China is big, old, and fascinating. Its importance in the larger scheme of things is such that there should be what I call “The China Rule.” This rule would apply as follows. If a scholar claims that history unfolds directionally or according to general rules, s/he must specifically test the claim using China as datum. [...]
Tags:ancestors·canonization·China·Chinese religion·Confucian Cult·Confucius·Imperial Cult·ritual·ritual feasting·sacrifice·spirit feeding·Temple of Culture·The China Rule·Thomas Wilson
There was a time when Paleolithic cave paintings were construed primarily through the lens of “art,” an interpretive stance which assumes that at least some Paleolithic peoples were “artists” who painted for pleasure. Because this lens is so subjective (and creative), all manner of interpretations were offered. Whether prosaic or fanciful, this approach raised troubling [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·art history·ASC·cave art·cave paintings·dark zone art·David Lewis-Williams·doodles·entoptics·flutings·form constants·France·functionalism·hallucination·Jessica Cooney·Kevin Sharpe·Leslie Van Gelder·Paleolithic·petroglyphs·play·ritual·Rouffignac·shamans·symbolism
“I would suggest that, among other things, ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment where the variables (i.e., the accidents) of ordinary life may be displaced precisely because they are felt to be so overwhelmingly present and powerful.
Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the [...]
Tags:accidents·Bare Facts of Ritual·control·Jonathan Z. Smith·lack of control·ritual·variability
Head cheese may not be for everyone but it has an intensely devoted following. Most head cheese recipes call for the removal of brain, eyes, and ears before preparation, but purists scoff at this and include everything except bones. It is doubtful that Upper Paleolithic humans made head cheese; it is too time consuming. It [...]
Tags:Buran-Kaya·cannibalism·crania·Crimean Mountains·defleshing·diet·funeral·Goat's Head Soup·head cheese·head-hunting·mortuary·ritual·ritual behavior·rockshelter·Sandrine Plat·skulls·symbolic behavior·Upper Paleolithic
“It has long been recognized that any interpretation of prehistoric religious behavior should be based on concrete archaeological evidence. Yet evidence for Paleolithic belief systems is extremely scanty, and that which does exist is usually enigmatic — or as [Mircea] Eliade has expressed it, semantically opaque” (Freeman & Echegaray 1981).
Three lines of evidence are typically [...]
Tags:Cantabria·cave·dualism·El Juyo·El Juyo face·figurine·J. Gonzalez Echegaray·L.G. Freeman·Magdalenian·mask·methodology·Mircea Eliade·mobiliary·Orc·overinterpretation·Paleolithic·parietal·parsimony·ritual·Rorschach·sanctuary·Spain·temple
The holy grail of archaeology is to discover the earliest evidence of symbolic thought in humans. Generally speaking, symbolism means that one thing represents or stands for another. In its most basic form, symbolic thought is iconic: an object in the world (e.g., rock) is related to an idea in the mind (e.g., person).
Because this [...]
Tags:Acheulian·April Nowell·arbitrary·art·Berekhat Ram·Fancesco d'Errico·figurines·geofact·icon·iconicity·incisions·Israel·language·linguistics·Morocco·ocher·pigment·ritual·Robert Bednarik·rock art·Saussure·semiotics·symbolic behavior·symbolic thought·symbols·Tan-Tan·Venus·words
If you have ever suffered through an episode of “Ancient Aliens” on the History Channel, you might believe that every megalithic structure in the world was constructed by extraterrestrials:
Apparently inspired by the show, one credulous soul posted this question over at Answers.com: “Can scientists prove that Stonehenge was not built by ancient astronauts?” The pithy [...]
Tags:ancestors·ancient aliens·ancient astronauts·archaeoastronomy·Aubrey Holes·Benjamin Ray·Bronze Age·chieftains·cycles·Durkheim·elites·form·function·Giorgio Tsoukalos·lunar·megalithic·megaliths·neolithic·power·ritual·sarsen stones·solar·Solstice·Stonehenge·Wessex·Woodhenge
Few books in the history of anthropology are better known (but never read) than James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. First published in 1890 (2 volumes), Frazer published a second edition in 1900 (3 volumes), and a rolling third edition between 1911 and 1915 which ballooned to 12 volumes.
Though [...]
Tags:Cambridge Ritualists·comparative mythology·Diana·folklore·James George Frazer·JG Frazer·Kant·magic·myth·Nemi·primitive religion·resurrection·ritual·ritual murder·Robert Ackerman·sacred grove·The Golden Bough·Ur-religion
This statement from an Inuit elder reveals the logic of hunting magic:
Now that we have firearms it is almost as if we no longer need shamans, or taboo, for now it is not so difficult to procure food as in the old days. Then we had to laboriously hunt the caribou at the sacred crossing [...]
Tags:amulets·game spirits·hunting·hunting magic·Inuit·magic·ritual·shamans·taboo
A recent article by Bello and colleagues, published in PLoS One (open access), has generated much attention in the press and blogosphere. The authors report on the earliest directly dated human skull caps, which were excavated from Gough’s Cave in England and are 14,000 years old. Although we cannot determine the precise use of these [...]
Tags:cannibalism·Chris Stringer·Ed Hardy·Gough's Cave·human calvaria·Magdalenian·post-mortem processing·R. Shane Tubbs·ritual·Silvia Bello·Simon Parfitt·skull bowl·skull cap·skull cup·Tibetan monk
