds may be, across time and space. 

Selected ethnographic cases for example expose the dangers of equating burial methods with 

a belief in an afterlife, for example, or of assuming that when burial methods change there 

must be a concomitant change in religious belief (Ucko 1969: 263-264); something we will 

discuss at greater length. Also, he finds no direct relationship between the quantity of grave 

goods and a belief in the afterlife, nor necessarily need the quantity of goods reflect the 

status (in-life) of the dead. How would we in fact assess how ‘rich’ a burial is? (In comparison 

to what, one might ask?). Above all, following the point made by Goody (Goody 1959), few 

ethnographically-known societies are characterised by a single form of burial – ‘one society 

will undertake several different forms of burial..’. 

This paper needs careful reading and we would suggest some extensive note-taking, 

working through the points he is making. There is a lot of reading to do, so we will 

keep the rest of this section focussed on a few case studies, which further explore 

some interesting topics. 

Roman burials – from generalities to specifics & Jones 1987, 

& Boylston et al 2000 

The general overview provided by the Jones (1987) chapter should provide some basic 

groundwork, and includes a range of information that you might be expected to have, from 

which to develop more detailed discussions about the nature, and variety of Roman mortuary 

practice(s). One aspect of the material discussed there relates to the placing of cemeteries, and 

their relation to towns, for example, which is important to note, with a range of examples in 

various countries. But in a world where most people still lived in the countryside, we also need 

to reflect in the nature or rural burial practices, and what they may tell us about the nature 

of societies they relate to. The issue of different burial types (cremations and inhumations) is 

raised – something we will be talking about in more detail below. 

We do not aspire to make you experts in Roman burial in this module, although you may want 

to develop interests in this field. The edited book by Reece (1977) – available online – remains 

a useful study with more interesting material, if a little dated in parts (but still important to 


ead). However, the second paper by Boylston et al (2000) introduces you to just one example 

of a single small cemetery, and some of the issues it throws up. In this case a curious pattern 

of decapitated bodies, and other apparently unusual burial arrangements is discussed, within 

a more general detailed analysis of this one site. Does this reflect violence, or does it relate to 

an pre-existing (Iron Age) custom, for example? An interesting view on this Iron Age concern 

for ‘heads’ is offered by another recent paper by Armit (2010), while offering a critical view 

on one popular myth relating to a Celtic ‘head-cult’. 

Religion and the Body? Cremation vs inhumation & Sorensen 

and Rebay http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/lrp/bronze.html 

One point Ucko draws our attention to is the revival of cremation in nineteenth century 

Britain, when cremation was made a legally approved means of body disposal (1969: 274). This 

provides an interesting topic for closer examination, with potentially wider implications for 

how we think about burial practices more generally. 

Having begun as a novel, and controversial practice, within a 100 years a substantial proportion 

of the British population is being cremated. This was very much the result of a secular movement. 

A leading figure in this movement was Sir Henry Thompson, whose campaign began with a 

paper entitled The Treatment of the Body after Death, (in The Contemporary Review, January 

1874). His main reason for promoting cremation was that “it was becoming a necessary sanitary 

precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in 

relation to the area it occupied”. Following a period of campaigning and legal manoeuvring, 

the first legal and official cremation was carried-out in 1885. In 1902 an Act of Parliament for 

the Regulation of burning of human remains, and to enable burial authorities to established 

crematoria, effectively saw cremation becoming an established, and regulated practice. 

Reading around the literature generated by the campaign for modern cremation may suggest 

a number of more general issues with wider significance in relation to archaeologically 

encountered cases. We may come to recognize that practices of cremation (when seen as an 

appropriate way of disposing of a body) have interesting distributions across time and space. 

We might also associate such practices with some parts of the world (e.g. India, S E Asia), while 

cremation seems to be almost entirely absent across most of Africa. 

To explore this issue a bit further, we provide another reading (Sorensen and Rebay 2008) 

which explores some issues surrounding cremation practices in prehistoric Europe. This relates 

to some of the wider issues we face in that the appearance of cremation practices in the 

Middle Bronze Age has long been seen to raise major questions as to whether this should 

be seen as a reflection of religious changes. Here be sure to get clear in your own mind the 

wider context of the ‘Urnfield Culture’ phenomenon, and how it fits into larger patterns 


of European prehistory (e.g. Fokkens 1997). The core of this phenomenon is the spread of 

cremation (represented by cremation urns ⇒ ‘urnfield’) across large parts of Europe c.1300- 

800BC. How can this change in practice be interpreted? The interest of this paper then lies is 

its making explicit the extent to which religious change may (or may not) be of significance 

here, and to try to discuss it in a more explicit way. 

Change in burial practices should perhaps be of particular interest (and we will come back 

to issues of change in more direct way later in the module). Burial practices tend to follow long 

standing traditions, and practices. Things are done in a particular way (even if we cannot 

exactly explain why they are done in that way). So when we encounter change, these are 

interesting contexts for this is where new and what may be seen as ‘deviant’ practices have to 

be justified, explained and generally ‘worked out’, and ultimately normalised. A change from 

inhumation to cremation would seem to be one of those arenas where new understandings of 

‘how things can be done’ developed. 

Understanding the nature of bodies when dead, and what to do with them, is a challenge 

which all societies have to face. Both cremation and inhumation would seem to be practical 

responses to the issue of dealing with dead people, but with radically different approaches. 

Inhumation burial is concerned with preserving the integrity of the body, while cremation 

involves transformation – turning it into something else. An extreme case of preservation 

would of course be a burial form which involves mummification of the body, to literally 

preserve the form of the body, while many burial traditions, to varying degrees are concerned 

with maintaining the integrity of the body. For example, in Islamic tradition, the idea of 

archaeologists excavating a body would be unacceptable. More commonly we find practices 

which could be interpreted as seeking to protect the body in certain ways: constructing a 

sealed burial chamber perhaps, or simply placing some structures (bricks/stones?) around the 

head of a body to stop this part being crushed when the grave is infilled. That such attitudes 

relate to more general beliefs about the body would seem to be an idea to be investigated 

further. We will now look at a couple of more archaeological contexts to draw out a few more 

salient points we might like to consider, and then return to the Bronze Age again. 

Modern traditions of Cremation 

Returning to the nineteenth century revival of cremation, we can further elaborate on some 

of the debates taking place at that time. Do we know when cremation stopped being a 

recognised and acceptable form of Christian burial practice? One key moment is perhaps in 

the early medieval period when Charlemagne prohibited cremation as part of his ongoing 

campaign against pagan practices – in 798. It was represented as being contrary to Christian 

belief in a Judgement Day and the Resurrection – being represented [then] as a crucial part of 

the Christian belief system (similar attitudes are shared by Muslims). 


But, the huge variation in modern practice (some figures suggest as many as 70% of people 

are cremated in Scandinavia and Britain today, while the practice was only legalised in Greece 

in 2008), suggest there is more to this than just ‘beliefs’ about the resurrection of the body 

and an afterlife. If we turn to customary practices within central Europe, some rather different 

possibilities suggest themselves. To what extent may we have culturally-specific ideas about 

an appropriate way to treat a body? One common practice, especially in urban areas, was 

that graves were not treated as permanent depositories for the body. Graves were leased 

(for some decades), after which the bodies were exhumed and deposited in charnel houses. 

When redeposited they were commonly not treated as individuals but the bones could be 

arranged and sorted by types. If you have not encountered such charnel houses, the ubiquitous 

Google search will illuminate you more – the charnel house now below St Stephen’s cathedral 

in Vienna is a well-known case. When the charnel house and eight cemeteries around the 

cathedral were closed in 1735 (due to an outbreak of bubonic plague), the bones within them 

were moved to the catacombs below the church. Subsequent burials directly in the catacombs 

occurred until 1783, when a new law forbade most burials within the city (the ‘health’ issue, 

again). The remains of over 11,000 persons are in the catacombs. 

Similar charnel houses are in fact not uncommon. One aspect of such practices is in fact the 

creation of a new ‘community of the dead’, dissolving notions of the individual, while also 

reminding people of their own mortality. There is a famous ossuary at Hallstatt in Austria 

where about 2000 skulls are kept having been exhumed. These are painted with ornaments 

by the families of the deceased – although sometimes including a name and date of the dead 

individual, so there retaining some sense of the individual person. 

They are in fact encountered in British contexts, if this has rather slipped from our consciousness. 

If you look at the detail of many medieval cathedrals you will find there was once a charnel 

house attached (e.g. Norwich). A well-known fourteenth century example was found at No.1 

Bishops Square (beside the Old Spitalfields Market) during development works in 1999, and is 

now on display on the site. Part of one was found in Leicester during excavations on the site 

of the (lost) St Peter’s Church. In fact, they were widespread features of medieval Christendom, 

so this would seem to suggest that the integrity of the body is in fact not an essential part 

of Christian belief about the dead body, and what is a proper way to deal with it. That it 

might have become more of a concern in NW Europe may perhaps be linked with specific 

understandings of Protestant Christian beliefs. 

In Vienna, for example, it would seem that attitudes to the bodily remains of the dead were 

rather different. The emphasis of funerary rituals was not on the body, but on the elaboration 

of the funeral itself (i.e. as social events). Even before the introduction of cremation, bodily 

integrity was much less a concern to the public – whatever official Catholic doctrine may have 

been. In fact, the debate about whether cremation should be allowed in Vienna developed 


along far more political lines, with the deeply conservative Catholic leadership trying to block 

such an innovation, while progressive and socialist movements favouring cremation, as part of 

more general anticlerical attitudes. Ultimately the choice of burial form was linked to ‘beliefs’ 

but beliefs entangled in much wider political beliefs. The choice of a burial practice became an 

expression of political opinion. 

Cremation in the Classical World 

Moving on to another major field of research, we can look at some points about burial 

practices in the classical world. Here it is worth remembering that in the seventeenth and 

eighteenth centuries when Enlightenment thinking began to develop new ideas about burial 

(and cremation) knowledge of the classical world provided some inspiration for new ideas (as 

ever a reminder of why we may be studying the past – to remind us how it has shaped our 

modern ideas). 

The Greek and Roman worlds also had cycles of changing practices, moving between cremation 

and inhumation as the dominant funerary rite – although both were in fact practiced 

simultaneously (in itself an important point to remember). In the most ancient texts (such as 

the stories of Homer), cremation appears as the primary practice in the Odyssey and Iliad. At 

Troy, heroic figures such as Patroclus, Hector and Achilles have great funerals focussed on their 

cremation pyres. The Homeric poems suggest that the cremation of the body freed the souls to 

enter Hades, and it has been suggested that cremation was the best way of releasing the souls 

from this world. Proper funeral rites were also seen as necessary. Improper treatment (e.g. 

lack of burial) could anger the dead, while also brought pollution and danger to the living (a 

not uncommon belief we find in many ethnographic cases). But beliefs about Hades and the 

afterlife were also clearly varied, and changing (Richardson 1985). Hades might be a sad place, 

but some believed that some mortals could be rewarded there. Some could become heroes or 

immortals, or ancestors (see, for example, Whitley 1988, 1994) – all of whom could influence 

the lives of the living. There are indications of ideas about reincarnation – in Herodotus, for 

example. 

If the ideas and beliefs appear variable, this may perhaps be contrasted with an emphasis 

placed on the ‘correct’ respectful funerary practice. But practices clearly changed. In Athens, 

cremation seems to have declined in popularity c.400BC. Why was this? Was there a ‘cheaper 

option’, for example? Analyses have not been able to demonstrate clear patterns here. It has 

been suggested that fifth and fourth century BC cremations tended to have more pottery, 

but less metal than inhumations (Morris 1992: 116). But these were clearly complex patterns. 

There seem to have been cycles of elite fashions – the elite finding new ways of doing things 

– which might then be imitated by people of lower rank, which in turn might encourage the 

elites to find new ways of doing things. 


In northern Italy the earliest Iron Age population (known as the Villanovans) are clearly 

linked to Urnfield traditions with the same use of cremations, if with their own local styles (a 

Google search for images of ‘cremation urns’ will show some extraordinary vessels used to hold 

cremated bodies in different parts of Europe – try this). By the end of the eight century BC, 

inhumation is also being practiced – with no obvious reason why the distinction is being made. 

Etruscan burial culture follows in this tradition, if with more elaborate tombs. The decoration 

of richer tombs shows all sorts of activities (feasting, athletic exercises, dancing, music) which 

have been interpreted in terms of an afterlife, or as scenes of honourable activities celebrating 

the dead. By the fourth century BC, other scenes of death and horror also appear, perhaps 

hinting at a change in how the afterlife was imagined. 

Developing out of this Italian tradition, Roman ideas appear similarly varied, although the idea 

of an immortal soul seems to have been generally accepted. Funerary rites seem to be linked 

to ideas that the spirits of the dead were linked to the graves, and could interfere in the world 

of the living. This seems to be related to practices of making offerings at the graves (gifts of 

flowers, meals, lighting lamps) at various times during the year. Inhumation was reputed (by 

authors such as Cicero and Pliny) to be an older form of practice, but cremation was probably 

most common – from stories of individual notables, the choice of which seems to have reflected 

family traditions – in turn linked to the status and wealth (and social aspirations) of families. 

Slaves and the very poor could be buried in mass/common burials it would seem. To leave 

a body unburied was a major offence and bad for the soul of the departed. If no body was 

available, a cenotaph could be created where the soul could dwell. 

A curious meeting place between cremation and inhumation was marked by the practice of os 

resectum (literally ‘cut bone’) in which a small part of the body, usually a finger joint, was kept 

back from the cremation and buried separately. This seems to be recognisable archaeologically 

in finds of small inscribed pots containing fragments of bone found at San Cesareo, on the 

Appian Way (Graham 2009). The purpose of this practice is not explained however. 


Figure 6.1 Roman burial monuments can take many forms, finding new and often 

extraordinary innovatory forms, especially in the Imperial age. At the Porta Ostiensis, 

for example, the city walls butt onto the Augustan pyramid tomb of C. Cestius, making 

it part of Rome’s new defences. It may be noted that the significance and meanings 

of such monuments can change over time, as memory recedes. By the Middle Ages this 

tombs was reputed to be the tomb of the mythical figure of Remus. 

Cremation however was not a universal in the Roman Empire – only mainly in the West (where 

it had existed before the Romans arrived). In eastern parts, inhumation was more dominant – 

what the writer Petronius would call a ‘Greek custom’. A major change developed from around 

the second century AD when inhumation became the dominant burial form throughout the 

Empire. The speed of the change suggests that class and geography played a part in its spread. 

Rich families appear to lead the fashion, gradually spreading to lower classes and into remoter 

areas. No connection has yet been convincingly made with changing beliefs influencing this 

shift. Overall, the differences between inhumation and cremation do not seem to have been 

considered of great significance. On the other hand, there are patterns in the data which 

clearly must relate to social changes, across time and space. If no more than ‘fashion’, there is 

clearly a vast amount of data in existence which can be explored in such terms. 

Back to the Bronze Age 

Looking at the Bronze Age evidence a bit more, we return to a period in which we have no 

written sources to give us even a glimpse of the possible relationship between burial practices 

and beliefs. From the examples we have looked at above, there are clearly no simple and single 

causes which we can identify as causing such shifts in the form of burial rites. We should then 

not necessarily expect them to exist in other prehistoric contexts. But what we can do is look 


at how such changes unfold and what people did in such circumstances of change – how did 

they make the changes? 

As Rebay has suggested, one way is to focus on attitudes to the body, and how they may be 

changing, or not. In the mid- to late Bronze Age cremations are replacing inhumations over 

much of Europe. This is also the period where we first encounter large cemeteries, of hundreds 

or even thousands of burials (are there more people, or are more people being ‘buried’, one 

might wonder?). On the other hand fewer objects are being buried with the remains of the 

cremated bodies. As the Sorensen and Rebay article argues, the transformation of the body 

into other substances does seem likely to indicate a significant (radical?) shift in beliefs about 

what constituted the body. By contrast most earlier interest in such changes have focussed on 

(1) whether the appearance of cremation was linked with movements of people (migrations), 

bringing new cultural practices, or (2) that this reflected new ‘religious’ beliefs, perhaps in 

relation to new ideas about the ‘soul’. In the second case this emphasis on the ‘soul’ may 

perhaps be traced in turn to ideas current in the nineteenth century about how cremation 

could be used to ‘liberate the soul’ from the body. 

But if we look at the actual data, there are interesting things we can see. We can see periods 

of transition, for example, when burial practices are in flux, during which cremations and 

inhumations are in fact being treated in very similar ways. Cremations can be put in graves dug 

in the same way as graves which would hold a whole body – and a similar set of pottery may be 

placed at the feet of the body, or at the end of the space where the scattered cremation was 

deposited. It looks as if it may take a few generations before in fact the practices change from 

inhumation, focussed on the whole body, to a treatment of a fragmented and transformed 

body, contained in a cremation urn. The transitions also seem to take different forms in 

different regions. 

The range of activities that take place after cremation also suggest that the cremation itself 

– burning the body – is not the final stage of the process. The physical remains of the body 

also seem to continue to be a focus of interest (in contrast to other known cremation practices 

– amongst Hindus in India - for example). The high degree of variability, and what we might 

think of as ‘experimentation’ suggests that ‘beliefs’ affecting this transformation were not 

fixed (although as we saw at the start of the module – in non-literate societies, the scope for 

defining fixed correct practices must have surely been quite limited). During the transitional 

period much attention is given to making the body whole again (or seem to be whole). They 

can be laid out like or body, or given a three-dimensional form in an urn. Here we see the 

pottery vessels replacing coffins or grave substructures as the actual container for the body 

remains. By this stage the burials practices have changed significantly, and indeed the urns 

may take on bodily attributes in their form and decorations. 


Post-funeral engagement with the bodies can also be seen to take on different forms. This may 

perhaps be seen in two stages – the first when the body is still perceived in some way relating 

to the living body, and latterly when the physical remains have become irrelevant. By this stage 

it become possible to disturb the burial, perhaps remove objects (or ‘rob’ the bodies, as we like 

to say). In some examples we certainly find evidence which suggests that continued access to 

the burial was necessary and we find examples, for example, of deposits of pottery and food 

remains, suggesting meals or liquids (libations?) were deposited on the cremated bones. 

Overall, the practices which may be encountered in Bronze Age Europe suggest many ways 

of transforming the body. However, even by the late Bronze Age when the urn burials may 

become quite simple and unelaborated affairs, what is clear is that the bodies have not become 

irrelevant and meaningless. The ‘respectful’ treatment afforded to the physical remains 

would seem to make this clear. Looking at the different examples we can see that no easy 

generalisations can be made in terms of the beliefs and practices relating to a change between 

inhumation and cremation, or vice versa. The treatment of the body and the performance 

of appropriate rituals builds on existing customary practices – practices people were familiar 

with. What we can probably see in the prehistoric evidence is how people are then gradually 

shifting their ideas, as ideas of how the cremated remains relate to the body gradually shift. 

It would certainly seem that it depends on the context as to whether we need to see a shift to 

cremation as a radical change, or not. 

In more recent contexts, the re-introduction of cremation became interlinked with political 

statements – associated with progress and modernity, and challenging the traditional doctrines 

(and political standpoints) of the Roman Catholic Church. In the Greek and Roman worlds (Iron 

Age societies remember – which just happen to have been literate), burial rites seem to have 

been mainly family-oriented, if subject to changing fashions. Appropriate behaviours however 

seem to be reconcilable with either inhumation or cremation – the difference does not seem 

to be that great. In Bronze Age central Europe, we might suggest that the idea of a material 

body with physical needs survived the introduction of cremation – and cremated remains were 

initially treated in similar ways to inhumations. Over time, practices were adjusted, ultimately 

perhaps producing new and rather different understandings of the body after death. 

What seems clear is that – looking at different cases – there is no single explanation for what 

cremation ‘means’ in itself. As such we cannot use analogies with other societies which use 

cremation to access such meanings (just because cremation ‘means’ something to Hindus who 

cremate bodies… there is no reason that it might means something similar in another historical 

context). On the other hand we can detect interesting points about changes in practices, and 

possible implications for understandings of the body, as part of funerary concerns. We can 

revisit some of these issues in two more readings – which provide more examples of how 


esearchers have approached the issue of cremation. These deserve a critical reading not least 

to recognise what assumptions the authors are bringing to their study, and to what extent 

these seem valid. 

Is the process of cremation itself meaningful? 

Williams, H. 2004. Death warmed up: the agency of bodies and bones in early Anglo-Saxon 

cremation rites. Journal of Material Culture 9(3): 263–91. 

Sørensen, T. F. and Bille, M. 2008. Flames of transformation: the role of fire in cremation 

practices, World Archaeology 40 (2): 253 — 267. 

You might want to follow up (now or later) some of these issues in these two papers, which 

can both be accessed online. The Williams paper (Williams 2004), if sometimes a little difficult 

to read, but raises some interesting questions about practices of cremation in another context, 

Anglo-Saxon England. Here again, one important focus is the bodies themselves, and how 

their remains are being perceived. While some of it may seem (to my mind at least) rather 

fanciful, some interesting points emerge about cremation in this context, an innovation in 

Britain, but ‘conservative’ in looking back to practices then current in northern Germany. [But 

here of course we can be sure that some measure of migration is in fact going on – and is 

responsible for the appearance of new forms of burial in post-Roman Britain – which could 

not be assumed in relation to the prehistoric Urnfield phenomenon]. There is now a huge, 

and often sophisticated literature concerning Anglo-Saxon burial archaeology in Britain, so 

this just opens up a few different ways of thinking about it. The bibliography will point you 

towards other related material. 

The Sørensen and Bille paper looks in a bit more depth at some of the more fundamental 

aspects of cremation of the human body in mortuary practices in Early Bronze Age (c.1300– 

1100 BC) as well as modern Denmark. In the examples they look at, they suggest that the 

burning of the dead body was and is by no means culturally, emotionally or experientially 

insignificant. This further means that we need to understand the workings of fire in cremation 

as more than those of simple destruction through pyrotechnology (it is just not a matter of 

body disposal). While the practice of cremation does indeed entail destruction, it is also more 

than destruction of the body, which leads them to think about what it is about fire and the 

flames which may be significant - to discuss critically the materiality of flames, what processes 

of transformation may be about, and what their consequences may be. 


Figure 6.2 The city walls of Rome butt onto the Augustan pyramid tomb of C. Cestius. 

(Photo Pauline Caroll) 

‘Grave robbing’ 

The very common occurrence of disturbed burials encountered by archaeologists – who would 

like to find undisturbed intact burials – has generated a common language of ‘grave-robbing’ 

and ‘tomb-robbing’, which remains an almost ubiquitous feature of archaeological reports. It is 

probably not unfair to say that archaeologists very commonly express their annoyance at how 

other people (non-archaeologists) have disturbed ‘their’ burials. Using terms like ‘robbing’ 

also makes it reasonably clear that such activities may be counted as morally wrong. 

In fact, what seems reasonably clear, both from ethnographic and archaeological examples is 

that the notion of ‘grave-robbing’ is rather less clear cut than we might imagine. As is made 

clear from examples mentioned in Parker Pearson’s book, it is not unusual to encounter burial 

traditions in which graves are reopened, bodies are moved around, transformed (parts may be 

removed), and reburied. This is normal practice. This has also been suggested in relation to 

prehistoric burials in Europe. 

We may also encounter practices where people share graves – where tombs are repeatedly 

opened and new burials are added. This may involve the disturbance of burials already in 

the grave, commonly with bodies (bones) being moved to one side, to allow a new burial 

to be inserted. Careful excavation can sometimes show that this may have happened several 

times, with the earlier burials becoming increasingly disturbed and fragmented over time. 

One interesting feature of such communal burials is of course that we might suspect that they 

are ‘family’ graves of some sort. As such, what might sometimes be seen as ‘robbing’ may in 


fact have been a ‘normal’ practice, perhaps involving one’s own relatives. What we may also 

see is that objects are being added to, and removed from the burials, in various ways. Again, 

sometimes perhaps by participants in the funerals. In studies of Nubian ‘Meroitic’ cemeteries 

(of the Roman period), most graves in most cemeteries were found to have been disturbed. 

But one consistent feature we encounter is that the relatively few undisturbed graves have a 

feature in common: they tend not to have any significant artefacts in them. The plundering is 

often very targeted – with specific parts of the body being disturbed. 

What may we deduce from this? :- “Plundering must have taken place soon after the burials, 

when the tomb equipment was still known to the living, i.e. contemporary to the actual use 

of the cemetery. …. Plundering was not only noticed, but practiced by the local community 

itself. In the light of this observation, the notion of plundering as a social crime (launched by 

offended archaeologists) needs to be reconsidered…” (Naser 1999: 24). 

The point being that the people who later disturbed the burials knew what was in them (and 

knew which ones did not need to be reopened- because there was nothing worth removing). 

Conclusion 

There is a huge amount of archaeological literature out there dealing with minutiae (siteby-site, 

grave-by-grave), as well as larger issues about burial practices and mortuary cultures 

around the world. If you find this interesting you need to be increasing your own familiarity 

with the literature in fields where you have an interest. Try and find time to identify and read 

some of the key synthetic/general studies, as well as examples of specific cemetery studies. 

It should be possible to find materials for most areas in e-journals and similarly accessible 

resources. The more detailed studies also provide good examples of the level of detailed 

analysis required in this work, and the kind of literature you need to be reading at this level. 

That you will be engaging more and more with the original research literature – commonly in 

journals, as well as monographs, is of course important at this level of study. 

What we also want you to do is be able to look at new and unfamiliar archaeological case 

studies in a critical way. There are clearly many interesting ways we can approach mortuary 

archaeology. But how satisfying are the more processual approaches – to you? Can you explain 

why? Once we get beyond defining ‘richer’ and ‘poorer’ burials, what else might we be 

learning from mortuary archaeology about how people think about life, and death? 

To what extent may we identify belief systems in such practices? Beliefs about what? As we 

have seen when looking at the literature on cremation – it would seem that beliefs about 

the body may be one area worth further exploration, potentially providing rather different 

(and interesting) perspectives on the past. We may certainly get a sense of how very different 

people may have been from us! 



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King, J. M. 2004. Grave-Goods as Gifts in Early Saxon Burials (ca. AD 450-600), Journal of Social 

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Laneri, N. 2007. Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient 

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University Press, 187-210. 



SECTION 7 





Core Readings 

 


Lucy, S. and Reynolds, A. 2002. Burial in early medieval England and Wales, In 

S. Lucy and A. Reynolds (eds) Burial in Early Medieval England, London: Maney, 

1-23. (paper) 

 

Cherryson, A. 2010. ‘Such a resting place as is necessary to us in God’s sight and 

fitting in the eyes of the world’: Saxon Southampton and the development of 

Churchyard Burial, In Buckberry, J. and Cherryson, A. (eds) Burial in Later Anglo- 

Saxon England c.650-1100 AD, Oxford: Oxbow, 54-72. (paper) 

Petts, D. 2009. Variation in the British burial rite: AD400-700, In Sayer, D. and 

Williams, W. (eds). Mortuary practices and social identities in the Middle Ages: 

essays in burial archaeology in honour of Heinrich Härke, Exeter: University of 

Exeter Press, 207-221. (paper) 

Saul, N. 2009. English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages, Oxford: Oxford 

University Press. (Chapter 2. ‘Commemoration in Early Medieval England’, pp. 

13-35). (paper) 


Williams, H. 2005. Keeping the dead at arms’ length, Journal of Social 


 

Semple, S. 1998. A fear of the past: the place of the prehistoric burial mound in the 

ideology of middle and later Saxon England, World Archaeology 30 (1):109-126. 

Mytum, H. 2006. Popular attitudes to memory, the body, and social identity: 

the rise of external commemoration in Britain, Ireland and New England, Post- 

Medieval Archaeology 40 (1): 96-110. 

Klass, D. and R. Goss 1999. Spiritual Bonds to the Dead in Cross-Cultural and 

Historical Perspective: Comparative Religion and Modern Grief. Death Studies 

23: 547-67. 


Introduction 

In this second section concerned with mortuary archaeology we will continue to explore this 

theme with an emphasis on more recent periods, while looking in a bit more depth at some 

much-discussed issues relating to Christianity (and other World Religions) and their impact on 

the mortuary practices in Late Antiquity and the medieval world. There is also much scope for 

exploring the archaeology of mortuary practices within more recent periods, within the remit 

of Historical Archaeology. Again, it is hoped that the wide range of material we will look at will 

provide useful material for all our students however their particular interests are developing 

at this stage in the BA programme. The core textbook by Parker Pearson will probably need 

further reading, and revisiting along with the new readings in this section. 

Roman and late antique burial practices 

So, as a point of departure, what can we generalize about burial practices in the Roman world? 

Is there something distinctive about ‘Roman burial’. As your readings in the last section will 

have begun to suggest, one thing is clear: that we cannot make meaningful generalisations 

across this huge Empire. Burial practices were as varied and complex as the Empire as a whole. 

As was clear to scholars several generations ago, there was a considerable variety to be found 

within the lands which came to be part of the Roman Empire, bedded in older regional 

traditions. There were many ways of ‘being Roman’ (and dying as a ‘Roman’). If you have not 

done so already, here it might be worth looking at an old study of the 1930s (Nock 1932 – 

available online) which provides a largely historical overview, identifying some of the trends 

then apparent, to add to your reading of the chapter by Jones (Jones 1990), which provides an 

introduction to the archaeology of Roman burial, and something of its variety. 

As we have seen, during the last centuries BC, both cremation and inhumation burial was found 

in the Italian heartlands. By the first century AD, cremation seems to have been most common, 

but subsequently became rarer and rarer. The writer Macrobius (a ‘pagan’, writing at the end 

of the fourth century in the time of the emperors Honorius and Arcadius) recorded that by 

his day, cremation was no longer practised. The growth in inhumation burial was matched by 

developments such as the building of (often elaborate) stone sarcophagi – something quite 

familiar from the Roman world. 


Figure 7.1 Part of an elaborately carved Roman sarcophagus, in Pisa. The design reflects 

Bacchic myths relating to Orpheus. Bacchus/Dionysos was associated with the hope of a 

better afterlife; thus many sarcophagi show the god and his followers. Such sculpted stone 

sarcophagi became common in the 200s A.D. and became symbols of wealth and status. Since 

certain themes were commonly employed for sarcophagi, they were often bought readymade 

and then adapted with the addition of a portrait of the deceased. It is not hard to find 

more examples in museums around the Roman world –for an example in the British Museum 

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/m/arcophagus_ba 

cchic_scene.aspx. this was made for a child, and is again of third century date. 

As is made clear in your readings, one interesting features of Roman practice (and law) was 

that the dead had to be disposed of outside settlements: “the dead shall be neither buried or 

burnt in the city” (as reported by Cicero). This seems to have been respected throughout the 

Empire, producing a characteristic landscape around towns, where the main roads leading 

out/in towns were lined with cemeteries. As such the Romans were like many peoples who 

maintained a distinction (and a distance?) between the living and the dead. As we will see, 

however, this if of course not universally true. 

In the western provinces, Gaul, Germany and Britain, we also find the traditions of cremation 

also being replaced over time. In the East, both traditions seem to have survived side-by-side. 

Cremation appears in some places – notably Egypt – as an alien custom associated with Greeks 

(there being a large Greek population there). Here the contrast with indigenous traditions of 

preserving the body – through mummification practices in the case of higher-status burials - 

are very obvious. 


One fascinating feature of Greek and Roman Egypt is the development of very elaborate 

painted representations of the dead (Riggs 2002, 2005 – for a useful review of Riggs 2005 - see 

here http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007- ‐06-‐37.html), which seem to have allowed quite 

subtle representations of specific aspects of their identity, as part of their commemoration. 

These papers also give a good idea of the capacity for adapting and modifying burial traditions 

to accommodate a range of cultural influences – particularly in the way in which Hellenism 

encountered more ‘traditional’ Egyptian traditions, and the meeting of two very different 

artistic traditions. We would recommend you read at least the review. 

Figure 7.2 Egyptian mummy portrait from the Fayum region – displaying an obvious concern 

to depict an individual person. If you are unfamiliar with these painted coffins that we 

recommend you look some quick (online?) research to get a sense of these remarkable 

paintings. Try the British Musuem: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/ 

highlight_objects/aes/m/mummy_case_and_portrait_of_art.aspx 


Christianizing burial 

Gauging how ‘Christian’ burials may be remains problematic – and needs more than 

common sense (‘theory’, again…)…. We tend to assume that the Christian ‘norm’ is a 

simple east-west oriented inhumation, without additional artefacts. But how true is 

this? What was the situation as the process of Christianisation was still taking place? 

What was being expressed when people buried other people? What importance 

should we place of the presence of objects which display obvious Christian symbolism? 

Various indicators may be highlighted. Where were people buried? How were graves 

oriented? Were objects (‘grave-goods’) included with burials? What did they signify? 

Did they have anything to do with religious beliefs? 

This issue is discussed, in relation to changing burials in SW Germany, by Schulke 

(1999), a paper which you may have encountered in your studies previously. There is 

clearly much scope for exploring such ideas in different parts of Europe (and beyond) 

where complex religious situations may be encountered. As in northern Italy, we 

may encounter different forms of Christianity, coexisting with pagans. Lombard 

kings and the elite might be buried in and around churches, but their status was still 

being proclaimed by the prized possessions and other goods buried with them – this 

continued until the late 7 th century. In some regions we may have active campaigns 

of religious conversion underway, linked with the development of new political units 

(early medieval kingdoms). How much may such changes be visible in mortuary 

culture, and in what ways? 

If you have not previously read this paper then you should now – and we recommend 

careful note-taking with this paper as it raises many key issues with a much wider 

relevance in early medieval archaeology. 

Schulke, A. 1999. On Christianization and Grave Finds, European Journal of 

Archaeology 2/1:77-106. available online through e-link. 

Early medieval burial in the Christian World 

We will now look in a little more detail at aspects of burial practices in the early medieval period, 

not least in relation to the appearance of ‘Christian’ forms of burial, and the disappearance of 

existing burial forms, commonly considered ‘pagan=non-Christian’. The reading noted above 

(Schulke 1999) raises several important issues, many of which should be familiar from your 

previous studies. In particular, it suggests we need to be very careful when making simply 

distinctions between Christian and pagan, especially when considering what the significance 

may be of artefacts deposited in burials. Are they gifts, possessions, or something else? It is a 

question quite often posed in Parker Pearsons book. The chapter by Lucy & Reynolds (Lucy 


and Reynolds 2002) identifies many of key issues of more recent discussions of this interesting 

field of research. We would recommend this gets a careful reading and note-taking – with 

an emphasis on identifying key issues, problems and uncertainties, which you may later come 

across in your wider reading relating to specific contexts, specific sites etc. 

In earlier modules we identified some of the major issues which have occupied (and continue 

to occupy) those studying Anglo-Saxon England. The actual chronology of the immigration 

into England? When did Anglo-Saxon settlement begin? For how long it did continue, and 

at what stage may it be considered complete (with the establishment of stable or at least 

relatively stable Anglo-Saxon kingdoms?). Ethnic origins and composition also remain key 

issues, if it is clear that Bede’s description of the homelands of the different groups grossly 

simplifies far more complex processes at work. As Lucy and Reynolds point out, the ‘Germanic’ 

links/origins of Anglo-Saxon burial practice has long been of interest (2002:1). What was 

the scale of immigration (or was it invasion?) – how many Anglo-Saxons arrived, and what 

happened to the indigenous population? This latter topic has taken on a new lease of life in 

relation to DNA studies (or the promise of DNA studies – see below). Gender issues also need 

to be considered. Do we, for example, envisage a ‘complete’ Anglo-Saxon population arriving 

(men and women?) or a considerable degree of local inter-marriage, between predominantly 

immigrant men, and local women? This of course raises issues of much wider relevance to 

other periods of greater mobility (migration). 

Recent research into Icelandic DNA has here produced some interesting results. ‘The data 

suggest that 20%–25% of Icelandic founding males had Gaelic ancestry, with the remainder 

having Norse ancestry. The closer relationship with the Scandinavian Y-chromosome pool is 

supported by the results of analyses of genetic distances and lineage sharing. These findings 

contrast with results based on mtDNA data, which indicate closer matrilineal links with 

populations of the British Isles. This supports the model, put forward by some historians, that 

the majority of females in the Icelandic founding population had Gaelic ancestry, whereas the 

majority of males had Scandinavian ancestry (Helgason et al. 2000). 


Figure 7.3 The contrasting distribution patterns of Anglo-Saxon inhumation and 

cremation burials. (based on Lucy 2000) 

Two further readings which you have available will also look in more detail at specific topics 

commonly encountered in this period. In the first one Williams (Williams 2005) looks at 

one particular feature of early medieval burial in England, the incidence of weapons in burials 

of the fifth-sixth centuries, and their different usage in relation to cremation and inhumation 

burials. Looking at the presence of swords (and other artefacts) in burials, he raises a number 

of issues about the real significance of such objects in burials, and what they may have ‘meant’ 

[although you may at times think his discussion becomes rather speculative]. It also provides a 

useful more general discussion of the weaponry in burials of this period. [Be sure to have read 

Harke 1990 on ‘Warrior Graves’]. The discussion also takes us back to some of those interesting 

questions about what cremation ‘does’. 

As Williams began his paper, this focus on objects in burials provides an alternative to approaches 

which have looked at funerary monuments and their place in the landscape, which refers 

you to Richard Bradleys book on that topic (Bradley 1998). As an interesting example of this 

approach we direct you to read the paper by Sarah Semple (Semple 1998). Using a range 

of different types of evidence, she raises many interesting points about the possible significance 

of tumuli/barrow/burial mounds, in the Anglo-Saxon landscape – again making the point how 

landscape issues may be well worth considering. That the written sources relating to Anglo- 

Saxon burials tend to come from the Christian period also raises interesting questions about 

how ideas had changed. In the earlier Anglo-Saxon period, prehistoric barrows may have been 

perceived as the home of spirits/ancestors and as a focus for (pagan) religious activity. Once 

the Anglo-Saxon’s were becoming Christians, they may have changed, becoming increasingly 


to be feared and avoided: ‘the demonization of the barrow’ (Semple 1998: 121). An extension 

of this discussion can be found in a more recent paper (Semple 2007) in the journal Early 

Medieval Europe, which you can access online. 

Churches and Churchyards & Cherryson 2010 

This next core reading looks at another major change in burial practice taking place in the 

early medieval period, the shift from ’field cemetery’ to churchyard burial – the sort of burial 

most of us take for granted as establishing the ‘typical’ medieval form of burial – which 

survives into modern times (even if few of us today are likely to be buried in a traditional 

churchyard). As Cherryson says this shift perhaps ‘represents the Church’s greatest impact 

on funerary behaviours during the Anglo-Saxon period’. When did this shift take place, and 

under what circumstances? While it seems likely that early clergy and perhaps some of the 

early Christian elites were buried in and around early churches, but when did the practice of 

burial in churchyards develop? There is, for example, little indication that the seventh-century 

Church was particularly concerned where people were buried – and in the early years of the 

spread of Christianity, the Church clearly would not have been in a position to determine 

such practices anyway. That traditional cemeteries already existed in which people’s relatives 

(‘ancestors?’) was a force to be reckoned with. How such cemeteries, perhaps used for many 

generations came to be abandoned, is in itself a change of some significance, and interest. 

This chapter looks at the evidence for one town (Southampton) in the context of southern 

England (Hampshire). 

This chapter also illustrates the scale of work required to bring together existing data 

and research regarding the mortuary archaeology of even one early medieval town. It is 

worth spending a few moments looking through the (extensive!) References at the end of 

the chapter, to get a sense of the research involved in such a study as this. The process of 

writing a BA Dissertation marks a first step towards such a study. 

For another discussion of this process (Zadora-Rio 2003), which you can access online. That this 

of course represents a particular English development must of course be borne in mind, and it 

is important to consider how such practices develop in other regions, in Europe and beyond. 

The familiar churchyard burial is not universally ‘normal’, even within western Europe. Even 

within England, there was clearly significant regional variation (e.g. Hadley 2002), complicated 

by the possibility of non-Christian practices surviving rather later in some areas. It may also 

be possible to see some active reaction against the increasing role of the Church in mortuary 

practice. We might suggest that churches tended to be associated with only limited groups of 

the elites – those who built them and those who got to be buried beside them. They found new 

ways to display their status, not in ‘grave-goods’, but in their association with churches, their 

position within churchyards, built tombs, grave markers, or indeed more elaborate coffins. 


This idea is discussed in an interesting paper by Van de Noort (1993) looking at the early 

medieval use of burial mounds (barrows), in various parts of western Europe. He suggests 

that “burial mounds primarily expressed opposition to the new Christian ideology of the 

Frankish empire …. The top-ranking elite was drawn in this ideology, as expressed in the 

widespread use of church graves throughout the empire, but local elites were left outside the 

inner circle” (1993: 72). This paper (available online) is worth reading. In England such burial 

forms may persist in areas such as the Derbyshire Peaks, Yorkshire Wolds and Cumbria. It could 

be suggested that these ‘represented a perfectly acceptable; Christian aristocratic alternative 

to churchyard burials’ (Hadley 2002: 211). It may not have been until the tenth century that 

burial near a church was expected or demanded. Interestingly this is the same period when we 

start getting evidence for the consecration of churchyards, and legal constraints on ‘wrongdoers’ 

of various kinds being forbidden Christian burial. 

Church burials and monuments etc & Saul 2009 

A further angle of Christian burial that we need to consider concerns the varied physical ways of 

commemorating individuals – in commemorative monuments. The chapter by Saul provides an 

excellent overview of the main strands of development of Christian funerary commemoration 

in England (we must of course accept that other histories will be found in different countries). 

This identifies key changes as practices moved away from the earlier Anglo-Saxon traditions 

of ‘field cemeteries’, generally away from human habitation, in which display was largely 

expressed by the burial of goods below ground – not by the erection of monuments above 

ground. But from the later seventh century, one key element of the shift towards churchyard 

burials is the increasingly provision of funerary monuments. Taking many forms, these seem 

to have included wooden grave markers for the less well-off, but a range of stone crosses, 

grave slabs and ‘name stones’ for those who could command the services of stone-masons 

and carvers. A full reading of this chapter should provide a basis for further work in this area, 

which remains a specialist field in its own right, attracting art historian, archaeologists and 

many others. 

Mortuary monuments and burial grounds are also a popular field of research in later periods 

(e.g. Mytum 2004, 2006). Within the domain of Historical Archaeology there is clearly great 

scope to investigate the fast expanding access to grave monuments in a world of increasing 

material consumption. In the journal article by Mytum (2006) – available online – he presents 

an interesting comparative study of memorials from burial grounds in Britain, Ireland and 

New England which revealed a widespread pattern of change in monument style and content, 

and exponential growth in the number of permanent memorials from the eighteenth century 

onwards. Although manifested in regionally distinctive styles (where most research tends to 

focus) he suggests that the expansion also reflects global changes in social relationships and 

concepts of memory and the body – issues we have encountered before. 


From Variability to ‘Deviant burial’ 

To remind us that even in Anglo-Saxon England, not everyone was necessarily ‘Anglo-Saxon’, 

the chapter by Petts (Petts 2009) provides a useful introduction to some of the wider 

complexity of burial practices which are encountered in the early medieval period, even in this 

small island. The ‘British’ areas, largely in the west, also show considerable variability, despite 

more stereotypical representations (as unfurnished burials with an east-west alignment). That 

these are also generally thought to be Christian areas (to be contrasted with the early Anglo- 

Saxon ‘pagan’ burial traditions found in the east is also of course of interest. His chapter draws 

attention to many now familiar themes. The existence of funerary monuments, still using 

Latin, reminds us of the Roman heritage (although we also find texts using Irish ogham script, 

presumably indicating some Irish settlers). 

Formal ‘managed’ (as they are sometime called) cemeteries also show rather more variability 

than previously thought. The spatial organisation of cemeteries in places suggest important 

foci, perhaps indications of the presence of local elites still influencing the ‘mortuary landscapes’ 

of some areas. He also draws attention to the issue of grave goods, and their absence, and 

whether this may be linked directly with the presence of Christianity. There are certainly 

objects being found in cemeteries, most perhaps probably reflecting personal belongings and 

dress accessories? But on the basis of your wider reading, do you think perhaps we need to be 

more careful about the different sorts of objects which may find their way into graves (how 

significant are odd bits of personal jewellery buried with their owner, for example?). 

As an afterword, it may be useful to draw attention to a related field of research also 

concerned with complexity, which has been becoming more visible in recent years, concerning 

what is often called ‘deviant burial’. While we commonly focus and stress the most common 

behaviour, and norms of practice, the fast increasing amount of data at our disposal is also 

making clear that there is much ‘abnormal’ behaviour out there, in the form of ‘deviant’ 

burial. These may take various forms and represent a range of different things perhaps (social 

outcasts, ‘different’ people, criminals, young children, slaves ..), people who are found to be 

treated in death differently from the social ‘norms’. 

A recent edited volume (Murphy 2008) provides a range of case-studies of ‘non-normative’ 

burial practices from the Neolithic through to Post-Medieval periods and includes case studies 

from some ten countries. While we do not have time to investigate this topic in much detail, it 

might be worth reading this review by Morgana McCabe, to get a sense of where this approach 

is leading, and some of the new insights that may be derived from such work. One of the 

chapters (Weiss-Krejci 2008) can be accessed online here: http://homepage.univie.ac.at/estella. 

weiss- ‐krejci/devbur.pdf while the issue of Irish cemetries (cillini) devoted to young unbaptised 


children and other strangers, variously defined, can be found in another paper available online 

by Donnelly et al. (Donnelly, S., Donnelly, C., Murphy,E. and Donnell, C. 1999). 

Morgana McCabe , a review of Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, Edited 

by Eileen Murphy,Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008. (ISBN 9781842173381). 244pp. The 

Kelvingrove Review Issue 4) http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_134275_en.pdf 

A more specific study by Andrew Reynolds (Reynolds 2009) has explored Anglo-Saxon deviant 

burial customs. Beginning in the post-Roman period and ending in the century following the 

Norman Conquest, his book surveys a period of fundamental social change, which of course 

includes the conversion to Christianity, the emergence of the political structures and the late 

Saxon state, and the development of the landscape we know from the Domesday Book. As he 

shows, while there is an impressive body of written evidence for the period (for example, in the 

form of charters and law-codes), archaeology is well-placed to provide different perspectives, 

especially for earlier periods (the fifth to seventh centuries) when documents are lacking. For 

later centuries, archaeological can provide a different perspective on, for example, the realities 

of capital punishment and the status of social outcasts. Note that the landscape setting of 

execution sites was also raised in the Semple paper (Semple 1998: 113). 

Reynolds argues, for example, that outcast burials show a clear pattern of development over 

time. In the pre-Christian centuries, ‘deviant’ burials do occur, but are found only in community 

cemeteries. However, with the growth of kingship and the consolidation of territories during 

the seventh century a new social/political world develops in which we see the emergence of 

capital punishment and places of execution in the English landscape. Locally determined rites, 

such as crossroads burial, now existed alongside more formal execution cemeteries. Gallows 

were located on major boundaries, often next to highways, always in highly visible places. The 

archaeology may here be important in providing evidence for new forms of organized judicial 

behaviour within the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (when we lack documentary records), 

and not just in the two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest. 


Deviant burials – an example. An Anglo-Saxon Execution Cemetery at 

Walkington Wold Yorkshire (Buckberry and Hadley 2007) 

As an example of a ‘deviant’ site, this paper presents a re-evaluation of a cemetery at 

Walkington Wold in east Yorkshire. The cemetery is characterized by careless burial on 

diverse alignments, and by the fact that most of the skeletons did not have associated 

heads (crania). In the 20 years or so since the site was excavated the cemetery has 

been interpreted in a number of ways: the result of an early post-Roman massacre, 

as evidence for a ‘Celtic’ head cult (of the kind we have already encountered) or 

as an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery. In order to resolve the matter, radiocarbon 

dates were acquired and a re-examination of the skeletal remains was undertaken, 

confirming that this was indeed an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery perhaps used as 

such over several generations, the only known example from northern England. The 

case study is interesting due to the complexity of the site, with many phases of use 

(originally two Bronze Age barrows), and provides a good example of the problems 

encountered in interpreting what is found. In this case, being able to clarify the date 

of the burials (with radiocarbon dates) was really essential. Overall, the age and 

sex data for Walkington Wold show that the executed individuals (the ‘population’) 

consisted entirely of young to middle adult males (18 to 45 years). 

Buckberry, J. and Hadley, D. M. 2007. An Anglo-Saxon Execution Cemetery at 

Walkington Wold, Yorkshire. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26(3): 309-329. (available 

through e-link) 

Beyond Christendom 

To provide some perspective on the Christian world with which most of us are probably more 

familiar, some brief comments on the Islamic world may be useful, and appropriate. In Insoll 

(2001), the chapter by Insoll provides an introduction to practices of Islamic burial (2001: 

129-31). We know comparatively little about the burial practices and customs in the early 

Muslim world, in contrast to the cultures of the contemporary Near East and Egypt. The topic 

has also received little scholarly attention – lacking traditions of grave goods which might 

have attracted early archaeologists, and strong cultural prohibitions about the disturbance/ 

excavation of individuals believed to have been Muslims. Recent studies by Halevi (Halevi 2004, 

2007) remain rare, reliant heavily on textual sources in addition to material culture. What 

makes an Islamic burial? Or what makes a burial Islamic ? – is a question to start with. The 

journal article (Halevi 2004) is accessible online and raises many interesting points, not least in 

relation to grave monuments and gravestones. It may also suggest interesting comparisons (or 

contrasts) with what is happening in the Christian world. 


One of the interesting features which can be discussed more generally is the treatment of 

ritual, and, most importantly, the place of death in the cultural transformations of the early 

Islamic world. These can be seen in the textual sources relating to Islamic law, and the study of 

Prophetic traditions (‘ilm al-hadith) as they pertained to the treatment of death in early Muslim 

societies, primarily in the urban spaces of Arabia, Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. Here 

again, a focus on the body may be useful, in showing how these discourses sought to “Islamize 

the body”, through manufacturing a standard idiom for the ways in which Muslims should 

bury, mourn, and conceptualize their dead. This set of practices would of course distinguish 

Muslims from the practices of non-Muslims (Ewing 2008). 

What is also clear is that while such processes developed among the more intellectual groups, 

there was also clearly a long-standing tension with everyday practice. The static nature of these 

opinions may be contrasted with more dynamic practices of the rest of society, as revealed in 

a material record of elaborate tombs, shrouds, tombstones, and funeral biers, public display 

of wailing recorded in textual sources, the purchase of funerary goods, or to descriptions of 

elaborate funeral processions, all ‘against’ what was commonly seen as ‘correct’ practice by 

religious scholars and authorities, and reflected in our own readiness to categorize deviations 

in practice from the discursive norm as “non-Islamic” (p. 196). In the past this might be seen 

as the divide between a presumed ‘correct’ orthodox Islam and a range of popular, heterodox 

“islams”, although we should perhaps challenge this today (as we saw in Talal Asad’s work, did 

we not?). With regard to tombstones, even if this practice was foreign to the Medina of the 

time of the prophet Muhammed, it may well have come to been an essential element of the 

spread of Islam in adjoining regions where Islam was to take root in the following centuries, 

building on existing local traditions of using tombstones. This provides a good example of the 

very real tensions between so-called ‘orthodox’ beliefs and ‘practice’. 

Continuing bonds to the dead ? 

& Klass and Goss 

To round off this section, we might suggest spending a little time looking at a rather different 

perspective on death and the dead, which seems likely to attract more archaeological attention 

in coming years. Most fundamentally, we might want to think a bit more about what so much 

mortuary behaviour may be about, maintaining (or breaking?) links between the living and 

the dead. The paper by Klass and Goss (1999) introduces this field of research in an accessible 

way, with an interesting comparative study looking a Western and Japanese traditions. 

As they point out, maintaining ‘continuing bonds’ to the dead play important roles in many 

of the world’s religious traditions, and clearly in earlier periods. Further, continuing bonds are 

intertwined in complex ways with other religious dynamics. They suggest that two broad types 

of dead remain available for interactions with the living : ‘ancestors’ and the ‘sacred dead’. 

They also suggest that differences between ancestors and the sacred dead is one of degree, 


not kind – and there may be a flow between the two categories. However, they suggest that 

Ancestor bonds are symmetrical in that they are characterized by mutual obligations between 

the living and the dead and by equal power to help or hurt. Bonds between the living and 

the sacred dead are asymmetrical in that there is nothing the living can do for the dead, 

although the dead have power to help the living. Their discussion perhaps throws some light 

on questions we have raised earlier about ‘ancestors’, and the ‘dead’, and will hopefully prove 

thought-provoking, not least for the explanations of how ‘ancestorhood’ works in a different 

culture. It may also suggest interesting connections with modern life and modern experiences, 

if nothing else reminding us that such studies are not entirely abstract and removed from real 

lives. Read on … 

Conclusions 

We have covered a range of issues in this section, some we have encountered before and 

some perhaps slightly new. In trying to draw together the different strands here, once you 

have completed the basics readings, it may be useful to try and look for applications in areas 

in which you may have specific interests. Can you identify traditions of grave monuments and 

commemoration? Did these change over time? Do the locations of cemeteries change over 

time. Can you identify other examples of ‘deviant’ burials, in contexts not discussed in this 

section? Can we find indications of what sort of people may be being marked out for special 

treatment? Can you find other contexts in which burial practices are changing and developing 

in response to encounters with existing traditions (for example in some colonial contexts?). 

Can you identify other contexts in which overtly ‘warrior’ burials are appearing, and then 

disappearing. What explanations are offered for this? A close reading of a report on a specific 

site, or group of sites, may prove worthwhile. We would certainly like you to be engaging 

with the more detailed literature as much as possible, and this may prove rewarding. The 

bibliography for this section (and your readings) should provide useful pointers. 

Bibliography and References 

Bashford, L. and Sibun, L. 2007. Excavations at the Quaker Burial Ground, Kingston-upon- 

Thames, London, Post-Medieval Archaeology 41 (1): 100-154. 

Buckberry, J. and Hadley, D. M. 2007. An Anglo-Saxon Execution Cemetery at Walkington Wold 

Yorkshire. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26(3): 309-329. 

Buckberry, J. and Cherryson, A. (eds) 2010. Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England c.650-1100 AD, 

Oxford: Oxbow. 

Cherryson, A. 2010. ‘Such a resting place as is necessary to us in God’s sight and fitting in the 

eyes of the world’: Saxon Southampton and the development of Churchyard Burial, In 

Buckberry, J. and Cherryson, A. (eds) Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England c.650-1100 AD, 

Oxford: Oxbow, 54-72. 


Donnelly, S., Donnelly, C., Murphy,E. and Donnell, C. 1999. The Forgotten Dead: The cilliní and 

Disused Burial Grounds of Ballintoy, County Antrim, Ulster Journal of Archaeology 58: 

109-113. (e-link) 

Ewing, K. P. 2008. Review of Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting 

Subject by Sherry B. Ortner. American Anthropologist, 110: 392–393.Geake, H. 2002. 

Persistent problems in seventh-century burial, In S. Lucy and A. Reynolds (eds) Burial in 

Early Medieval England, London: Maney, 144-55. 

Gilchrist, R. 2008. Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials, 

Medieval Archaeology 52: 119-159. 

Halevi, L. 2004. The Paradox of Islamization: Tombstone Inscriptions, Qur’anic Recitations, and 

the problem of religious change. History of Religions 44(2): 120–52. 

Halevi, L. 2007. Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society. New York: 

Columbia University Press. 

Härke, H. 1990. “Warrior Graves”? The Background of the Anglo-Saxon Weapon Burial Rite. 

Past & Present 126: 22-43. 

Helgason, A., Sigurðardóttir, S., Gulcher, J. R., Ward, R. and Stefánsson, K. 2000. mtDNA and 

the origin of the Icelanders: deciphering signals of recent population history, American 

Journal of Human Genetics 66: 999–1016. (available online) 

Holbrook, N. and Thomas, A. 2005. An Early-medieval Monastic Cemetery at Llandough, 

Glamorgan: Excavations in 1994, Medieval Archaeology 49: 1-92. 

Kahila, G. 1992. Identification of Infanticide in Archaeological Sites: A Case Study from the Late 

Roman-Early Byzantine Periods at Ashkelon, Israel, Journal of Archaeological Science 19: 

667-675 

Karkov, C. E., Wickham-Crowley K. M and Young, B. K. (eds) 1999. Spaces of the living and the 

dead : an archaeological dialogue, Oxford: Oxbow. 

King, J. M. 2004. Grave-Goods as Gifts in Early Saxon Burials (ca. AD 450-600), Journal of Social 


Leone, A. 2006. Changing Urban Landscapes: Burials in North African Cities from the Late 

Antique to Byzantine periods. In D. Stone & L. Stirling (eds) Mortuary Landscape in North 

Africa. Toronto: Toronto University Press 

Lucy, S. 2000. The Anglo-Saxon way of death: burial rites in early England, Stroud: Sutton. 

Lucy, S. and Reynolds, A. (eds) 2002. Burial in Early Medieval England, London: Maney. 

MacDonald, D. H. 2001. Grief and Burial in the American Southwest: The Role of Evolutionary 

Theory in the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains, American Antiquity 66(4): 704-714. 


Mattingly, D.J. 2004. Being Roman: expressing identity in a provincial setting. Journal of Roman 


Murphy, E. 2008. Deviant Burial in the Archaeological, Oxford: Oxbow Books. 

Mytum, H. 2004. Mortuary monuments and burial grounds of the historic period, London: 

Kluwer Academic/Plenum. 

Mytum, H. 2006. Popular attitudes to memory, the body, and social identity: the rise of external 

commemoration in Britain, Ireland and New England, Post-Medieval Archaeology 40 (1): 

96-110. 

Nock, A. D. 1932. Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire, Harvard Theological Review 

25(4): 321-359. 


Pearce, J., Millett, M. and M. Struck (eds) 2000. Burial, society and context in the Roman world, 

Oxford: Oxbow. 

Petts, D. 2009. Variation in the British burial rite: AD400-700, In Sayer, D. and Williams, W. (eds). 

Mortuary practices and social identities in the Middle Ages: essays in burial archaeology 

in honour of Heinrich Härke, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 207-221. 

Reece, R. (ed.) 1977. Burial in the Roman World, London: CBA. Available online: http://ads. 

ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/library/cba/rr22.cfm 

Reynolds, A. 2009. Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, Oxford: OUP. 

Riggs, C. 2002. Facing the Dead: Recent Research on the Funerary Art of Ptolemaic and Roman 

Egypt. American Journal of Archaeology 106 (1), 85-101. 

Riggs, C. 2005. The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion. 

Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Saul, N. 2009. English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Sayer, D. and Williams, W. 2009. Mortuary practices and social identities in the Middle Ages: essays 

in burial archaeology in honour of Heinrich Härke, Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 

Schulke, A. 1999. On Christianization and Grave Finds, European Journal of Archaeology 

2/1:77-106. 

Semple, S. 1998. A fear of the past: the place of the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology 

of middle and later Saxon England, World Archaeology 30 (1):109-126. 

Semple, S. 2007. Defining the OE Hearg: A preliminary archaeological and topographic 

examination of hearg place names and their hinterlands, Early Medieval Europe 15 (4): 

364-385. (e-link) 


Semple, S. and Williams, H. (eds) 2007. Early medieval mortuary practices, (Anglo-Saxon studies 

in archaeology and history 14), Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology. 

Van De Noort, R. 1993. The context of Early Medieval barrows in western Europe, Antiquity 

67: 66-73. 

Webster, J. 1997. A negotiated syncretism: readings on the development of Romano-Celtic 

religion. In Mattingly, D. J. (ed.) Dialogues in Roman Imperialism, Ann Arbor: JRA, 165-84. 

Weiss-Krejci, E. 2008. Unusual Life, Unusual Death and the Fate of the Corpse: A Case Study 

from Dynastic Europe, In Murphy, E. (ed.) Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, 


Williams, H. 1997. Ancient Landscapes and the dead: the reuse of prehistoric and Roman 

monuments as early Anglo-Saxon burial sites. Medieval Archaeology 41: 1-31. 

Williams, H. 1998. Monuments and the past in early Anglo-Saxon England, World Archaeology 

30 (1): 90-108. 

Williams, H. 2005. Keeping the dead at arms’ length, Journal of Social Archaeology 5(2): 253-275. 

Yasin, A. M. 2005. Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: from Roman Family to Christian 

Community, Art Bulletin 87(3): 433-57. 

Zadora-Rio, E. 2003. The Making of Churchyards and Parish Territories in the Early-Medieval 

Landscape of France and England in the 7th-12th Centuries: A Reconsideration, Medieval 




SECTION 8 

Archaeology and Religious Change I 



Archaeology and Religious change I 

Core readings 

 

Henig, M. 2007. Roman Religion and Roman Culture in Britain. In Todd, M. (ed.) 

Companion to Roman Britain, Malden: Blackwell, 220-241. (paper) 

Derks, T. 1997. The Transformation of Landscape and religious representation 

in Roman Gaul. Archaeological Dialogues 4: 126-47, 154-63. (adapted copies of 

some figures are provided on Bb) (paper) 

 

Blagg, T. 1986. Roman religious sites in the British landscape. Landscape History 

8: 15-25 (paper). 

Yasin, A. M. 2005. Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: from Roman 

Family to Christian Community, Art Bulletin 87(3): 433-57. (paper) 

Additional readings 

Webster, J. 1995. ‘Interpretatio’: Roman Word Power and the Celtic Gods, 

Britannia 26: 153-161. (available online through e-link) 

 

 

 

Webster, J. 1997b. Necessary comparisons: a post-colonial approach to religious 

syncretism in the Roman provinces. World Archaeology 28 (3): 324-338. (available 

online through e-link) 

Ferris, I. 2002. Romano-British Religious Sites in the West Midlands Region, 

http://www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/wmrrfa/seminar3/Iain_Ferris.doc 

Curran, J. 1996. Constantine and the Ancient Cults of Rome: The Legal Evidence, 

Greece & Rome 43 (1): 68-80. 

Fowden, G. 1978. Bishops and temples in the eastern Roman Empire A.D. 320- 

435. Journal of Theological Studies 29: 53-78. 

Thinking about Religious Change 

In the following sections we will shift the focus slightly to think more explicitly about religious 

change and perhaps how religions are changed. In so doing we will be addressing issues which 

of course have a wider relevance in archaeology – how and why do aspects of culture change? 

How do new cultures get formed? How careful do we need to be when using terms such as 

‘Christianisation’, or indeed ’Romanisation’? In the religious sphere the term ‘Christianisation’ 

has perhaps supplanted usages which would talk about ‘Conversion’. We may (as you will have 

already seen) discuss the Christianisation of the calendar, Christianisation of the landscape, the 

Christianisation of a region (Scandinavia, England, Nubia, Mexico ..), the Christianisation of 


marriage, or indeed the Christianisation of death. Conversion of course tends to be about faith 

and belief, it may be an event (‘the conversion of King Edbald..’), and ultimately a personal 

process. Christianisation (or Islamicisation etc..) is more concerned with forms and processes 

and religious change as a social phenomenon. We are interested in changes in the structures 

of social world: the family, the state, communities and social practice – just the sorts of areas 

we can study in an anthropological/sociological/archaeological way. 

However, there are a number of pitfalls we need to be wary of. In the first place, we encounter 

the idea of Christianisation which assumes that we in fact have a (ahistorical) standard of 

what Christianity actually is. In fact, of course we do not need to think about this for long 

to realise that our ideas of what Christianity is, and is about, are of course modern constructs. 

These are not the same as what they were in the sixteenth century, or the sixth century. What 

are ‘Christian’ practices are clearly open to debate, and have developed over time, in some 

cases over a very long time. And of course, as we know, there is no single definition or 

‘authentic’ model of correct practices of belief (if there was, there would not be so many 

varieties of Christianity represented by all the different ‘churches’, present and past). 

As expressed a few years ago: “part of the charm of the study of Christianity in the early Middle 

Ages and beyond are the different and at times bizarre experiments that have taken place in 

the creation of a Christian society”, going on to note that “these are most obvious at the 

edges of Christianity, often in missionary work, among the less educated and the marginalised, 

but not exclusively” (Kilbride 2000: 4). One of the key points being that we can find many 

strange variants of Christian practice, while we might also allow that ‘part of the point of 

being a Christian is that it is always possible to be a not very good one’ (Kilbride 2000: 6). 

Notwithstanding this strangeness (to us, at least), they perceived themselves as Christian, and 

we certainly need to be wary of suggesting that they were ‘not yet fully Christianised’, simply 

in imposing our particular ideas of what ‘being Christian’ required. But who are the arbiters 

of correct belief and practice (an issue we have encountered before)? One might suggest that 

is certainly not our business. Is it not rather more interesting to get an idea of the varied and 

different ways in which people became Christian and try and understood why things worked 

out like they did? This may even have some resonance today when Christianity is increasingly 

a religion of Africa and the Americas (certainly a long way away, in just about every way, from 

its eastern Mediterranean roots!). 

A further issue here is then to try and work out in our minds how religious change happens 

– the mechanisms behind it. Were kings, or missionaries, the real agents of conversion? How 

might this have worked in earlier periods, when we have suggested that preliterate societies 

might have had less of an emphasis on ‘beliefs’, as opposed to acceptable practices. In such cases 

why would people ‘care’ about individual religious beliefs? There is however much fascinating 


literature on ‘why’ religious conversion may happen, and how pre-existing cosmologies may 

be receptive to change, allowing that religion has real purpose as a means of making sense of 

the world (for an interesting paper on how anthropological research on African conversions 

might be useful in thinking about Christian conversion in medieval Europe, see Olson 1999 – 

available online). 

Religious encounters within Roman imperialism &iHenig 2007. 

We will begin to look at some questions relating to how religious change may be a part of 

imperial encounters. In our own modern world we perhaps commonly assume that religion 

must necessarily have been a significant factor in imperial encounters, perhaps mainly because 

of the close association of Christianity, and conversion to Christianity, with most European 

imperial and colonial ventures (e.g. in Africa and the Americas). 

As a first case we will explore a few aspects of the Roman world, religious change within 

Roman imperialism and the extent to which there may have been a religious dimension to 

Roman imperialism and Romanisation. More generally we may touch on some wider issues 

of what ‘being Roman’ was about, and the extent to which we can even talk about Roman 

culture – was it something that the Roman Empire brought with it, or was it something that 

was in fact created by the Roman Empire, and changed and developed as the Empire changed 

and developed? 

In the first instance, be sure to read the chapter by &Henig (Henig 2007) which introduces, in 

a rather descriptive way, a basic outline of Roman religion in it British provinces. When reading 

this, do so with an eye to picking out issues which may relate to change and development, and 

how religious practices of the Roman period related to what went before, and how much they 

developed out of them, or may have differed markedly from them. It is also important to pay 

attention to points of detail – about chronology, especially. In discussing such material you 

certainly want to be sure if changes you identify were, for example, introduced at the time of 

the Roman conquest, or in fact dated some centuries later. As we have already seen in relation 

to Roman burial practices, developments in Britain must in turn be contextualised in relation 

to wider cultural changes in the empire, whether in relation to burial rites or the provision of 

sarcophagi. A sense of wider context in turn allows us to appreciate how distinctive Romano- 

British practices may be within wider ‘Roman’ culture (and different from Gallo-Roman practice, 

for example). You will perhaps notice the emphasis placed by this writer on the Imperial cult, 

the military and the more ‘classical’ aspects of Roman practices. The peculiarly ‘British’ elements 

are perhaps less obvious. 


Figure 8.1 The God Sulis (?) at Bath 

While we may be used to ideas of forced conversion within colonial contexts, one interesting 

feature of Roman practice lies in the less confrontational interpretatio romana, or ‘Roman 

translation’, ‘the interpretation of alien deities and of the rites associated with them’ (Tacitus. 

Germania 43.4). Interpretatio romana denotes the identifying or pairing of one or more 

local gods with a Roman equivalent, probably the most famous example in Britain being the 

conflation of the British deity Sulis with the Roman Minerva at Bath. Such interpretatio is 

then manifest in specifically Roman cultural forms such as engraved writing and monumental 

Classical-style sculpture and architecture. 

Figure 8.2 Note that this syncretism was not just found in the western provinces – it is 

also encountered in the eastern Mediterranean where ancient local gods – even having 

had much longer traditions of monumental temple-, may take on new forms; here the 

temple of the ancient god Baal-Shamin at Palmyra, Syria, linked with Zeus, amongst 

other Greek and Roman gods. 


If, as Cicero suggests, the gods have different names in different countries, then there is 

no need to use Roman names for local deities who already have a name (Cicero: De natura 

deorum 1.83-4). The fact that many local gods could share a single Roman ‘equivalent’ (such 

as the case of Mars in Britain who has at least 16 local counterparts) shows the openness 

of interpretatio. Similarly a British god such as Cocidius could be paired with two different 

Roman deities (Mars and Silvanus) who in Roman religion were two different deities, not 

interchangeable versions of each other, suggesting a lack of precise definition of the identity 

of local gods. As Webster has argued (Webster 1995), interpretatio is not necessarily a mutual 

reconciliation of religious practice resulting in a consensual syncretism, but may also be seen 

in the context of an asymmetrical colonial act by a ruling power. This is evident in that it is 

most obviously performed by higher-status members of Romano-British society – amongst the 

indigenous elites or the military. In terms of power relations it may be argued that it was to 

the advantage of both these groups to promote Roman religious structures through such a 

syncretistic model. But opinions may differ…. 

The large Roman military presence in Britain (at its peak it represented more than 10% of the 

imperial army) was of course a major source and promoter of Roman religion, as evident in the 

Henig reading. This is very evident in the way that the majority of inscribed ‘Roman’ religious 

altars come from military sites, the military frontier districts (e.g. Hadrian’s Wall) especially. 

This in fact quite consistent with the more general distribution of inscriptions (including 

tombstones) in Britain which are also concentrated in a relatively limited, and commonly 

militarised areas (Biro 1975). When we look at occurrences of interpretatio in the epigraphic 

record there are some 85 known references to ‘Mars’ in Roman Britain, 36 of which are paired 

with a non-Roman deity. Classical-style imagery may have depicted a range of British deities. 

Sometimes the deities portrayed are explicitly identified with a Roman god (e.g. Jupiter, Mars, 

Mercury, Diana or Silvanus), others display instances of name-pairing interpretation. Careful 

examination of finds from individual sites will throw up plenty of examples: In the case of 19 

votive plaques from Baldock, while Minerva is represented iconographically, 13 of them give 

her the name of the British goddess, Senua. 

Preconquest Celtic religion was primarily aniconic [lacking representations/images of gods] 

so the fact that the first images of local deities appear in a Classical style accompanied by 

Roman names is a striking feature of iconographic interpretatio. Stone sculpture usually 

appears in the context of monumental temples, themselves a new form. The temple of Sulis 

Minerva at Bath is a good example of syncretistic iconographic interpretatio. Probably initially 

commissioned by the British (client) king Togidubnus - a Briton whose interests lay with the 

Romans - at Bath we see what might be termed religious imperialism, where its predominantly 

Classical-style temple overbuilds a sacred spring. The deity of the spring, Sulis, was equated 

through interpretatio with the Roman goddess Minerva. While the iconographic program of 


the temple combined Roman and British religious themes, its formal attributes certainly look 

very Roman including a Roman-style bronze cult statue of Minerva and courtyard altar. 

The temple attracted Roman-style cult officials (a sacerdos, who was a Roman citizen and a 

haruspex) and, as in the north-east, finds from the site indicate a predominance of quite high 

status dedicants, commonly invoking paired divinities, although we get the impression that 

the British deity was still present, albeit secondary to the Roman manifestation. At other sites 

it the local god becomes less visible, due to the domination of Roman iconography. At the 

well-known site of Uley (Woodward and Leach 1993), a Romano-Celtic style temple was built 

over an existing Iron Age ritual complex. While with less classical architecture, the cult statue 

of the deity was a Classical-style sculpture of the Roman Mercury. 

At this point it might be worth while spending a little time exploring the online texts of the 

journal Britannia – perhaps using the search facility to search for ‘religion’ or ‘temple’, which 

will throw out articles such as these [note that the King 2005 paper is an important review of 

current knowledge, and worth reading]. If you are likely to draw on this topic in an assignment 

then it would be important to make use of more case studies from individual sites, or from 

more discursive articles from amongst such papers:- 

– ‘Interpretatio’: Roman Word Power and the Celtic Gods Jane Webster Britannia, 

Vol. 26, (1995), pp. 153-161 

– A Romano-Celtic Temple at Ratham Mill, Funtington, West Sussex A Romano-Celtic 

Temple at Ratham Mill, Funtington, West Sussex Anthony King, Grahame Soffe 

Britannia, Vol. 14, (1983), pp. 264-266 

– Animal Remains from Temples in Roman Britain Animal Remains from Temples in 

Roman Britain Anthony King Britannia, Vol. 36, (2005), pp. 329-369 

– The God Silvanus Callirius and RIB 194, from Colchester The God Silvanus Callirius 

and RIB 194, from Colchester Andrew Breeze Britannia, Vol. 35, (2004), pp. 228-229 

– Votive Head from West Wight A Votive Head from West Wight Jean Bagnall Smith, 

Martin Henig, Kevin Trott Britannia, Vol. 34, (2003), pp. 265-268 

– The Claudian Invasion of Britain and the Cult of Victoria Britannica The Claudian 

Invasion of Britain and the Cult of Victoria Britannica Giles Standing Britannia, Vol. 

34, (2003), pp. 281-288 

– God in Man’s Image: Thoughts on the Genesis and Affiliations of Some Romano- 

British Cult-Imagery Miranda J. Green Britannia, Vol. 29, (1998), pp. 17-30 

– A Ceramic Cult Figure from Leicester Richard Pollard Britannia, Vol. 29, (1998), pp. 

353-6 

– Enclosed Ambulatories in Romano-Celtic Temples in Britain K. W. Muckelroy 

Britannia, Vol. 7, (1976), pp. 173-191 


Mars Condatis ‘God of the Confluence of Rivers’ in the Tyne-Tees region of 

North East England, and a ‘God of Water and Healing’ (known from inscriptions at 

Piercebridge, Bowes and Chester-le-Street). 

Mars Latrobius ‘ God of the Mountains and the Sky, and was worshipped in Austria 

- equated with both Mars and Jupiter. A dedication to Mars Lattobius has been found 

on the highest peak (2000m+) of Mt. Koralpe, Austria. 

Mars Lenumius known from a dedication to him found at the fort of Benwell on 

Hadrian’s Wall. 

Mars Belatucadrus known from five inscriptions found in the area of Hadrian’s Wall. 

Mars Braciaca known from an inscription found at Bakewell, Derbyshire. 

Mars Corotiacus known from an inscription on a bronze sculpture of a warrior 

riding a horse over a prostrate enemy found in Suffolk, England. 

Mars Mediocus was known from an inscription on a bronze panel found at 

Colchester, England. 

Mars Nabelcus was Mountain God who was worshipped in various mountain areas 

of Southern France. 

Mars Nodens also known as Nodens or Nudens, a God of healing found only in 

Britain. Dedications to Mars Nodens are known from at an important temple complex 

at Lydney, Gloucestershire, and another dedication found at Lancaster……… .. 

In conclusion, while it might seem that some sort of ‘religious imperialism’ was at work in 

Roman Britain, it needs to be explored within the context of the broader project of Roman 

imperialism. While manifesting to a certain extent as part of civic structure and imperial cult, 

Roman religious imperialism in Britain was more obvious when it was part of the translation 

process of epigraphic and iconographic interpretatio romana, where we see a tendency to 

privilege Roman deities over British. The evidence for interpretatio is also most abundant 

in higher-status forms such as Roman-style stone engraving, monumental sculpture and 

architecture indicate its utilization by those higher up on the social scale of Romano-British 

society, and/or in the military. This then perhaps tends therefore to reflect elite concerns. It is 

less clear, because of lack of evidence, how much those lower down on the social scale accepted 

(or engaged with) the Roman cultural package and hence what we might term Roman religion. 

There remain many many Romano-British shrines and temples where the ‘Roman’ presence 

is much slighter, perhaps reflected in some more monumental architectural forms and the 

presence of Romano-British material culture. 


At this stage you might like to reflect a bit more on what interpretatio Romana 

means, as a form of syncretic practice? How does it apply to religion in the region? 

Why did this mixture occur, and in what contexts? Why did it not stay entirely native/ 

become entirely Roman? Can we say that the Romans forced their religion onto the 

provincials? Was there such a thing as Roman ‘religious policy’? Bear these thoughts 

in mind as you continue your readings …. 

& Derks (Derks 1997) 

In a more analytical vein, your second core reading looks in more detail as a specific aspect of 

‘Romanisation’ in relation to ideas of landscape (which we have already introduced) as well as 

religious cults, and the specific confrontations of the local and wider Roman practices. Derks has 

undertaken much research in this field in relation to northern Gaul and the Netherlands, with 

several publications on the topic (e.g. Derks 1998). While recognising that the establishment of 

Roman authority was accompanied by a new symbolic world order bringing with it Roman state 

ideology and the cult of the emperor, how did this play out on the ground with the ‘indigenous’ 

communities? Did cultural differences grow less? Did local communities find new ways of 

symbolic self-definition. Might the conquest have had the reverse effect and encouraged a 

revival of ‘native’ traditions, as a reaction against the conquerors (as is known to have happened 

in more recent colonial contexts). Rather than simply borrowing from one culture to another, 

to what extent do we see the creation of new cultural forms, which did not previously exist in 

either culture – new syncretic forms? His underlying position is that “the self-definition of a 

community is never expressed better than in its myths and rituals’ (1998: 241). 

This article may be related to a larger work by Derks (Derks 1998) looking at northern Gaul – 

mainly north of the Seine - from which some of the key conclusions are summarised here. One 

issue that he draws attention to is the importance of thinking about the ‘cult community’ – the 

group of people who actually support a particular cult of a certain god and share the use of 

cult spaces for their personal/collective rituals. Many would seem to be anchored in local life, 

but smaller numbers seem to have a wider significance, connected with administrative regions 

(the pagi and civitates). These may be organised differently and indeed have a different legal 

status. Local cults may be private or relate to kinship groups, or ‘professional’ groups, but 

the regional cults belonged to a wider public domain – their temples may be built on public 

land and have officials supported by public administration (as would be the case in Bath). As 

he too recognises ‘it was in these public cults that the Romanization of religious conceptions 

and ritual practices penetrated furthest. It was here that the knowledge of the new ideas was 

greatest and the need for an expression in Roman forms strongest” (1998: 242). 

This ‘Romanization’ was a process of syncretisms, as we have already seen, which also varied 

from region to region (an important point to remember). The linking of Roman and native 


gods is the most obvious example, as we have seen. Although in Gaul most inscriptions of such 

syncretic gods (e.g. Hercules Magusanus, Mars Camulus) are found on private votive offerings, 

he suggests that most of these gods had a wider significance as the protectors of a civitas or 

pagus, their worship usually linked with larger more monumental temples complexes, with 

official priestly offices. 

As you also see in your reading, he suggests the choice of Roman gods, as counterparts for 

the local gods also has a logic to it. In his area, the principal gods were always associated 

with Mars or Hercules, with Mars more popular in the south and Hercules in the north. He 

suggests the regional differentiation is linked to wider differences in the differing agricultural 

regimes. In the agrarian Mediterranean Mars was closely associated with the protection of the 

Roman fundus estate, specialising in agriculture and viticulture. Hercules was widely associated 

with pastoralism and herders (you will commonly find ancient shrines in the foothills of the 

Appenines in Italy, frequented by pastoralists, coming down from the hills for seasonal fairs, 

located at shrines). The choice of association in northern Gaul reflected just such associations, 

the southern areas were much more agriculturally focussed, while the northern sites were 

more pastoral: ‘the community made a deliberate choice for the particular god in the Roman 

pantheon who, by reputation, came closest to the values, norms and lifestyle which it has 

always maintained’ (1998: 242). 

With regard to the private cults, at the local level, he suggests two cult forms stand out. What 

may be called ancestral cults, organised around kin groups, are know from votive inscriptions 

on altars – for ancestral mothers - found in the Cologne region. There is also the private cult 

of Mercury. This is found in the countryside, where Mercury seems to have been a bringer of 

prosperity. His sanctuaries are not found before the end of the first century AD, and seem to 

be most popular during the most prosperous periods of the second and early third centuries. 

Mercury is also found in towns, supported by all kinds of trade and craft groups – another 

specific following. 

The construction of the temples themselves may be seen as an innovation – the creation of a 

new architectural style – adding a porticus to existing cult buildings (built in a vernacular style). 

The earliest Gallo-Roman temples in his study area date from the Claudian-Neronian period 

and are hence amongst the first monumental buildings of Northern Gaul. There is a huge 

variety in building plan and workmanship, probably reflecting both funding and tastes. Public 

cult buildings are the most elaborate – in the modest sanctuaries of private cults, the visitor 

had access to the cult statue. In the public cult temples, the architectural forms limited direct 

access – the priests acting as intermediaries between the community and the gods. Whereas 

in late Iron Age (La Tene) Gaulish societies leaders expressed their roles through donations of 

valuable materials (gold coins, war trophies), under Roman rule they reflected their generosity 

and patronage through financing buildings and embellishing public monuments (e.g. temples, 


well houses, theatres). New ways were found to generate personal prestige, while also 

increasing the fame and reputation of the sanctuaries and their gods (as we encountered with 

medieval shrines, perhaps?). 

He also identified significant regional differences. In the Somme region virtually all temples, 

private or public, have a more substantial Gallo-Roman form. Elsewhere, the Gallo-Roman 

form is exceptional. In the Lower Rhine civitates, such forms are only found for public cults. 

In the hilly regions, the form is hardly found at all. Large regional sanctuaries equipped with 

theatres and thermae show a similar distribution. The differences in regional architecture also 

seem to follow the same lines as the association of local gods with Hercules or Mars. The 

apparent exception – in that the hilly regions follow the southern pattern – can however be 

explained by their links with various civitates, where they represent the upland margins of 

agricultural river valleys with their villa – hence their association with Mars and agricultural 

landholdings. But we do find presences of Hercules in upland areas relating to private cults. 

Another point may be noted in relation to the northern areas, where we do find some more 

‘Roman’ attributes. This may be put down to the continued military presence in the region 

(the south was largely demilitarised in the Augustan period – the north remained a major 

recruiting area for Roman auxiliary troops). As such the northern areas – and the civitates 

elites - probably retained their more martial character – which adopted more the cultural 

forms of the Roman army. In the south we see a convergence towards the dominant Roman 

Mediterranean culture, in the north it is much more selective, converging in some fields of 

life (military values), and diverging in others (pastoral values). But we see perhaps a greater 

homogenisation, from the large numbers of local gods, a simplification towards the variants 

of Mars and Hercules. This in turn perhaps erected new boundaries between these regions. 

Romanisation in the landscape? & Blagg 1986 

A slightly different approach is taken in this next brief paper by Blagg (Blagg 1986) which 

draws us back to ‘landscape’ approaches. Here, one major impact being the arrival of new 

architectural forms in the landscape, while also considering how Britain’s own versions of 

Roman building types provided it with its own particular character. Some of the differences 

between Britain and other regions (Gaul and Italy) are also usefully drawn out, looking for 

example at the place of public cults in Roman urban settlements, and then rural shrines. 

When reading this it is worth noting some of the potential differences which are apparent 

between Britain and Gaul – and consider how these might be explored in yet other contexts, 

in other Roman provinces. The text also reiterates some important points concerning religious 

syncretism, which Blagg sees as spontaneous. He also draws out some points in relation to the 

subsequent Christianisation of Britain, and its after-history. 


This paper marks a quite early attempt to think about some of the ‘landscape’ manifestations 

of religious change. There is clearly much potential for developing such approaches, not least 

in drawing on the great wealth of material we now have relating to Roman rural as well as 

urban settlement (not least due to-PPG16 developed-funded archaeology). In most areas it 

would certainly be possible, as a project, to explore the religious landscapes of a region in 

some detail now (e.g. Ferris 2002). 

For a more local exploration of some of these questions, perhaps consult the: 

West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology http://www.iaa.bham. 

ac.uk/research/projects/wmrrfa/seminar3/index.shtml 

Ferris, I. 2002. Romano-British Religious Sites in the West Midlands Region http:// 

www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/wmrrfa/seminar3/Iain_Ferris.doc 

To conclude this part of the section you should read another online text Webster (Webster 

1997b) looking at some wider issues linking religion and imperialism, ancient and modern. 

One of the key things to take away from this perhaps is the importance of recognising how 

our knowledge and experiences of ancient and modern imperialism are so interlinked, and the 

absolute necessity for thinking in a critical and comparative way in our studies. While perhaps 

a bit heavy-footed (in my opinion) in foregrounding various bits of post-colonial theory in 

the discussion, this paper is of interest in drawing attention to the need for more complex 

understandings of the religious encounters underway in the Roman period, and indeed the 

value of taking a more wide-ranging comparative approach across time and space – to look at 

other colonial and imperial encounters. In this and other papers you can identify plenty more 

reading if you wish to explore this topic in some more detail. 

Christianising the Roman Empire and the end of the old religions 

In this second part of this section we will look at some more aspects of religious change within 

the context of the later Roman Empire, returning to the topic of its Christianisation. An 

enduring topic of research, which we have already touched on, has been how Rome itself was 

affected by the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of state. What happened 

at the heart of the Empire should provide us with some sort of benchmark, surely? A couple of 

points may be drawn out here, which indicate some of the avenues which might be explored 

in exploring such a topic, especially focussed on public monument building – and the need to 

understand how such monuments fit into wider patterns of investment in urban landscapes. 

You have encountered another approach to changing urban landscapes in a paper by Johnson 

(2010), in the Debating Urbanism volume, there looking at rubbish disposal rather than 

monument building. 


It is certainly important to understand the context in which Christian building programmes 

were introduced. The turbulent third century was a period of Rome in which there were 

highly unusual building projects. Most noteworthy is the massive new defensive wall circuit 

with which Aurelian enclosed the city, with 13 miles of walls quickly erected, apparently with 

little regard for the integrity of earlier structures. At the Porta Ostiensis, for example, the 

new walls butt onto the Augustan pyramid tomb of C. Cestius (fig. 8.1), making it part of 

Rome’s new defences. It is also noteworthy that new temples erected in the third century were 

erected for the worship of deities imported from the eastern Mediterranean (Isis and Serapis, 

Elagabalus, and Sol), an indicator that this was already an age of religious flux, in which Rome 

itself could experience change. 

Figure 8.3 Piranesi’s picture of the Augustan pyramid tomb of C. Cestius built 

into Rome’s new defences, in 18th century. 

To set the works of Constantine in context, it is also necessary to understand what went before. 

The previous Tetrarch/Emperor Maxentius had in fact been a major patron of architecture at 

Rome (and one of the most Rome-oriented of all the emperors of that period). Maxentius’s 

works of construction and reconstruction include the Basilica Nova, Temple of Venus and Roma, 

the imperial palace on the Palatine hill, as well as his own villa-circus-mausoleum complex on 

the Via Appia. Constantine went to great lengths to erase Maxentius’s memory from the city 

centre, and the limited reputation in part reflects his success in doing just that. Constantine 

took to claim Maxentius’s monuments as his own (as part of a campaign to depict his defeated 

enemy as the tyrannus and himself as the liberator urbis). The Maxentian Basilica Nova was 


ededicated in honour of Constantine, complete with a colossal new seated statue of the 

emperor. Not far away, Constantine erected one of the largest triumphal arches in the world 

(also the first triumphal arch to celebrate a victory in a civil war rather than the defeat of a 

foreign enemy). 

Curran’s (Curran 1990) discussion of Constantine’s arch – a footnote. 

Constantine’s Arch has in fact been much studied in recent years prompting much 

debate. In 1994, Vaccaro and Ferroni presented a radical new interpretation of the 

monument, arguing that the arch was in fact built by Hadrian and that Constantine’s 

masons merely modified the 175-year-old monument, adding columns and a series of 

statues and reliefs. This idea has since been convincingly rejected by other researchers 

who have established not only that Constantine was the first to erect an arch on 

this spot but that every block of the monument—including even the Constantinian 

frieze depicting the war against Maxentius and Constantine’s entry into Rome, — 

was reused from an earlier monument. The revelation that the Arch of Constantine 

is 100% spolia underscores the importance of Constantine’s expenditures on new 

Christian buildings in Rome. 

Kleiner (2001) offers a useful review of Curran’s work. The traditional view is that Constantine 

did not erect any overtly Christian structures in the city center in order to avoid offending the 

pagan majority in the capital, and wearing his Christianity quite lightly. Was this deliberate? 

Curran argues that this was not Constantine’s motivation and that he had no master plan 

and no master plan for where he built the main Christian basilicas. While the site for St. 

Peter’s was dictated by the location of the saint’s martyrium (in what is now Vatican City), the 

Lateran basilica did not have to be erected where it was. Curran persuasively demonstrates 

that in choosing a site on the Caelian hill for the episcopal seat in Rome, Constantine also 

overbuilt the site of the headquarters of Maxentius’s horse guards beneath the Christian 

basilica, consistent with his goal of erasing his predecessor’s memory. In the event most of 

the monotheistic monuments are found ‘on imperial property and the outskirts of the city, a 

pattern continued by Constantine’s successors. In the Basilica Nova portrait of Constantine he 

holds a Christian symbol in his hand and on the Arch of Constantine the emperor’s victory is 

instinctu divinitatis, the emperor’s Christian sympathies are hardly evident in the city center. 

In fact, in the second century reliefs on the Arch of Constantine (all with re-used and re-cut 

portrait heads converting Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius into Constantine), the emperor 

is repeatedly depicted sacrificing to the traditional state gods’ (Kleiner 2001). 


Figure 8.4 Constantine’s Triumphal Arch – Rome. 

A second and distinct process of change was that undertaken by the bishops, to support the 

activities of the Christian communities. Constantine and later emperors did not take upon 

themselves the role of providing churches in the heart of the city – this was left up to the 

bishops (most of Constantine’s grand building enterprises were in fact concerned more with 

the care of the Christian dead!). It is possible to reconstruct many of the building activities of 

Rome’s bishops, not least from the Liber Pontificalis (a collection of biographies of early popes). 

While their building projects were much more modest than those of the emperors, the bishops 

did construct several churches within the walls, some in quite central locations (rather more 

prominently placed than the emperors’ Christian monuments). Attempts were also made to 

break down the distinctions of the classical city, between the living and the dead. Attention 

paid to the tombs of saints and martyrs brought them increasingly into the world of the living. 

By the end of the fourth century, as in so many parts of the expanding Christian world, such 

tombs attracted settlements of the devoted, including monastic communities. The creation 

of a community of Roman saintly dead of course looks forward to the familiar early medieval 

world of civic and patron saints. 

The Christianization of Roman society, like that of Rome itself, also appear to have been 

quite slow and unsteady. Constantine’s sons, for example, banned pagan sacrifices in 341, 

but did not simultaneously close the pagan temples. Although all temples in all cities were 

ordered shut in 356, there is evidence that traditional sacrifices continued. Under Julian (who 


attempted to turn back the Christianisation process when Emperor, 355-363), the temples 

were reopened and sacrifices legalized. Gratian rejected the position and title of pontifex 

maximus and effectively brought an end to the state religion, but did not ban pagan worship 

by individuals. The temples remained open until the reign of Theodosius I who, after 391, 

increasingly constrained the activities of cults. 

The sometimes contradictory and ambivalent approach to non-Christian cults during the fourth 

century is seen in the continuing prominence of the games in the Circus Maximus in the life 

of the Roman people. These officially sponsored entertainments were not secular events. As 

Curran notes, at the Circus Maximus, “functioning temples and altars were [still] to be found 

located in their ancient positions within the walls of the circus and the gods could be seen 

crowding, like the spectators, to view the spectacles” (2000: 259). A (slightly older) paper by 

Fowden (1978) also looks at more general issues concerning the fate to ‘pagan’ temples at 

the hands of newly empowered Christian bishops. This topic could be explored in case-studies 

looking at particular places. 

The progress of the shift towards Christianity also had its own local dynamics in different 

regions. In Egypt, the last pagan temples, the temples of Isis at Philae (by Aswan) were 

symbolically declared finally closed only in 537 (although recent research suggest they may in 

fact have gone out of use a couple of generations earlier, in the 460s). You could read more 

about this in a detailed case-study by Dijkstra (Dijkstra 2005), a study which can be accessed 

online. One interesting aspect of the Philae situation is that a Christian bishop seems to have 

co-existed in close proximity to the Isis temple for at least a century. 

The building of Christian communities & Yasin 2005 

Having introduced some more generalised discussions relating to the arrival of Christianity, in 

a number of different contexts, this last case-study looks in some detail at some quite specific 

archaeological material, in Roman North Africa. This provides a detailed examination of a 

number of different themes we have already encountered in relation to death and burial, and 

the commemoration of the dead. Yasin’s discussion also located her study within wider issues 

of commemoration, in other times and places, so this paper should have something of interest 

for everyone, however their wider specialist interests may be developing. A close reading of 

the text should throw up some points of interest, with wider relevance:- 

- The issue of how and when ‘ordinary’ people came to be buried inside churches is 

one we have encountered already. 

- Their relationship with ‘saints’ – a topic we have encountered at several points – is 

again raised. 

- Issues surrounding modern forms of communal burial commemoration are raised. 

Whether in military cemeteries, or modern family graves in Rome (it is interesting 


where individual identities may be less important than the wider family, for 

example) 

- Looking back to various forms of Roman practice – a striking contrast emerges in 

Christian burials, where burials within these Christian basilicas is organised not 

around families, but membership of the local church. 

- It raises issues about the importance of funerals, as public displays – expressing the 

cohesion of the Christian community. 

‘Archaeological evidence illustrates the mechanisms by which North African funerary basilicas 

functioned as commemorative monuments for local communities of Christians. As with their 

Roman precursors and the modern examples cited earlier, formal elements of the tombs’ 

decoration, epigraphy, and iconography joined single individuals into a clearly defined group 

and commemorated their collective identity’ (Yasin 2005: 451). 

The interest of the North African examples is the extent to which they may be similar, or 

different from other regions. The issues raised here surely invite comparison with other 

places, where existing burial traditions may have been different, and different forms of social 

organisation may also have existed. But some of the analyses seen here may suggest to you 

new ways of looking at other cases, where different approaches to burial were adopted – 

where different uses of tomb monuments and inscriptions were made. How and in what ways 

do these practices differ from other regions? What is it exactly which is recorded in tomb 

inscriptions? What exactly is being commemorated? 


Barlow, J. 1993. Archaeology and Belief in the Roman World: an Iconoclast’s Approach. 

Australasian Historical Archaeology 11: 120-123. 

Biro, M. 1975. The inscriptions of Roman Britain, Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum 

Hungaricae 27: 13-58. 

Blagg, T. 1986. Roman religious sites in the British landscape. Landscape History 8: 15-25. 

Bowes, K. 2008. Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity, 


Brown, P. 1961. Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman aristocracy, Journal of Roman 

Studies 51: 1-11 

Curran, J. 1996. Constantine and the Ancient Cults of Rome: The Legal Evidence, Greece & 

Rome 43 (1): 68-80. 

Curran, J. 2000. Pagan City and Christian Capital, Oxford: OUP. 


Derks, T. 1997. The Transformation of Landscape and religious representation in Roman Gaul. 

Archaeological Dialogues 4: 126-47, 154-63. 

Derks, T. 1998. Gods, Temples and Ritual Practices. The Transformation of Religious ideas and 

values in Roman Gaul. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 

Dijkstra, J. 2005. Religious Encounters on the Southern Egyptian Frontier in Late Antiquity 

, PhD thesis Groningen University, [available online at this linkl:-] http://dissertations. 

ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/theology/2005/j.h.f.dijkstra/thesis.pdf. 

Fowden, G. 1978. Bishops and temples in the eastern Roman Empire A.D. 320-435. Journal of 

Theological Studies 29: 53-78. 

Frankfurter, D. 1994. Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt. Journal of Early 

Christian Studies 11(3): 339-385. 

Greene, S. E. 2002. Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter A History of Meaning and Memory 

in Ghana, Indiana: Bloomington. 

Haynes, I. P. 1993. The Romanisation of Religion in the ‘Auxilia’ of the Roman Imperial Army 

from Augustus to Septimus Severus. Britannia 24: 141-157. 

Henig, M. 2007. Roman Religion and Roman Culture in Britain. In Todd, M. (ed.) Companion 

to Roman Britain, Malden, Blackwell: 220-241. 

Johnson, M. 2009. The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity, Cambridge: CUP. 

Johnson, P. S. 2010. Investigating Urban Change in late Antique Italy through Waste Disposal 

Practices, In Sami, D. and Speed, G. (eds) Debating Urbanism, Leicester, 167-93. 

Kleiner, F. 2001. Review of John Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital. Bryn Mawr Classical 

Review 2001. 

Kilbride, W. G. 2000. Why I feel cheated by the term ‘Christianisation’, Archaeological Review 

from Cambridge 7/2: 1-17. 

McMullen, R. 1984. Christianizing the Roman Empire, New Haven. 

Nordeide, S. W. 2006. Thor’s hammer in Norway. A symbol of reaction against the Christian 

cross?, In Andrén, A., Jennbert, K. and Raudvere, C. (eds) Norse religion in long-term 

perspectives. Origins, changes, and interactions. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 218-223. 

https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/3273/1/Old%20Norse%20Nordeide.pdf 

Olson, L. 1999. The Applicability of the Horton Thesis of Christian African Conversion to the 

Conversion of Medieval Europe. In Cusack, C. M. and Oldmeadow, P. (eds) This Immense 

Panorama: Studies in Honour of Eric J. Sharpe. Sydney, 79-88. http://escholarship.usyd. 

edu.au/journals/index.php/SSR/article/view/657/638 


Schreuder, D. and G. Oddie 1989. What is ‘Conversion’? History, Christianity and Religious 

Change in Colonial Africa and South Asia. Journal of Religious History 15(4): 496 - 518. 

Webster, J. 1995. ’Interpretatio’: Roman Word Power and the Celtic Gods. Britannia 26: 153-161. 

Webster, J. 1997a. A negotiated syncretism: readings on the development of Romano-Celtic 

religion. In Mattingly, D.J. (ed.) Dialogues in Roman Imperialism. Portsmouth: JRA, 164-184. 

Webster, J. 1997b. Necessary comparisons: a post-colonial approach to religious syncretism in 

the Roman provinces. World Archaeology 28 (3): 324-338. 

Williams, H. 1999. Runestones and the Conversion of Sweden, In Cusack, C. M. and Oldmeadow, 

P. (eds) This Immense Panorama: Studies in Honour of Eric J. Sharpe. Sydney, 59-78. 

Yasin, A. M. 2005. Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: from Roman Family to Christian 

Community, Art Bulletin 87(3): 433-57. 

Yasin, A. M. 2009. Saints and Church in Late Antique Mediterranean, Cambridge: CUP. 


SECTION 9 

Archaeology and Religious Change II 



Archaeology and Religious change II 

Core readings 

Blair, J. 2005. The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, Oxford: Oxford University 

Press. (Chapter 7: the Birth and growth of Local Churches c.850-1100). (paper) 

Gilchrist, R. and Sloane, S. 2005. Requiem: the medieval monastic cemetery in 

Britain, London: MOLAS, (Chapter 9, pp. 214-30 - paper). See also http://ads. 

ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/cemeteries_ahrb_2005/ 

Finch, J. 2003. A Reformation of Meaning: commemoration and the parish 

church c.1450-c.1550, in Gaimster, D. and Gilchrist, R. (eds) The Archaeology of 

Reformation c.1480-1580, Oxford: Oxbow, 437-449. (paper) 

Gilchrist, R. 2008. Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later 

Medieval Burials. Medieval Archaeology 52: 119-159. (e-link) 

Lane, P. 2001. The archaeology of Christianity in global perspective, In Insoll, 

T. (ed.) Archaeology of World Religion, London: Routledge, 148-81. (available 

within e-book) 

Graham, E. 1998. Mission Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 17: 25-62 


 

Bagge, S. 2005. Christianization and State formation in Early Medieval Norway, 

Scandinavian Journal of History 30(2): 107-34. (e-link online) 

Gazin-Schwartz, A. 2001. Archaeology and folklore of material culture, ritual 

and everyday life. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(4): 263-80. 

(e-link) 

Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. 2008. The colonization of consciousness. In 

Lambek, M. (ed.) A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 

464-78. (paper) 

 

Lydon, J. and J. Ash 2010. The Archaeology of Missions in Australasia: Introduction 

International Journal of Historical Archaeology 14(1): 1-14. (and rest of volume 

– online) 

Introduction 

In the first part of this section we would like to build on existing knowledge of medieval 

societies, while giving some further sense of how Christian practices may have changed and 

developed within themselves over time. The first readings look again at some of the larger 

trends in the effect of Christianity on medieval life, and some more of its specific manifestations 


in the archaeological record. In the second part of the section we will be moving into the 

postmedieval world and the realm of historical archaeology. Here we will look at archaeological 

cases which are (again) linked with key historical processes such as imperialism and colonialism. 

We also get a chance to think some more about how religious changes/changes in religious 

thinking (like the Reformation) may have affected the wider world. 

Medieval Christianity to the Reformation, and beyond 

To begin with we would like you to work through another, quite general, reading relating to 

the Christianisation of medieval England, a chapter from an important recent general study of 

the topic (Blair 2005). 

This detailed survey should be essential reading if you were to do more research in this field. 

It is also excellent in the way it combines both historical and archaeological evidence. We can 

only provide a single chapter here, but will draw attention to a number of key points addressed 

in this study, which draw out the specifically English developments of the early medieval 

Church, and especially the familiar local (parish?) churches which are such a prominent part 

of the landscape today. The often quite detailed discussions, looking at individual churches, 

regional traditions of church-building, and how they may have developed over times, provides 

a valuable introduction to the church-focussed field of research. Such work of course invites 

quite architectural studies – looking at the fabric of standing churches, as well as more 

archaeological ones. As the examples of how churches are distributed in the landscape makes 

clear (and the incidences of two or even three churches within a single settlement), there 

are complex histories to be unravelled and understood. The issue of churchyard burial – and 

its significance – is also again evident. You will also get a sense of how regional variations in 

practice relating to churches seem to be embedded in the variability of social and political 

practices from region to region – as such, lying outside explicitly ‘religious’ factors. 

This chapter needs to be set in the context of other parts of the book, especially in relation 

to the earlier importance of minster-churches in the earlier medieval church. The following 

section is based in large part on Nightingale’s (2006) review of Blair’s work. One needs to think, 

for example, about the extent to which ministers, staffed by groups of clergy, were the Anglo- 

Saxon church, providing its institutional framework and the resource base for both bishops and 

low level priests. Bishops might come with ready-made notions of episcopal authority but in 

practice their power was rooted in their minsters. Central to Blair’s argument here is the notion 

that the whole spectrum of religious foundations containing groups of nuns, monks or priests 

shared sufficient common characteristics to justify the application of a common term, minster, 

to all of them: the Latin monasterium and Old English mynster were interchangeable and used 

for all. What seems to be lacking in England are aristocratic estate churches or mausolea which 

were common on the Continent (see Bowes 2007 for more on how the Gallic villa estates were 

Christianised). 


Another interesting line of discussion concerns the role of minsters in providing one focus for 

the re-emergence of towns in Anglo-Saxon England. Blair has argued they played a significant 

role in this process. Here again, contrasts with parts of continental Europe where urban life had 

survived the collapse of the Roman Empire, need to be borne in mind. He would suggest that 

Minsters commonly came first and were not a corollary of royal power centres as some have 

assumed. Our ideas of some royal palatia (sites such as Yeavering or York) disguise the fluidity 

and impermanence of most residences of relatively itinerant kings. The latter can be better 

characterised as temporary sites, which may be contrasted with the durability and economic 

pull of minsters. Half of the 53 non-Roman places named as royal vills or stay places before 

820 are unidentified – presumably never developing into more permanent settlements. None 

of them look like regular or long-term residences before Offa (in imitation of Charlemagne) 

established a fixed capital at Tamworth, and other rulers began to be drawn to establish their 

regular residences alongside or within important minsters. 

In turn the minsters suffered during the ninth century. Here the Scandinavian attacks and 

settlements were probably important. As Nightingale (2006) comments, there is ‘a creeping 

secularisation at the hands of kings, nobles or expanding towns and to the loss of status 

occasioned by the monastic reforms of the tenth century. Minsters were increasingly used 

as royal estate centres (at least nine minster sites appear in this guise in King Alfred’s will), 

and rewards for royal officials. As towns grew, they also often eclipsed the minsters which 

had been the original catalysts for, and defining marks of, urban growth: over half of all 

the markets and boroughs named in Domesday can be traced back to minster sites. 

The monastic reforms of the tenth century focussed royal patronage and protection on an 

exclusive group of reform houses at the expense of the wider body of minsters’. 

What you will see in the chapter we provide as a reading is how, as Nightingale puts it, the 

minsters were increasingly submerged in a new landscape of local churches with their own 

priests, landholdings and rights to burial and tithe. Here we can focus on this shadowy but 

momentous development which saw a multitude of smaller churches come into being by the 

time of Domesday Book (it lists over 2,000 churches, priests, and ‘priests with churches’). As 

they quickly took root, they were organised into the framework of rural parishes which of 

course survive in its essentials until today. For Blair this transformation is to be understood in 

the context of a restructuring of the English landscape which shared much in common with 

the so-called ‘feudal revolution’ of the Continent: economic and demographic growth went 

hand in hand with a break up of big estates into smaller, more tightly focused ones; manorial 

exploitation intensified and farms coalesced into villages.’ And here bear in mind that of 

course villages varied in form across the country – and some areas maintained rather more 

dispersed patterns of settlement. 


‘Amidst these changes churches became a mark of status at a much more local level. We find 

texts of c.1000 (e.g. the Wulfstan text known as the Promotion Law) which relates how a 

freeman had the outward and visible signs of thegn-ly rank once he had acquired: ‘5 hides of 

land of his own, a church and a kitchen, a bell-house and a fortress gate, a seat and special 

office in the king’s hall’ (2005: 371). This is precisely the period that the great rebuilding of 

churches appears in full spate, having commenced around 1000, gathered pace in the decades 

before 1066 and continued through the later eleventh century. It is notable that the Norman 

Conquest is seen to have contributed little to this wholesale transformation of the religious 

landscape, although it may have weakened the ability of minsters to retain tithes and resist 

encroachment by new local churches’ (Nightingale 2006). 

Were there other economic reasons for founding more churches? ‘Lords might build 

local churches for reasons of status, but to take root these churches had to attract others; 

that they did so can be glimpsed in the rise of graveyards around these churches, and their 

developing roles within the community. One interesting question is whether this surge of new 

foundations could be a direct consequence of the imposition of tithe obligations which also 

first come to the fore in the tenth century. Blair touches on the possibility in his survey of the 

remarkable evidence of villages or even single churchyards containing two or more churches 

in Norfolk and Suffolk (2005: 397–401). The evidence for tithes and other church dues also 

suggest that the economic attractions may have played a more significant role in this surge 

in church foundation. It is in the tenth century, in the codes of Aethelstan and Eadgar and 

contemporary leases, that we first encounter enforced tithes. These were to become significant 

assets. It is hard to ignore the way that Domesday Book lists churches (and parts of churches) 

as valuable assets; much of this can be attributed to the endowments they had attracted, while 

tithes and other dues (e.g. burial dues) are also likely to have played their part. Faced with such 

evidence it is hard not to conclude that the desire to retain resources rather than pay them to 

another lord or neighbour’s church was a powerful stimulus for the founders of local churches 

in general’ (Nightingale 2006). 

Medieval burials, inside and outside monasteries 

&Gilchrist and Sloane 2005 

This is the concluding chapter from a major quantitative and qualitative study of c.5000 monastic 

graves, dating from c.1050 to c.1600 (with a further c.3000 graves considered for comparison). 

The study concentrated on the treatment of the dead in religious houses in Britain, but with 

comparisons drawn from parish churches, secular cathedrals, plague cemeteries and Jewish 

cemeteries (providing a useful comparative angle). The study summarises some identifiable 

changes in burial practices over time and the characteristics of particular regions, providing 


some references back to aspects of earlier medieval burial we have previously encountered. 

It also looks at the nature of the monastic cemetery as a commemorative landscape (burial 

monuments again…), and addresses aspects of the treatment and classification of the body in 

death. Ending at the time when the Protestant Reformation was bringing major changes in 

religious beliefs and practices in England (and other countries), we also get a chance here to 

reflect a bit more on what the impact of this process of change was. 

If you feel your historical knowledge of the Reformation needs improving then 

perhaps consult a general history like old, but factually helpful, ‘New Cambridge 

modern history. Vol. 2, Reformation, 1520-1559’, available as an e-book. Aston’s 

study of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and how this affected the sense of the 

Past is also well worth a read (Aston 1973). 

Evidence for the representation of gender, age and identity is also presented, suggesting that 

the funerary rite symbolised particular aspects of individual identity in death. The role of the 

family in burial practice is also considered. They also discuss evidence for apotropaic funerary 

practices, connecting burial with traditions of healing and protective magic- something which 

we will look at a bit more in this section (see below). Finally, they review the relevance of the 

tripartite model of the rites of passage (separation from the world – liminal rites, and 

post-liminal rites, drawing on van Genneps work) and its application to later medieval beliefs 

surrounding death. You may want to refer back to Parker Pearson’s book here. Here we get 

some discussion of how well this theoretical structure may work in medieval contexts. 

Medieval Monastic Cemeteries of Britain (1050-1600): a digital resource 

and database of excavated samples Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane 

2005http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/cemeteries_ahrb_2005/ 


Figure 9.1 The late medieval commemorative memorial (in this case a copy of 

the commemorative brass monument of Thomas Lawne, rector of Mottisfant in 

Hampshire, who died in 1518 – a few decades before the English Reformation 

began. (courtesy of Sarah Edwards) 

One interesting conclusion is that the Reformation seems to have curtailed variation in practice. 

Monastic burial of course disappeared, with the suggestion that ‘Protestant’ ideas are indeed 

reflected in attitudes to the dead, and the treatment of the dead. We also encounter significant 

changes in commemorating the dead. A useful study of this topic by Finch (Finch 2003) 

is here for you to read, which takes a well-focussed look at what was happening in parish 

churches in the time of religious transition. One interesting point that emerges is one also 

noted by Gilchrist, how we might think of medieval monuments reflecting a ‘prospective’ ongoing 

relationship with the dead, which in the post-Reformation period became ‘retrospective’, 

where those links with the dead were seen in a different way. 

Religion and Magic? & Gilchrist 2008 

Having discussed some aspects of processes of conversion in previous sections, this next 

reading introduces some interesting questions surrounding archaeological perceptions of, and 

approaches to magic, here within a medieval British context, and here discussed by a wellknown 

and much-respected academic (interests in magic may also be a more fringe activity). 

Within academic archaeology we may well be quite uncertain how to deal with the topic – not 

least with the vague feeling, inherited from early anthropology that magic was regarded as 

‘primitive’ or ‘exotic’, and something very different to organised religion. It is also suggested 

that for archaeologists studying the Middle Ages, the juxtaposition of magic and Christianity 

may seem particularly difficult to interrogate, based on the (false) assumption that these are 

mutually exclusive categories comprising marginal superstition on the one hand versus ‘proper’ 

religion on the other. 


Apotropaic – preventing, warding off or intended to prevent evil 

[from Greek apotropaios turning away (evil)] 

This article represents a serious attempt however to explore this theme in relation to British 

mortuary archaeology, reviewing a range of apotropaic items and materials that were included 

in the graves of some members of later medieval communities. The significance of these 

practices is traced to earlier burial traditions, and some key points high-lighted, in particular 

the increased use of amulets during the period of conversion to Christianity, and more ancient 

traditions of placing selected natural materials or antique objects (‘special’ objects?) within 

graves. Some suggestions are also made how such practices may be linked with known types 

of later medieval magic, which might allow us to suggest some of the meanings/intentions 

behind ‘magic’. Was this magic healing or protective? Did it aim to safeguard the living or 

conjure the dead? Who were the recipients of such magical rites — and who was responsible 

for performing them? Other issues we might consider are how practices may have changed 

over time; what was the relationship between early and later medieval practices of magic? We 

also need to think about how medieval people distinguished between religious and magical 

phenomena? 

In the conversion of northern Europe to Christianity, we know that the church tolerated 

and absorbed magical practices such as the use of healing charms, while, as we have seen, 

the Christian cult of relics extolled the miraculous healing properties of the bones of saints 

(or any substances that had come into contact with them). As we have suggested before, 

rather than characterising such practices as not merely ‘pagan survivals’, they could be seen 

as important elements that were deliberately absorbed into a new mix. This was not just the 

simple fusion/syncretism of two sets of beliefs, but was instead a dynamic process that involved 

the sustained engagement of folk traditions and Christian practice. The particular theoretical 

slant taken here has again (as we see in Webster’s work in relation to Roman case-studies) 

looked to postcolonial and diaspora theory, and the social processes of ‘hybridity’ and 

‘creolisation’. As such it could be argued that medieval Christianity, in juxtaposing diverse 

traditions developed as a hybrid cultural form. Presumably, in its other manifestations – in 

Africa, or the Americas, it can then be said to have developed its own peculiarly new hybrid 

forms (but then, are not all cultural forms ‘hybrid’ in some way?). It is also to be noted that 

the theory of hybridity stresses peoples agency, and this is a useful concept for thinking about 

medieval magic. 

Here the point is made that archaeology has the potential to contribute a distinctive perspective 

on medieval magic; having a long time-depth which allows us to track changes over time; here 

to see how later medieval rites may be ‘hybrid’ forms drawing on earlier beliefs. Oral traditions 

may suggest some ‘meanings’ (but we are of course of quite speculative ground here). But we 

could, for example, suggest that the incorporation of new types of amulet in burials of the 


seventh-ninth centuries may reflect a strategic selection of grave goods intended to protect 

the integrity of the body for the Christian resurrection. Other sorts of artefacts placed in graves 

can also be identified, timber rods, textual amulets and protective charms. However, magic 

does not seem to have been employed routinely in medieval burial rites, but was instead 

specially directed (towards the particularly vulnerable, the young or physically disabled, or 

during times of fear of the dead). We may conclude that traces of magic in medieval burial 

rites represent the redirection of popular folk magic towards specific Christian purposes. 

Max Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism – is there a link? 

In thinking about the changes in religious thinking and the arrival of modernity, 

and ideas of secularity, you will commonly encounter the work of Max Weber, 

most famously his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Written early 

in the twentieth century (translated into English much later), it is a very influential 

study of the relationship between Protestant ideas (especially the ethics of ascetic 

Protestantism) and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism. At its heart, 

we find the idea that the religious ideas of groups such as the Calvinists played a role 

in creating the capitalistic spirit. Here we have a major statement of how religious 

change may be implicated in changing the world as a whole. 

Weber, had noted a correlation between being Protestant and being involved in 

business, and then went on to explore religion as a potential cause of the modern 

economic conditions. He argued that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an 

end in itself, and pursuing profit as virtuous; he turns to Protestantism for a potential 

explanation. He suggested that Protestantism offers a concept of the worldly 

‘calling’, and gives worldly activity a religious character. While important, this alone 

cannot explain the need to pursue profit. However, one branch of Protestantism, 

Calvinism, does provide this explanation – although other branches (e.g. Methodists, 

Baptists) also shared similar ideas. As Calvinists believe in predestination (that 

God has already determined who is saved and damned), it is suggested that there 

developed a psychological need for clues about whether one was actually saved. 

Calvinists looked to their worldly success as providing a clue; material success as signs 

of God’s favour. Weber argues that this new attitude broke down the traditional 

economic system, paving the way for modern capitalism. However, once capitalism 

emerged, the Protestant values were no longer necessary, and their ethic took on a 

life of its own, the spirit of capitalism, now has its own life. While much debated 

ever since, this remains influential and compelling, in a general way. It also marks an 

important landmark on sociological thinking about religion, making clear that this 

is certainly an issue which needs to be thought about, and at least considered – and 

why we think this sort of module is worth doing. 


Another issue here we might revisit is addressed in a paper by Gazin-Schwartz (Gazin-Schwartz 

2001 – available online) looking again at issues relating to how material culture may be used, 

and indeed what may define a ‘ritual’ object, from the everyday – in this case looking at examples 

drawn from Scottish practices in more recent centuries. One clear message (suggested earlier 

in the module) is how ritual and mundane activities may be integrated; domestic activities 

may have ritual meanings, and ritual activities can employ everyday materials. 

Rather than focusing (as Renfrew does) on what makes a site, a feature, or an artefact unique/ 

special/anomalous, we may have to consider multiple possible contexts for the use of materials, 

features, and sites. Utilitarian objects and practical activities can also be thought of as ritual 

objects and activities. We will need to ask not only what roles “everyday” items may play 

in spiritual life but then also to ask what roles “special” artifacts or locations may play in 

everyday life? Similar issues will be raised again in relation to African-American magic, and 

religious practices, a field which has attracted some interest amongst American historical 

archaeologists (e.g. Russell, 1997; Wilkie 1997). If you have interests in historical archaeology 

of the Americas, those papers provide a good starting point. 

Historical perspectives, and the ‘colonisation of consciousness’ 

& Lane 2001 

In this second part of this section we will move into more recent periods, looking to some 

aspects of the part religion may play in historical archaeology, commonly again within more 

recent colonial and imperial contexts. Here we may find familiar issues we have encountered 

previously, and indeed linkages with similar problems we encountered in earlier periods, 

relating to colonial contacts and cultural exchanges. 

It may also be suggested that the often considerable theoretical sophistication of more 

recent colonial histories may have something to teach us when dealing with other periods and 

contexts. A useful introduction, which establishes some of the potential linkages is provided by 

Paul Lane’s chapter Lane 2001, which adopts a wider historical perspective on Christianity, 

and its varied impacts around the world. Reading this will also take you back to various topics 

we looked at earlier in the module (e.g. sacred places, pilgrimage etc) – hopefully reinforcing 

some of those points, in new ways. 

Many important issues are touched on here, beginning with the emphasis placed on the 

diversity and variety of forms of Christianity, across time and space. As such archaeology may be 

striving not only to identify Christianity, but something of the specific character of a particular 

type of Christianity which may have arisen. This should certainly not just be limited to more 

familiar types of Western Christianity. As we will also be reminded, just because we commonly 

see nineteenth century histories of colonisation in which the spread of Christian churches was 


intimately linked to the spread of Western cultural values and practices, this does not of course 

have to be like that. As Lane reminds us, many ‘African’ churches, while accepting some key 

religious aspects of Christian faith in no way accepted other values and practices of western 

civilization (2001: 149) 

His discussion of more recent colonial encounters introduces one interesting approach to 

this process, phrased in terms of the ‘colonisation of consciousness’ – where religious 

conversion was also linked to a ‘civilising mission’. For those working in more recent periods 

of colonial encounters, one of the ‘big’ issues has perhaps been whether Christian missionaries 

were primarily philanthropic, or whether they should be condemned as agents of imperialism. 

There has been much academic debate about “Whose side was the missionary really on?” 

Nonetheless, while much energy has been spent on debating the political and economic roles 

of missionaries, an equally important question concerns how they transformed the cultural 

imagination of Africa. The emphasis of this type of approach is on the cultural importance of 

the daily (quotidian) practices and arrangements. 

As the Comaroff’s put it ‘the colonization of South Africa – and many other parts of the world 

– began with an ideological onslaught on the part of Christian missionaries, self-styled bearers 

of European civilization ‘. Here if you do not know much about how Europeans came to 

southern Africa, perhaps pause for a moment and do a little background checking. 

Conversion was not just about changing belief systems but also ‘reconstructing their everyday 

worlds’ (2008: 475). Among the more significant features of these early missions in southern 

Africa was that the missionaries did not establish discrete “residential” stations apart from the 

native communities. Instead, due to the nucleated character of Tswana chiefdoms, evangelists 

found it necessary to locate themselves within local settlements, close to the chiefly authority. 

Here of course they were working amongst native communities in areas outside European 

control – control which was established after them. This is a very different pattern from other 

mission encounters which established their own separate “organic” communities (in the same 

way as colonial systems built around newly founded planted towns differed from those 

which built on existing indigenous settlements). 

The bitter irony of the colonial encounter discussed by them is that of course the new colonial 

order, which the missionaries had helped into existence, utterly refused to recognize the ‘new 

moral world’ of equal moral worth and opportunity to which the missionaries had invited 

Tswana Christians. This is a fascinating story, which is probably unfamiliar to you, but well 

worth reading more about, beginning with Comaroff and Comaroff 2008. They have 

written about this topic more widely, in both articles and books, some of which you can access 

online (e.g. Comaroff and Comaroff 1986). 


Mission archaeologies &Graham 1998. 

A more specifically archaeological paper on this theme is provided by Graham (1998) where 

such encounters are explicitly framed in terms of Christian missionary activities and ‘Mission 

Archaeology’, although her focus is mainly in the Americas. This needs to be fully read. It 

provides a very useful summary of research around much of the Americas, which can provide 

a way in to more detailed studies, should these be required. It would however benefit from 

some maps and figures, so if in doubt, spend some time identifying where exactly the main 

sites are. Some at least are still represented today as heritage sites, of one form or another 

(e.g. Nustra Senora del Rosario Mission, Texas: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/ 

articles/uqn19) 

While providing much useful factual information, note that the chapter also provides some 

explicit statements on how Graham thinks this kind of this archaeology might be approached, 

and why? How will archaeological approaches fit in with wider historical studies of colonial and 

mission encounters? What are we trying to find out? As we commonly find, the archaeological 

focus on material culture is certainly valuable in its potential to tell us about areas not wellcovered 

in textual records, and particularly in relation to the more everyday quotidian activities 

of life, both of colonisers and colonised. 

In her discussion you will again encounter her ‘take’ on the work of the Comaroffs – which 

she also clearly found helpful. As she says : “I suggest that the material record – built form, 

representation, etc – be examined as a reflection of the idea of changing cultural imagination 

and reordering of a conceptual universe”. Religion again places a central role here, suggesting 

“of the many aspects of the material record that might reflect native conceptual gains, the 

most revealing in the record of Christianization process”… but again stressing “archaeologists 

must be careful not to adopt the simplistic approach of colonial Catholic priests and interpret 

the material culture of mission sites as manifestations of either acceptance or rejection of 

Christianity” (1998: 29). 

Building on Graham’s work, Mission Archaeologies are increasingly developing their own 

regional trajectories. An excellent example of this can be seen in a recent International Journal 

of Historical Archaeology volume devoted to Missions in Australasia (Lydon and Ash 2010), 

well worth looking through and reading in more depth, especially if you have interests in 

historical archaeology. 


Figure 9.2 San Miguel Chapel, Sante Fe, New Mexico, reputedly the oldest 

church structure in the USA, with original adobe walls built c.1610AD. 

Religious change and conflict 

On the East African coast, the spread of Islam has attracted research interest, and some studies 

have begun to explore local Swahili practices within a wider Islamic tradition, for example in 

relation to cemetery organisation and the incorporation of tombs within urban spaces (e.g. 

Horton 1996). Otherwise, a considerable body of data exists concerning Islamic holy men and 

their tombs, which commonly perform important social and religious roles. Such practices are 

in turn today often fiercely contested within many Islamic communities in East Africa (e.g. 

Mire 2007; Becker 2009), reflecting diverse views within Islam, which have been mentioned in 

earlier sections. 

The Bamiyan Buddhas – Afghanistan 

You may remember the destruction of these colossal statues in Afghanistan – in the 

name of religion – in 2001. The discussions, representations, and mis-representations 

of what was going on here is very interesting to learn more about. An interesting 

exercise here would be to write down what you may know about this episode, and 

what you think were the issues at stake here – just in note form. (If you are not 

familiar with the story do some WWW research to see the more general discussions/ 

media discussions which are available; again noting key points which seem to be 

being made). Then read at least one of the articles below; and reflect on their rather 

different understandings/representations of what was going on – and how these 


ancient religious statues, largely unknown to the wider world – suddenly became so 

internationally important – after they had been destroyed. 

Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C. 2003. Dismembering/disremembering the Buddhas, 

Journal of Social Archaeology 3(1): 75-98. 

Flood, F. B. 2002. Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the 

Museum, The Art Bulletin 84(4): 641-659 (e-link) 

The extent to which archaeology itself can get implicated in fierce, and even deadly religious 

disputes is well-exemplified in the case of Ayodhya, in India. In 1992 this sixteenth century 

mosque was destroyed by Hindu militants, acting at least in part at the instigation of political 

organizations. Both Muslims and Hindus claimed the site, one as the site of an ancient mosque, 

and the others claiming that it was a holy site, the supposed birthplace of the mythical king 

Rama. The 1992 event was widely reported in the international news media, lead to bloody 

riots in India and in neighbouring Bangladesh. Hundreds died in the rioting. Archaeology 

has occupied a central role in debates about the site, as it was claimed that archaeological 

excavations had demonstrated the presence of an ancient Hindu temple at the site, predating 

the mosque, which provided a case for Hindu precedence in making their claim on the site. 

[The main archaeological protagonist was known to have links with what most would see as 

an extremist paramilitary Hindu organisation]. 

For the fuller story, read the paper by Bernbeck and Pollock (1996), which provides and 

overview of a still ongoing debate. Three Indian judges ruled that the disputed religious site 

in Ayodhya, claimed by both Muslims and Hindus, should be shared by both communities. In 


a long- awaited and controversial judgment in the nation’s history, the Lucknow bench of the 

Allahabad high court decided against the claim by Muslim community representatives that 

they should be allowed to rebuild the mosque, demolished by the a mob of Hindu extremists 

in 1992. Instead, the site of the mosque would be split between two Hindu groups and one 

Muslim group, they said (for the 2,000 page judgment, see http://rjbm.nic.in/ ). As Bernbeck 

and Pollock remind us in the paper, this case reminds us of more general links between the 

past and the present, and how the past – in the case religious pasts (real or imagined) actually 

do matter in the here-and-now. 

Conclusion 

In this section you have had a range of materials to look at, hopefully bringing together and 

reinforcing ideas about a number of themes that we have looked at previously. The papers 

which relate to burial practices, for example, will hopefully have clarified a number of issues we 

have previously seen, while making wider linkages across time and space, one of the benefits 

of taking a wider comparative perspective in our studies. 


Aston, M. 1973. English ruins and English history: the Dissolution and a sense of the Past, 

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 36: 231-55. (available online – elink) 

Bagge, S. 2005. Christianization and State formation in Early Medieval Norway, Scandinavian 

Journal of History 30(2): 107-34. (online) 

Becker, F. 2009. Islamic reform and historical change in the care of the dead: conflicts over 

funerary practice among Tanzanian Muslims. Africa 79(3): 416-434 

Bernbeck, R. and Pollock, S. 1996. Ayodhya, Archaeology, and Identity. Current Anthropology 

37(1): 138-142. 

Blair, J. 2005. The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Bowes, K. 2007. “Christianization” and the Rural Home, Journal of Early Christian Studies 

15(2): 143-170. 

Bowes, K. 2008. Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity, 


Clendinnen, I. 1982. Disciplining the Indians: Franciscan Ideology and Missionary Violence in 

Sixteenth-Century Yucatán. Past and Present 94: 27–48. 

Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. 1986. Christianity and Colonialism in South Africa. American 

Ethnologist 13(1): 1-22. 


Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. 2008. The colonization of consciousness. In Lambek, M. (ed.) A 

Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 464-78. 

Derks, T. 1997. The Transformation of Landscape and religious representation in Roman Gaul. 

Archaeological Dialogues 4: 126-47. 

Finch, J. 2003. A Reformation of Meaning: commemoration and the parish church c.1450-c.1550, 

in Gaimster, D. and Gilchrist, R. (eds) The Archaeology of Reformation c.1480-1580, 


Flood, F. B. 2002. Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum, 

The Art Bulletin 84(4): 641-659 (e-link) 

Gaimster, D. and Gilchrist, R. (eds) 2003. The Archaeology of Reformation 1480-1580, Leeds: 

Maney Publishing. 

Gallagher, D. B. 1998. Holyrood Abbey: the disappearance of a monastery, Proceedings of the 

Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 128: 1079-1099 

Gazin-Schwartz, A. 2001. Archaeology and folklore of material culture, ritual and everyday 

life. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(4): 263-80. (e-link) 

Gilchrist, R. 2003. ‘Dust to Dust’: revealing the Reformation dead. In Gaimster, D. and Gilchrist, 

R. (eds.) The Archaeology of Reformation 1480-1580. Leeds: Maney, 399-414. 

Gilchrist, R. 2008. Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials. 

Medieval Archaeology 52: 119-159. 

Gilchrist, R. and Sloane, S. 2005. Requiem: the medieval monastic cemetery in Britain, London: 

MOLAS. 

Graham, E. 1998. Mission archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 17: 25-62 

Greene, S. E. 2002. Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter A History of Meaning and Memory 

in Ghana, Indiana: Bloomington. 

Habig, M. A. 1945. The Franciscan Provinces of Spanish North America [Concluded]. The 

Americas (Academy of American Franciscan History) 1 (3): 330–44. 

Halevi, L. 2004. The Paradox of Islamization: Tombstone Inscriptions, Qur’anic Recitations, and 

the problem of religious change. History of Religions 44(2): 120–52. 

Horton, M. 1996. Shanga. London: BIEA 

Johnson, M. 2009. The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity, Cambridge: CUP. 

Lane, P. 2001. The archaeology of Christianity in global perspective, In Insoll, T. (ed.) Archaeology 

of World Religion, London: Routledge, 148-81. 


Lee, A. J. 1990. Spanish Missions. APT Bulletin 22 (3): 42–54. (available online) doi:10.2307/1504327. 

Lewis, I. M. 1983. The Past and Present in Islam: the case of African “Survivals”. Temenos 19: 

55-67. 

Lydon, J. and J. Ash 2010. The Archaeology of Missions in Australasia: Introduction International 

Journal of Historical Archaeology 14(1): 1-14. 

Mire, S. 2007. Preserving Knowledge, not Objects: A Somali Perspective for Heritage 

Management and Archaeological Research. African Archaeological Review 24: 49-71. 

Orser, C. E. 1994. The Archaeology of African-American Slave Religion in the Antebellum South. 

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4(1): 33-45. 

O’Sullivan, D. 2006. The ‘Little Dissolution’ of the 1520s, Post-Medieval Archaeology 40 (2): 

227-258. 

Russell, A. E. 1997. Material Culture and African-American Spirituality at the Hermitage, 

Historical Archaeology 31(2): 63-80. 

Weber, M. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Scribner. 

Webster, J. 1997. Necessary comparisons: a post-colonial approach to religious syncretism in 

the Roman provinces. World Archaeology 28 (3): 324-338. 

Wilkie, L. A. 1997. Secret and Sacred: Contextualizing the Artifacts of African-American Magic 

and Religion, Historical Archaeology 31(4): 81-106. 

Yasin, A. M. 2009. Saints and Church in Late Antique Mediterranean, Cambridge: CUP. 


SECTION 10 

Archaeology, Religion and Belief 



Archaeology, Religion and Belief 

Core readings 

Edwards, D. 2005. ‘The Archaeology of Religion’, in Díaz-Andreu, M., Lucy, S., 

Babic, S. and Edwards, D. The Archaeology of Identity. London: Routledge, 110- 

28. (also in e-book) 

Fogelin, L. 2007. The Archaeology of Religious Ritual, Annual Review of 

Anthropology 36: 55-71. (paper, in Section 1 & e-link) 

 

Bradley, R. 2003. A Life Less Ordinary: the Ritualization of the Domestic Sphere 

in Later prehistoric Europe, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13 (1); 5-23. 

This is the time to reread some of the texts you read at the start of the module, 

perhaps finding that they are easier to read than they were on first reading. 


Brück, J. 1999. Ritual and Rationality: some problems of interpretation in 

European archaeology, European Journal of Archaeology 2: 313-344. (also 

e-link) also Reprinted in Insoll, T. (ed.) The archaeology of identities: a reader, 

Abingdon: Routledge [pp. 281 ff - available as e-book]. 

Dowson, T. 2009. Re-animating Hunter-gatherer Rock-art Research, Cambridge 

Archaeological Journal 19: 378-387 (e-link) 

Barlow, J. 1993. Archaeology and Belief in the Roman World: an Iconoclast’s 

Approach. Australasian Historical Archaeology 11: 120-123. (e-link) 

Introduction 

Now that we are approaching the end of the module we would like you to concentrate now on 

consolidating your reading, and continue to draw together the varied strands of investigation 

we have been looking at. Most of the readings will be directed towards that purpose, either 

revisiting some papers we looked at previously (perhaps having acquired some different 

perspectives by this point, from when you first read them), or with some additional papers 

which also generally revisit issues you are already familiar with. A few other interesting papers 

which can be accessed online are also highlighted – as ever, try and read as much and as widely 

as possible. At this stage, when you are working towards your second assignment, it will also 

probably be most helpful to have time to re-read texts previously looked at, or simply follow 

up more reading, identified in the bibliographies, which may look to be especially relevant to 

your own interests and/or the assignment you are aiming to address. Returning to parts of the 

textbooks, or other readings, that you may not have read fully will also be useful. 


The Archaeology of Religious Ritual & Fogelin 

The Fogelin (2007) paper you have from section 1 is perhaps a good place to turn back to and 

re-read, in particular for its discussion of issues of ‘ritual’, and how we may think about it. It 

makes the point, which we hope we have made clear, in the importance of having a sense of 

the historical background to our understandings of, and approaches to, religion and ritual. 

The usefulness of looking at practice (and ritualization), rather than attempting to find 

meanings is also perhaps one key lesson. The work of Catherine Bell is very important in this 

respect. But also note that she urges us to think in terms of the characteristics of ritual-like 

activities, keeping our thinking ‘open’. It is interesting that in a contribution by her to a quite 

recent book on the Archaeology of Ritual (Kyriakidis 2007) she was quite explicit about the 

impossibility, and undesirability, of trying to find a definition of ritual, that everyone could 

agree on. She would suggest that this is not going to happen. As she says: 

“Several speakers argued that we need to define ritual so that we can better talk to one 

another, as if our problems interpreting a ritual site lay in communicating with each other. A 

clear definition, they suggest, will establish clarity in the discipline and in all the thousands of 

conversations of which it is composed. This position reminds me of a colleague of mine who 

did much to establish the study of ritual in the 1970s and ever since then has argued that we 

will get nowhere without a clearer definition of ritual. In 2000, he was still ruing a lack of 

progress in ritual studies which he linked to a failure in this critical area (Grimes 2000: 259-270). 

Well, we are never going to agree on a definition of ritual. We do not want to, nor will it solve 

the problems we face ……” (Bell 2007: 283) 

If a specialist in the field has spent 30 years of their life, without making progress in the terms 

of definition, then perhaps we need to learn from this? As she had said in an earlier text: 

“Critical terms are not critical because they contain answers but because they point to the 

crucial questions at the heart of how scholars are currently experiencing their traditions of 

inquiry and the data they seek to encounter” (Bell 1998: 220-221). 

[So, we can talk about the ‘family’ even though we know full-well that in practice, a ‘family’ 

can vary in meaning across time and space ………. ] 


Figure 10.1 Thuparama Stupa constructed over shrine containing collar bone of 

the Buddha – the oldest in Sri Lanka - at Anuradhapura. (photo Ruth Young) 

Identifying Ritual and Religion? Fogelin then goes on to review some of the issues 

concerning the links between religion and ritual, whether people are necessarily that 

religious anyway, and indeed the extent to which we need to recognise that lots of different 

kinds of actions can be ritualized (and recognizable as such), but not necessarily primarily 

‘religious’. Whether we can accept a fundamental distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ 

is also questioned. Seeing Ritual in terms of action, and behaviours, is one way forward. The 

examples cited here show how such studies may be undertaken. The paper by Walker (Walker 

1999) looking at the ethnography/archaeology of the American South West (looking at the 

religion/religious practices of the Hopi and Navajo, and how they are different) is worth a read 

(available through e-link). 

By contrast, his own work on Buddhist monasteries in India (Fogelin 2003) takes us back to think 

about ritual architecture and its use, both by monks, and by Buddhist pilgrims. He notes 

that ‘some stupas were found in large, open-air complexes that were the focus of pilgrimage. 

Other smaller stupas were located within the worship halls of Buddhist monasteries, often 

carved into the sides of cliffs. In each case, the people who created these temples had to decide 

how to present the stupa for worship, and to accommodate the highly individualistic nature 

of Buddhist worship, while attempting to provide mechanisms to foster group cohesion within 

the developing Buddhist community. Monks designed their own ritual spaces with the goal 

of allowing for the mediation of worship by ritual specialists. In contrast, stupa complexes 


frequented by the laity were designed differently, not to be dominated by ritual leaders, but 

to allow a more open and egalitarian form of group worship. Interestingly, the architectural 

layout of the different stupa complexes suggests that the laity, not the monks, were perhaps 

most interested in individual, meditative ritual.‘ 

Fogelin suggests that his archaeological approach to these sites provides a rather different 

perspective on early Buddhism to those derived from textual sources, which date from later 

periods. This is in many ways the exact opposite of the picture found in the Buddhist religious 

texts – which of course reflect the views of those ritual specialists, and might be suspected 

of being concerned with promoting the role of the ritual specialists, who wrote them.. As 

a whole, the study is a convincing example of the possibilities of architectural analysis in 

addressing questions about both ritual and social order in past societies. As he says “examining 

how people wish to be seen can tell a great deal about who they are” (2003: 150). 

His discussion of Symbols and Power also reminds us how all sorts of symbolic objects – being 

material things – can be controlled and manipulated in much the same way as any other (nonsymbolic) 

object. Those with power (ruling elites etc) can for example, limit access to material 

symbols/objects, just as they can control other resources (food, goods etc). The examples he 

cites from N America are worth reading, and may certainly be useful if you have interests in 

more prehistoric contexts and prehistoric archaeology. Overall, his paper should again remind 

us that there are no ‘easy’ ways to do such research but, as the numerous case-studies we have 

seen make clear, religion and ritual clearly does provide an interesting may of structuring 

research, engaging with interesting questions. 

Prehistoric applications & Bruck 1999 

As a further revisiting of a text you may already have looked at in section 3, at this point perhaps 

re-read this paper by Bruck (1999). This paper takes us back to the issue of how so many of 

our ideas about what religion ‘is’ and what ritual ‘is about’. That prehistoric populations may 

not have recognised our categories of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ certainly needs to be borne in 

mind. In this respect you may encounter many researchers who assume that we can make this 

distinction – and in so doing may be going in the wrong direction. By this stage you may in a 

position to unpick their arguments and show where there may be alternative ways of thinking 

through the problems (‘different’, if not necessarily sating they are ‘wrong’). 

Parts of this article/chapter get quite involved with talking about other archaeologists, but the 

case-studies – looking at Middle Bronze Age archaeological data – is quite interesting. Here 

the focus is on ’odd’ deposits – deposits which would normally be thought about as ‘ritual’. 

The question here being, on what basis do we single out these deposits as ‘different’? Moving 

on from that question - was this sense of difference appreciated by people in the Bronze Age? 


And from that, what may it tell us about the nature of prehistoric rationality? In reading this, 

or re-reading this, how convincing do you find her case, and the points she is making? 

Ritual in the Domestic World & Bradley 2003 

Another reading which has previously be referred to, but you may not have had time to read 

is this revised lecture by Richard Bradley. Having originally been delivered as a public lecture it 

is quite accessible, and makes some useful points. At this stage in the module, many of these 

should be quite familiar by now, and he presents some explicit criticism of various existing 

interpretations, which he thinks suffer from an inadequate theoretical understandings of 

ritual. On p.11, for example, he criticises Venclova’s approach to central European shrines, for 

imposing modern ideas of ritual/religion, and their separation from everyday life. He would 

also say she is wrong to suggest that shrines must be set apart from domestic buildings (we 

‘know’ this need not be the case.. and can find plenty of examples where people have shrines 

within their domestic world), or that they need be in conspicuous places (they may be, as we 

often find examples on hill-tops, for example, but not always..). He also raise the issue of how 

we may recognise votive objects. We ‘know’, for example that many cultures will use quite 

ordinary and humble objects as ‘votives’. 

With him we also revisit the ideas of thinking in terms of ‘ritualization’ (following Catherine 

Bell’s ideas) rather than simply in terms of ‘rituals’. Again, he makes the point of the value of 

such an approach in dealing with behaviour we may actually be able to observe. As he says this 

opens up ways for archaeology to look, for example, at how rituals may develop over time, 

and to trace their social and political associations. He goes on to consider a range of examples 

which may be usefully used in discussing such issues. 

Rock Art revisited & Dowson 2009 

The paper by Dowson takes us back to the issues of shamanism and rock art, and provides a 

useful chance to revisit some of these issues. As he reminds us shamanistic interpretations of 

hunter-gatherer rock arts have in recent years been quite heavily criticized. As he also reminds 

us, much of this criticism draws on some of the same fundamental flaws in the shamanistic 

approach to understanding rock arts. This article briefly revisits some of the key features 

of shamanism and its use in rock-art research, and suggests some ways that both sides of 

the debate have got wrong. He again looks at southern African hunter-gatherer rock art as 

a starting point, and suggests some new ways of understanding rock art, and how similar 

approaches might perhaps be applied in other contexts, in Spain and other parts of Europe. 


Roman world & Barlow 

Having discussed a number of different aspects of religious change in the later Roman world, 

and perhaps thought we were getting some sense of a coherent picture emerging, it may 

be useful just to step back and reflect on where we have got to. A little reading you should 

look at, is by Jonathan Barlow (Barlow 1993). This is interesting in stepping back and raising 

some critical issues which perhaps we need to thing about some more, in how we think about 

religion, and indeed how we discuss it in our narratives. This draws out quite a lot of key points 

which we have encountered at various times during this course (e.g. what is ‘Christian’ burial?); 

it is probably worth taking some structured notes on the text when you are reading it. In the 

light of the wide variety of cases we have looked at during this course, do you think 

he raises some significant questions? 

Religion, Death and Burial 

As Fogelin noted in his paper, one of the most developed subjects within the archaeology of 

ritual are studies of mortuary ritual. The burial of human remains is typically associated with 

rituals, often understood in terms of rites of passage (concerning which the works of Turner 

1966 and Van Gennep 1960 were hugely influential). Parker Pearson’s book remains a key 

introduction to this topic, worth revisiting, and re-reading, as you read more widely in this 

area of research. One key thing to bear in mind is how approaches to the study of mortuary 

ritual tend to have many of the same elements as studies of ritual generally. Where some 

archaeologists focus on the iconographic and symbolic meaning of grave goods, others focus 

more on the processes of interment of the body and the ritual practices that accompanied 

interment. In general, archaeologists have gradually moved away from studies that see 

mortuary ritual as passively reflecting society (telling us about status, etc etc) toward studies 

that see mortuary ritual as actively constructing social orders – as such making such studies far 

more complicated and uncertain, but perhaps also more interesting. 

As we have seen, we may be able to discuss all sorts of issues of status and identity in relation 

to burial, but may also see that religion is often rather indistinctly represented (or rather 

less than we might presume). But, as we saw, magic and rather a simple apotropaic beliefs 

may be quite well-represented, providing insights into beliefs which we may not get from 

other sources of historical data. As we have also seen, other issues, such as the shift from 

cremation to inhumation (or vice versa) may prove to be interesting topics of study, raising 

more fundamental questions about the body, for example, and attitudes to the physical body. 


Archaeology and Religion & Edwards 

The final paper we provide you with is this chapter from ‘The Archaeology of Identity’, which 

was trying to organise some general ideas, and questions, about how we may think about 

religion and religious identities, and some implications for archaeology. It will hopefully also 

be useful in drawing together some of the main points and themes we have been looking at 

in this module. 

The starting point for that chapter was the point that many social scientists (and archaeologists) 

were not really very interested in religion 20-30 years ago, thinking that the modern world was 

becoming secular, and that there were more interesting things to think about than religion. By 

the early 2000s however, we find that this is far from the case, and religion is deeply important 

in the way the modern world works (and doesn’t work). If nothing else this perhaps means we 

might need to understand religion a bit more than we do. Understanding religions we are less 

familiar with - and their history, may also be useful. That the world is not increasingly secular 

would seem quite clear – and the opposite would in fact seem true. The fascination of religious 

studies in Japan (alluded to at the start of the chapter) is that this archetypal modern ‘secular’ 

society in fact has an incredibly rich and varied religious life. Unusually, it also provides an 

example of a society where people are active in several distinct religious traditions at the same 

time (hence the % of the population being Christian/ Shinto/Buddhist can be 200+%). 

In opening up the question of ‘what is religion anyway?’, something we often return to, it is 

certainly important to bear in mind the lessons of anthropological (and historical) thinking 

and the questions they have raised. The extent to which many of our modern conceptions of 

religion are so framed in Enlightenment ways of thinking cannot be avoided (but of course 

ALL our ways of thinking about the world – and where they come from - need to be reflected 

on). We can think about such crucial ideas as well in an Archaeology level 3 course, as well as 

an Anthropology, Philosophy or History course. It is at this level of study that perhaps we really 

start coming to terms with the extent to which the received (‘common-sense’) knowledges 

we bring with us from our previous education may need to be revisited in a more critical and 

thoughtful ways. 

If nothing else we are faced with some challenging questions. Was prehistoric religion 

something qualitatively different? As we have mentioned a number of times, was it the 

literate character of more recent world religions, which really changed their potentials? We 

are of course, not expecting you to have a definitive answer to such questions, but at least to 

recognise that such issues exists and can be explored, and argued about. Some of the examples 

cited from African ethnographic examples may well be helpful. The extent to which ‘belief’ 

may in fact be a relatively insignificant element of much (e.g. African) religious practice, is 

certainly one interesting point to consider. The importance of sharing similar ritual practices, 


and the importance of such practices in maintaining social groups certainly needs to be borne 

in mind (albeit reflecting quite a functionalist approach to religion). 

That shared ritual practices may in fact be a significant component of the archaeological 

traces of prehistoric societies we recover certainly needs to be borne in mind. But then not 

in all societies, so there are potentially interesting avenues for exploring difference between 

different groups. Might this be potentially more interesting than exploring differences in their 

diet, perhaps? – or not? 

Understanding better the historical constructions of ‘religions’, represents a wide-ranging field 

of study in its own right. The large body of scholarship concerning the origins of Hinduism 

(to take a single example), is a fascinating study. The extent to which Hinduism is really a 

mass of different smaller-scale religious practices which have somehow been re-invented into 

a single ‘whole’, perhaps within relatively recent centuries, is well worth a read. The article by 

Lorenzen referred to in the text (Lorenzen 1999) can be accessed online. The debates about 

Hindu origins certainly encompass a range of key issues, which may be encountered in many 

other historical contexts, in relation to very different religions. 

The extent to which non-standardised heterodox forms of religion may exist also represents a 

rich vein of research. We have encountered this in many areas, whether in relation to varied 

burial practices, or to (potentially violent) disagreements within religious traditions, as one 

group strives to assert their monopoly of ‘true religion’, over others. That this may well involve 

more generalised divisions between literate elite religious specialists, and others, is a common 

theme. Our common presumption in favour of the literate religious specialists – we assume they 

know what is ‘correct’ – is perhaps an attitude we might reflect on. Our common encounters 

with terms such as ‘pagan-survivals’, ‘pre-Islamic survivals’, ‘magic’, ‘superstition’ and the like 

perhaps need to be balanced with questioning attitudes about what constitutes ‘authentic’ 

and ‘correct’ religion. 

That religion and religious attitudes may also provide a basis for exploring wider issues relating 

to colonial and imperials worlds, ancient and modern, would seem to be worth thinking 

more about. The idea of the ‘colonization of consciousness’, for example, seems quite helpful 

in identifying some of the wider impacts of colonial encounters and religious mission 

encounters. As in other fields of the material world, where material culture could be actively 

used to affect the world, religion could also be used in a similar way. Its deliberate use in 

creating difference is a case in point. One thing we have seen perhaps through the broad 

historical sweep of this course, is that in some periods, religion would seem to be a much 

lower-profile than in others. But like other cultural attributes, it can easily become used to 

create difference, defining ‘in-groups’, and ‘out-groups’. 


The ways in which the study of religion may be integrated into more general studies of social 

and political change, for example in the development of Greek city-states, or the expansion 

of Roman domination, first of Italy, and later in the spread of the Empire, is of course another 

fascinating field of research. The extent to which religion was, or was not, part of a larger 

imperial ‘package’ is a topic with a wide relevance. In any discussion of this, we are of course 

looking for evidence-based debate, while the need to move beyond our own presumptions, 

formed in our present-day experience of the world, remains crucial. 

As is hopefully apparent in that last reading as it ends, dealing with religion and ritual within 

archaeology is challenging, and difficult. This is an area where careful (theoretical) reflection 

on what we are talking about, and how we may go about it, it crucial. That there is much 

interesting work going on out there, dealing with a huge range of material in different 

contexts, is also hopefully apparent. Some aspects of this you may find more convincing, and/ 

or more interesting than others. Either way, we hope your assignments will provide you an 

opportunity to present your ideas on these topics. 

References and bibliography 

Barlow, J. 1993. Archaeology and Belief in the Roman World: an Iconoclast’s Approach. 

Australasian Historical Archaeology 11: 120-123. 

Bell, C. 2007. Response: Defining the Need for a Definition, In Kyriakidis, E. (ed.) The Archaeology 

of Religion, Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute, 277-288. 

Bradley, R. 2003. A Life Less Ordinary: the Ritualization of the Domestic Sphere in Later 

prehistoric Europe, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13 (1); 5-23. 

Breen, J. 2010. Resurrecting the Sacred Land of Japan: The State of Shinto in the Twenty-First 

Century, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 37(2): 295-315. 



of identities : a reader, Abingdon: Routledge [available as ebook]. 

Bruno, D., Crouch, J. and Zoppi, U. 2005. Historicizing the Spiritual: Bu Shell Arrangements on 

the Island of Badu, Torres Strait, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15(1): 71-91. 

Crawford, S. 2004. Votive Deposition, Religion and the Anglo-Saxon Furnished Burial. World 

Archaeology 36: 87-102. (e-link) 

Dowson, T. 2009. Re-animating Hunter-gatherer Rock-art Research, Cambridge Archaeological 

Journal 19: 378-387 


Fogelin, L. 2003. Ritual and Presentation in Early Buddhist Religious Architecture, Asian 

Perspectives 42(1): 129-154 (e-link) 

Fogelin, L. 2007. The Archaeology of Religious Ritual, Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 55- 

71. (e-link) 

Walker, W. H. 1999. Ritual, Life Histories, and the Afterlives of People and Things, Journal of 

the Southwest 41(3): 383-405. 


© University of Leicester SEPTEMBER 2014 

Leicester LE1 7RH 

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www.le.ac.uk 

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The Archaeology of Religion and Belief

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