Bintliff, J. L. (2014). Sacred worlds or sacred cows? Can we parameterize past rituals? Archaeological Imaginations of Religion. T. Meier and P. Tillessen. Budapest, Archaeolingua:

ARCHAEOLINGUA

Edited byERZSÉBET JEREM and WOLFGANG MEID

Series Minor31

BUDAPEST 2014

ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMAGINATIONS OF RELIGION

Edited by

THOMAS MEIER and PETRA TILLESSEN

Front Cover IllustrationOur “cover girl” shows one of the most famous paintings of German romanticism: “Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer” (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog) painted by Caspar David Friedrich in 1818. We believe this painting to be an especially suitable cover because many of archaeologists’ convictions on prehistoric religion are deeply rooted in romanticism. To name only a few we want to point to frequent statements on religion as the irrational, i.e. non-functional, on natural sacredness of sites (“naturheilige Plätze”) and we point to emotional and experiential approaches to religion and especially to phenomenology. Friedrich’s painting includes many of these aspects, most obviously the emotionality of a magnifi cent landscape. Moreover the fog may be interpreted as a metaphor for the hidden religions of the past that some

archaeologists seek to reveal (or revive?).

ISBN 978-963-9911-24-6

HU-ISSN 1216-6847

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2014

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Table of Contents

Preface by the editors ......................................................................................... 7

THOMAS MEIER together with PETRA TILLESSENArchaeological imaginations of religion: an introduction from an Anglo-German perspective ................................ 11

JOHN BINTLIFFSacred worlds or sacred cows? Can we paramaterize past rituals? ....... 249

ERICA HILLImagining animals in prehistoric religions ............................................ 265

ROBERT J. WALLISAnimism, ancestors and adjusted styles of communication: Hidden art in Irish passage tombs .......................................................... 283

MIRANDA ALDHOUSE-GREENStyle over content .................................................................................. 315

LIV NILSSON STUTZDialogues with the dead. Imagining mesolithic mortuary rituals .......... 337

KATJA HROBAT VIRLOGETConceptualization of space through folklore. On the mythical and ritual signifi cance of community limits ................ 359

TIINA ÄIKÄSThe concept of liminality and Sámi sacred landscapes ......................... 383

About the authors ........................................................................................... 401

Sacred Worlds or Sacred Cows? Can We Paramaterize Past Rituals?

JOHN BINTLIFF

AbstractIn this paper I shall present the problems being brought into Archaeology through an overemphasis on the ritual aspects of past societies to the exclusion of other aspects of life. A reintegration is proposed without sacrifi cing the unique features of human behaviour, whether religious, social or economic.

It has long been a customary joke within Archaeology, with more than a grain of truth in it, that if we don’t know what an object or structure is for, there is a tendency to call it “ritual”. A humorous parallel is shown in Fig. 1. However, over the last generation, Archaeological Theory in Western Europe (far less so elsewhere in the rest of the World), has moved its intellectual focus from the deep certainties of Modernism, when citizens might still barricade the streets to force major change in the real world (Fig. 2: Delacroix’s painting of 1830 ‘Liberty Leading the People’), to the playful uncertainties and deliberate “superfi ciality” of Postmodernism (neatly summed up in Fig. 3: Delacroix demasculated, for citizens who merely fi ght to be stylish). For many archaeologists, this means a retreat from the confi dent exploration to discover the truth about the Past typifying the New Archaeology of the 1960’s (likewise with neat contemporary culture parallels in the ethos of the technologically-boosted heroic teamwork of Star Trek: Fig. 4), to the touchy-feely, individualistic, agent-centred approach of Post-Processualism (perhaps encaptured in Fig. 5: the moody prehistoric Celt, an appropriate icon for the 1990’s in Archaeology and onwards, and certainly in Fig. 6: Tilley’s [TILLY 1994] sacred laws for understanding the sensuous and sanctifi ed use of space and landscape by everyone living before Modernism). Also relevant to our theme is the extraordinary change that has occurred in offi cial attitudes to Stonehenge visitors: till not long ago New Age crowds were legally and physically discouraged from approaching and “worshipping” inside the monument, where “serious” or no public were permitted (Fig. 7). Now every British archaeologist worth his/her theoretical salt is competing to outdo each other in elaborating new theories on the ritual signifi cance of the complex, whilst

250 John Bintliff

archaeology students from Reading University are seen on television spending the night there playing bongo-drums to recreate mystical vibrations off the stones.

In other words, Ritual or Religion have now become central to our current theoretical perspectives, so much so that it can seem to be squeezing out consideration of other aspects of past life. Without wishing to deny that all societies possess ritualised behaviour (including secular rituals as well as those with a metaphysical signifi cance), and religious belief seems to be present

Fig. 1. Archaeologists can have diffi culties working out what something in the past was really for. This is a humorous example courtesy of Lights cigarettes

251Sacred Worlds or Sacred Cows? Can We Paramaterize Past Rituals?

Fig. 2. ‘Liberty leading the People’, by DELACROIX (1830)

Fig. 3. The Postmodern take on fi ghting for Liberty, fi ghting to be stylish by fashion company Principles

252 John Bintliff

amongst members of every known recorded society, Social Anthropology and History teach us to observe how such activities and mentalities are embedded in the other spheres of human life, which have equal value in time spent, or importance, for the successful functioning and reproduction of a given society. Let me provide some well-documented examples of known ritual contexts where this relationship is very clear. Firstly, let us take the Parthenon, or central cult centre for the ancient city of Athens, dedicated to its patron divinity the goddess Athena. It was paid for in large part by the fi nancial tribute exacted from the frequently-unwilling member-cities of its Aegean maritime empire, whilst its most famous frieze portrays, in a shameful display of arrogance, the citizens of Athens parading before the admiring glances of the Olympian gods (FOXHALL 1995). In a curious twist of History, Athens came to represent the essence of Classical Greek achievement through the dominance of its writers and artists in

Fig. 4. Heroic icons of Modernist exploration linked with scientifi c credentials, small-screen idols from Star Trek


Fig. 5. An appropriate icon for the touchy-feely individualism of 1990’s-plus Post-Processualist Archaeology: a moody Celt

Fig. 6. Tilley’s global theory of why modern people are totally different from all pre-modern people (from TILLEY 1994)

254 John Bintliff

Fig. 7. Till very recently these were the undesirable New Age crowds at Stonehenge

Fig. 8. In Classical Greek funerary art, everyone is shown in their right

role and social status (from LEADER 1997)


what has been passed on to posterity. When Communists and other dissidents from 20th century AD democratic governments or military regimes in Greece were exiled to the island of Macronisos, one of the tasks set for prisoners to re-educate them in “proper” Greek values was to build miniature Parthenons (HAMILAKIS – YALOURIS 1996).

My next example comes likewise from Ancient Greece: Classical tombstones. A commemoration of a man or woman on a graveyard tomb frieze appears at fi rst sight to capture them in a casual everyday moment, memorializing their normal presence in an unguarded instant, like a hidden camera-shot. Yet the images selected (Fig. 8) are repetitive and stereotyped, anything but random moments (BEARD 1991; LEADER 1997). Everyone is shown in their right place in the social order. Here the deceased is shown seated at home (the proper place for an Athenian adult woman), attended by a servant-girl (with contrasted hair, dress and scale), examining her jewellery (not in any way a leisure pursuit, rather it symbolizes the dowry-wealth she brought into the household at marriage).

Tombs from the Renaissance of Italy, despite their location inside churches, offer even more intrusive forms of political and social messages (PAOLETTI – RADKE 1997): take for example the Visconti funeral monument in Milan (Fig. 9), upon which rides a warleader readier for intercity battle and mercenary service than to humbly meet his maker. Or in Naples, the sepulchre of the Angevin King Robert, dominates the high altar of the church and

Fig. 9. The Visconti funeral monument in Milan (from PAOLETTI – RADKE 1997)

256 John Bintliff

even the crucifi ed Christ below (Fig. 10). Lastly, also from Naples, a powerful patron inserts his full-sized effi gy for posterity (below left) into a lifelike circle of mourners around the dead Christ (Fig. 11).

Moving back in time to Bronze Age Crete, rethinking of the function and plan of the First Palaces of the Minoan civilisation during Middle Bronze Age times, and their Early Bronze Age predecessors, has led iconoclastic researchers such as Jan Driessen and Ilse Schoep (DRIESSEN – SCHOEP et al. 2002) to question whether such building-complexes acted as control centres for early states and their ruling elites, as usually interpreted. They reconstruct (Fig. 12) open courts with scattered building blocks around, forming ceremonial areas for a wide public. Perhaps no single elite controlled even these ritual events, rather competing leading families vied to plan communal rituals. Only in the later, Second Palace era, especially near its end, do they allow for enclosure of these courts and for a more isolated elite class restricting access to the palaces. The totalitarian systems

Fig. 10. The tomb of King Robert of Anjou in Naples (from PAOLETTI –

RADKE 1997)


Fig. 11. A lifesize terracotta lamentation from Naples (from PAOLETTI – RADKE 1997)

Fig. 12. Reconstruction of an early open ‘Courtyard Complex’ as the precursor of the Minoan palace at Malia (from DRIESSEN et al. 2002)

258 John Bintliff

ruled by intermarrying kings and queens, if they ever existed, are now relegated to the tail-end of a more communitarian and religious function for palaces and the society centring around them.

Yet once again one must raise doubts as to the possible purity of religious life being reconstructed. Is it likely that these elaborate centres and the regional communities focussed onto them existed without mechanisms for limiting violence and solving disputes, or could be built by voluntary labour from rich and poor without management? The remarkable poverty of weapons, as material objects, and later, on palatial archive tablets, makes Minoan Crete strikingly different from contemporary societies elsewhere in the Aegean and Near East, implying strong social mechanisms limiting individual action. Moreover, if we take estimates of the size of populations dwelling in the towns associated with the Minoan palaces, the necessary geographical catchment required to feed them (cf.

Fig. 13. A systemic model of past societies by DAVID CLARKE (1968)


BINTLIFF 2002), reaches well into their surrounding countryside and across rural settlements, arguing for a necessary control by the palace-towns of surpluses from the same regions they serviced in ritual ceremonies. All in all, the older suggestion of small statelets in which economic and religious control were linked to a regional class of intermarrying elite families seems still not far off the mark to explain all the evidence we possess.

Putting ritual and religion into a permanently-interactive nexus with other important aspects of society seems then a more logical and realistic step than isolating and privileging such activities. This was clear in David Clarke’s 1968 (CLARKE 1968) system’s model of a past society (Fig. 13), but actually his model was merely a redrawing with some variation of Grahame Clark’s 1957 (CLARKE 1957) model of the same nexus of linked behaviours (Fig. 14).

Fig. 14. A systemic model of past societies by GRAHAME CLARK (1957)

260 John Bintliff

As proposed earlier, when we review the development of Archaeological Theory from New into Post Processual modes, we might reasonably seek their roots in the wider popularity and succession in general Western Thought of Modernism then Post Modernism, and in turn contextualize their opposing ways of seeing the world into much longer-lived polarisations, Nietzsche’s

Fig. 15. The future of archaeological theory (BINTLIFF 1993)

Fig. 16. A famous Processual archaeologist confronted by Mystical Art (Colin Renfrew)


Apollonian and Dionysian modes of thought (BINTLIFF 1993) (Fig. 15). As the examples above have suggested, perhaps it is time to reconcile these out-of-phase contradictory theoretical positions as two sides of a single more complex coin, in which they are complementary rather than oppositional (BINTLIFF 2009).

Nonetheless, there have been attempts to ‘domesticate’ one of these opposing positions into the other, most famously by Colin Renfrew (RENFREW 1985) (shown on Fig. 16 as “a famous Processual Archaeologist confronted by mystical art”). Renfrew tried to control the seemingly untestable identifi cation of ancient buildings or objects as ritual or religious, by setting up a check-list of properties whose presence could make such labelling increasingly plausible. Whilst this is clearly a signifi cant advance, in that it demands that the archaeologist try to be explicit as to why he or she believes that ritual behaviour is being recognised, it rather leaves out the essence of that activity, in focussing on secondary questions of access or symbolic-signalling. That is why I have felt that the philosopher Wittgenstein was more subtle in recognizing in his later works that humans deploy a set of different discourses to achieve complex communicative goals; these are not reducible to each other but form discrete “word games” with their own rules, to be brought out at the appropriate social moment rather like a specifi c implement

Fig. 17. A translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Discourse Theory into Archaeology (BINTLIFF 2000)

262 John Bintliff

is produced from a capacious toolbox to suit the work at hand (BINTLIFF 2000). I have shown on Fig. 17 what we might consider as useful complementary discourses for Archaeologists approaching “reading” a past society. Life as we live it is a mosaic of interwoven discourses, complementary yet all embedded in action, requiring each one special investigative practices; yet ultimately they are inseparable from each other, just as they are in each individual past actor.

References

BEARD, MARY (1991), Adopting an approach II. In: Tom Rasmussen – Nigel Spivey (eds), Looking at Greek Vases. Cambridge. 12–35.

BINTLIFF, JOHN L. (1993), Why Indiana Jones is smarter than the Post-Processualists. Norwegian Archaeological Review 26, 91–100.

BINTLIFF, JOHN L. (2000), Archaeology and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. In: Cornelius Holtorf – Hakan Karlsson (eds), Philosophy and Archaeological Practice. Perspectives for the 21st Century. Göteborg. 153–72.

BINTLIFF, JOHN L. (2002), Rethinking early Mediterranean urbanism. In: Rüstem Aslan – Stephan Blum – Gabriele Kastl – Frank Schweizer – Diane Thumm (eds), Mauerschau. Festschrift für Manfred Korfmann. Tübingen. 1, 153–77.

BINTLIFF, JOHN L. (2009), The implications of a phenomenology of landscape. In: Eckart Olshausen – Vera Sauer (eds)), Die Landschaft und die Religion. Stuttgarter Kolloquium zur Historischen Geographie des Altertums 9. Stuttgart. 27–45.

CLARK, JOHN GRAHAME DOUGLAS (1957), Archaeology and Society. London.CLARKE, DAVID L. (1968), Analytical Archaeology. London.DRIESSEN, JAN – ILSE SCHOEP – ROBERT LAFFINEUR (eds) (2002), Monuments of

Minos. Rethinking the Minoan Palaces. Liège. FOXHALL, LIN (1995), Monumental ambitions. The signifi cance of posterity

in Greece. In: Nigel Spencer (ed.), Time, Tradition and Society in Greek Archaeology. Bridging the ‘Great Divide’. London. 132–49.

HAMILAKIS, YANNIS – ELEANA YALOURIS (1996), Antiquities as symbolic capital in modern Greek society. Antiquity 70, 117–29.


LEADER, RUTH E. (1997), In death not divided: Gender, family, and the state on Classical Athenian grave stelae. American Journal of Archaeology 101, 683–99.

PAOLETTI, JOHN T. – GARY M. RADKE (1997), Art in Renaissance Italy. London.

RENFREW, ANDREW COLIN (1985), The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi. London.

TILLEY, CHRISTOPHER (1994), A Phenomenology of Landscape. Places, Paths and Monuments. Oxford.

Bintliff, J. L. (2014). Sacred worlds or sacred cows? Can we parameterize past rituals? Archaeological Imaginations of Religion. T. Meier and P. Tillessen. Budapest, Archaeolingua:

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