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So ritual can sometimes be translated as ‘definitely deliberate. These things didn’t just come together by being buried together, and earth movement’ etc.

How does one go about theorising what the ritual might’ve involved, and how seriously do such theories (sorry, probably using the wrong terminology. I know nothing if not that I’m quite ingorant) find themselves being taken?


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Also, excellent thread!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So ritual can sometimes be translated as ‘definitely deliberate. These things didn’t just come together by being buried together, and earth movement’ etc.

I'm not completely sure what you're asking here. Are you asking about ritual deposits and distinguishing them from thing that have simply been dumped or that have ended up together through post-depositional taphonomic processes?

How does one go about theorising what the ritual might’ve involved, and how seriously do such theories (sorry, probably using the wrong terminology. I know nothing if not that I’m quite ingorant) find themselves being taken?

Depends who it is and the data they have available! Sometimes with recourse to anthropological and ethnographic examples (sadly, often in a completely uncritical and consequently staggeringly racist way). Sometimes by drawing upon comparative material from neighbouring regions or periods. Sometimes by making assumptions about the supposedly linear evolution of religious traditions (based on very racist and entirely western and monotheist-centric schemas). Sometimes through wild, flailing inference. Some folks simply refuse to do it and argue that inferring the ritual world of the deep past is impossible.

Surprisingly little is actually written on how we should go about making these inferences - often the bridges we build between data and theory are incredibly vague. My PhD is all about improving the links between data and theory with reference to religious practice in the Bronze and Iron Age Near East - and there's frighteningly little work tackling the issue directly.

People nowadays are very fond of talking about themselves and the experience of humanity broadly using computer metaphors. I can imagine that if this went on for long enough, people might assume that humans had always conceived of themselves this way, even knowing full well that we have not always had computers. The use of the word ritual seems similar to that, except rather than computers the metaphoric framework is religious.

 Manchu wrote:
People nowadays are very fond of talking about themselves and the experience of humanity broadly using computer metaphors.

Are they? Considering only the humanities, it's popular to talk about society as a network or system and actions/persons/ideas as nodes within it, which has been fading in and out of fashion since the 60s, but I don't think it's really about using computers as a metaphor so much as it's that we now associate these terms with computers. Bruno Latour, who developed actor-network theory and is frequently the big name in this in the Anglophone work, has been advocating ditching his original terminology specifically because of its modern digital connotations.

I can imagine that if this went on for long enough, people might assume that humans had always conceived of themselves this way, even knowing full well that we have not always had computers. The use of the word ritual seems similar to that, except rather than computers the metaphoric framework is religious.

I'm not sure the analogy stands up here. However defined, ritual is present in every society that has ever been examined first hand. It is also near-constantly present in ancient texts - Akkadian, Sumerian, Hebrew, Moabite etc all have words for, and explicitly describe, cultic acts whilst they don't have words for 'religion'. As such, we have no reason to doubt that this was always the case. It's not a metaphor for anything, it's just a thing that we frequently have evidence for.

No, I wasn’t referring to fashions in academic jargon but rather popular culture at large. People certainly think of their own memory, for example, as working like computer memory — what was once a term applied analogously to computers has now come full circle to be applied back to humans, although it came back as something completely different from what it originally referenced. That’s just another example. Certainly networks and networking is nothing like fading in what you might think of as lay circles; but I was more referring to the sense in which people see themselves individually, as opposed to collectively in communities and societies, through the lens of computer metaphors.

I’m not sure why you bring up ancient peoples who created written historical records in response to a point about the remoteness of exactly such peoples from pre-historic ones. It seems to me that the Akkadians and ourselves likely have quite a bit more in common than either does with stone age humanity. Yes, the societies you reference described in their own writings what they conceived of, and what we today conceive of in conceptual-historical continuity, as religion, including the notion of ritual. But we don’t have any such sources for pre-historic people. We have items that they made and we have paintings, or what we call paintings in reference to our own conception of art. But we don’t even have an iota of their language, as spoken by themselves.

Sorry I didn't realise my last question had already been asked

I was wondering though how do you avoid putting too much emphasis on things that survive over those that degrade, e.g. amphora over textiles.
Is it like wood where you can look at different types of soil and say 'ah there was once a lot of textiles here' or do you have to assume that places needing a lot of wine and oil would necessarily need lots of degradeable goods as well?

 Kroem wrote:
Sorry I didn't realise my last question had already been asked

I was wondering though how do you avoid putting too much emphasis on things that survive over those that degrade, e.g. amphora over textiles.
Is it like wood where you can look at different types of soil and say 'ah there was once a lot of textiles here' or do you have to assume that places needing a lot of wine and oil would necessarily need lots of degradeable goods as well?

Beyond acknowledging the nature of the record and the consequent gaps in the data there's not a huge amount you can do, really. You can make inferences about what is likely to be missing, sometimes with quite a lot of details based on other material. For example, we know a fair bit about textiles in some periods and regions from texts and art, or can make pretty strong and nuanced inferences as to what types and qualities of fabrics were being produced based on spindle whorl size and loom types. The important thing is to try and ensure you don't fill in the blanks too blithely, I guess.

I've been teaching a seminar for 1st year undergrads for a few years where we have them interpret modern people from their rubbish (whatever [clean-ish] rubbish we have in our research office) and then remove all the organics and have them do it again to drill in how rapidly the dataset vanishes. Most universities do something similar, so it gets hammered into students early that we're trying to make a jigsaw out of a a fraction of the pieces and we don't know what the whole picture looks like or how much of it is missing.

Haha that's funny, I bet the students love doing that! Although I can see the logic of the exercise.

Like you said I can see how acknowledging what can't be known is better than making shakey guesses. It is like with laws; where you can know what was promulgated but not if anyone actually enforced or obeyed it!

Context is the key thing here, it's a really important part of archaeology. As we excavate, we record things and photograph and discuss as we go. We plan meticulously, particularly in urban excavations when there are so many layers of soil on top of each other. Each change in colour of the soil or difference in sediment represents an event in time, so each must be recorded and the finds associated give us an idea of dates.

One misconception of archaeologists I think is that finding really important stuff is easy. Sure, there are a few examples of this, like the flint blades found all around the ground in parts of Sudan and the Arab Peninsula (though you have to know what to look for), but most stuff is far harder, and the incidents of someone just happening to stumble something like a t-rex skeleton is extremely rare, let alone the idea that the whole thing will be excavated with a few swipes of a brush or blows from a pickaxe.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
One misconception of archaeologists I think is that finding really important stuff is easy. Sure, there are a few examples of this, like the flint blades found all around the ground in parts of Sudan and the Arab Peninsula (though you have to know what to look for), but most stuff is far harder, and the incidents of someone just happening to stumble something like a t-rex skeleton is extremely rare, let alone the idea that the whole thing will be excavated with a few swipes of a brush or blows from a pickaxe.

That's palaeontology. Microliths aren't easy to find either!

You are entirely right that the ease of data recovery is hugely variable by period and region, though. Where I work, we find pottery from the Early Bronze Age through the Islamic period all over the surface and throw away buckets full of it every day when we're excavating because we find such vast quantities of diagnostic stuff. In the UK every, individual undiagnostic sherd would be worth keeping on most sites.

 Manchu wrote:
Now, is that what you mean by a ritual, including in the sense that it is mundane. How about if I visit the grave of my grandfather every year on the anniversary of his death. That’s an example of something only I do, by myself, but is it a ritual?

In this example, unless your grandfather is someone famous like Jim Morrison or Winston Churchill, I'd personally call this a personal ritual, as there is some "activity" involved. . . however on the social level, I'd call this a tradition, as many people visit the graves/grave markers of departed relatives on the anniversary of their passing, it is the "same" for everyone, even if specific relatives are different.

I happen to agree with you that differentiating ritual, tradition and other synonymous terms can muddy the waters some, especially as we're dealing with human culture it is hard to come up with hard and fast "rules" that universally apply across the breadth of time and society.

The reason for the differentiation is more for our need in order to better interpret the data we find. The honest answer is that it's just not easy, which is why we devote ludicrous amounts of time and energy to try and find out why.

To the grave visiting question: I'd argue that even you just doing it by yourself is ritual because of the association of death, it's a specific act of remembrance for you yes, but it's also part of a huge culture wide system where we have numerous examples of people doing the same thing for different relatives. Perhaps you leave the flowers on graves or a book or a treasured possession there. If that graveyard was in centuries time excavated (hypothetically) archaeologically all the things deposited there may appear on the record. Perhaps not everything survived but at a different grave a similar thing would survive and all these examples together give us an a much greater understanding of what might have been happening then. From there we can diffuse the information and look for patterns that might suggest personal individualities or religious meaning in the act.

An interesting part of this so far is I've noticed relies on understanding how archaeologists work, so the questions asked about certain topics depend on what we do on site as well as post excavation.
Hopefully when I've got a bit more time I'll write up something about that, maybe with a few old site videos I've taken to give an idea.

Again thanks for all the replies they've been great so far and please do keep going.

I miss studying under Hutton! My very favourite pre Roman Britain authority, helps that he is a lovely bloke as well.

 Manchu wrote:
I’m not sure why you bring up ancient peoples who created written historical records in response to a point about the remoteness of exactly such peoples from pre-historic ones. It seems to me that the Akkadians and ourselves likely have quite a bit more in common than either does with stone age humanity. Yes, the societies you reference described in their own writings what they conceived of, and what we today conceive of in conceptual-historical continuity, as religion, including the notion of ritual. But we don’t have any such sources for pre-historic people. We have items that they made and we have paintings, or what we call paintings in reference to our own conception of art. But we don’t even have an iota of their language, as spoken by themselves.

I don't think we've any reason to assume we're far more like Akkadian-speakers (important note - 'Akkadian' in reference to texts refers to a linguistic category, NOT an ethnic, cultural, or political group) than they were Neolithic populations, but that aside:

No, we don't have textual sources for prehistoric societies, so the closest populations are a useful source. Insofar as we understand the process, Northern Mesopotamian society saw kinship-based prehistoric populations urbanise (very quickly) and maintain many of their traditions - with large sectors of their society living the same lives they had been prior to the urban phenomenon. For my money, they're a decent way into the lives of the people that immediately preceded, and, for a time, lived alongside, them.

In every society where we can do this and in every instance where we have an ancient historic populace writing about a prehistoric one activities which modern people would colloquially call ritual are present. Many assemblages of similar character to those that are the manifestations of these phenomena also exist in a range of prehistoric contexts. Whilst burying an infant in a jar under the wall of a structure may have meant something very different at Neolithic Çatalhöyük than it did ten minutes walk away at Early Bronze Konya, I don't think it's a leap to call both meaningful acts associated with socially structured perceptions of supernature. Given these types of evidence, I don't think it is unreasonable to place the balance of probability of it being ubiquitous.

It is of course possible to argue that you simply cannot access the cognitive world of the deep past, or that any cheonological or geographical distance makes comparison invalid, and people make the argument. It's fallen out of favour since the advent of postprocessualism in the late 70s/early 80s but it's still around in the more positivist sub-disciplines. It's a valid perspective, but I'm interested in the specifics of how people understood and interacted with their world, however difficult that may be, and you have to work with the data available.

For what it's worth, I don't think ritual is a useful term due to its vagueness. It's only helpful in very general discussions of structuration or habitus where grouping religious, political, and other socially-structured ideological systems is acceptable - and all my work is about getting rid of generalised discussions of these aspects of human life. I try to avoid using the word ritual entirely in academic contexts unless I'm forced to quote someone directly (and am usually doing so to critique the term!) - and I work specifically on religious practice. I tend to use 'explicitly religious practice', 'political performace' and other such phrases to try an capture things that fall under the ritual umbrella in modern use. As it goes, my girlfriend, who's also a religion-focussed near eastern archaeologist and one further into her career than me, fundamentally disagrees and loves using 'ritual' all the time. I think there's a lot to do with the institutions we came through in that - Glasgow archaeology (me) is far more theory heavy than Cambridge oriental studies (her) is.

nfe wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
One misconception of archaeologists I think is that finding really important stuff is easy. Sure, there are a few examples of this, like the flint blades found all around the ground in parts of Sudan and the Arab Peninsula (though you have to know what to look for), but most stuff is far harder, and the incidents of someone just happening to stumble something like a t-rex skeleton is extremely rare, let alone the idea that the whole thing will be excavated with a few swipes of a brush or blows from a pickaxe.

That's palaeontology. Microliths aren't easy to find either!

You are entirely right that the ease of data recovery is hugely variable by period and region, though. Where I work, we find pottery from the Early Bronze Age through the Islamic period all over the surface and throw away buckets full of it every day when we're excavating because we find such vast quantities of diagnostic stuff. In the UK every, individual undiagnostic sherd would be worth keeping on most sites.

Sorry, I often get the two mixed up. As to the excess stuff, is any of it saved? I think that some of it could be sold and the money used to fund additional porjects.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:

nfe wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
One misconception of archaeologists I think is that finding really important stuff is easy. Sure, there are a few examples of this, like the flint blades found all around the ground in parts of Sudan and the Arab Peninsula (though you have to know what to look for), but most stuff is far harder, and the incidents of someone just happening to stumble something like a t-rex skeleton is extremely rare, let alone the idea that the whole thing will be excavated with a few swipes of a brush or blows from a pickaxe.

That's palaeontology. Microliths aren't easy to find either!

You are entirely right that the ease of data recovery is hugely variable by period and region, though. Where I work, we find pottery from the Early Bronze Age through the Islamic period all over the surface and throw away buckets full of it every day when we're excavating because we find such vast quantities of diagnostic stuff. In the UK every, individual undiagnostic sherd would be worth keeping on most sites.

Sorry, I often get the two mixed up. As to the excess stuff, is any of it saved? I think that some of it could be sold and the money used to fund additional porjects.

No worries: common error. Nah, we take it, record it, then just dump it on site. In Israel we leave it all in a big pile besides a seating area we have around information boards so people can lift it if they want. Students often take some. In Iraq it just gets left in the plough furrows!

Our potsherds aren't worth anything - you can literally walk across ANY patch of rural ground in the Near East and find dozens. That aside, I would never endorse selling any artefact of any kind under any circumstances. Puts you on a very dangerous road.

Not archaeology, but an interesting related piece of news...

Student cracks theologian's baffling religious code

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Not archaeology, but an interesting related piece of news...

Student cracks theologian's baffling religious code

Cool.

Really good of Holmes to make a point of focussing credit on Woods. St Andrews' theology department is famously stuffy and old-fashioned and plenty of academics would have simply taken all the credit when they'd identified the key but asked a student to help - hell, many would do it even if the student found it.

EDIT: I say 'really good'. I mean 'basic credit as it's due' - it's just unusual.

Aberdeenshire stone circle initially thought to be thousands of years old identified as modern replica

This is engagement with archaeology at its best!

Reminds me of that episode of Time Team where they dug all sorts of artifacts up on a Welsh farm, all from different time periods before finding a sword placed on top of some easily date-able barbed wire, proving the entire dig had been 'salted' by persons unknown. Even though it was a bust as far as the actual archeology and history was concerned, it was a fascinating insight into the whole process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llygadwy

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Aberdeenshire stone circle initially thought to be thousands of years old identified as modern replica

This is engagement with archaeology at its best!

I really like this. A couple of friends are currently working on a project looking at all the Stonehenge replicas around the world and the diversity of why and how people engage with the past is a lot of fun and an interesting area of study. I'm not sure that 'replica' is a good term for that example, though. It's not mimicking a specific monument, and it's not 'fake' - it's a legitimate circle made of stones... Now it has its own story and its own history and its own agency. It's cool.

 filbert wrote:
Reminds me of that episode of Time Team where they dug all sorts of artifacts up on a Welsh farm, all from different time periods before finding a sword placed on top of some easily date-able barbed wire, proving the entire dig had been 'salted' by persons unknown. Even though it was a bust as far as the actual archeology and history was concerned, it was a fascinating insight into the whole process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llygadwy

This happens to some of us a lot. I frequently find bullet casings below ancient material - who'd have thought that strategically useful points in the landscape in deep history were also useful when you're fighting Lebanon or the US? I've also found myself in a few 1950s IDF latrines pits...

To bring this slightly back round to my original topic intention, I have a general question for people on here. Does the idea of historical accuracy mean a lot to you? Or are you quite happy to accept a great deal of nonsense in say tv and film?

And as an aside to that: if you were to visit a "living history site" (not necessarily a museum) would you expect the organisers or original creators to have professional qualifications? If you visited somewhere like say a Viking settlement or some sort of colonial village in the US would you be okay with the fact that the people running it were just "lifelong enthusiasts"?

If when replying to this you could say what country you were from that would be a big help!

Cheers

I'm more annoyed by people stupidly taking TV/Movies/Games as accurate representations of history than I am by TV/Movies/Games taking liberties with history.

As to the aside, I think it's a matter of budget. There are some places people can be surprised how bone thin the budget is. Most historical sites I know of in the US do have qualified people actually running the show, but are very dependent on lifelong enthusiasts for their day to day affairs.

 Olthannon wrote:
To bring this slightly back round to my original topic intention, I have a general question for people on here. Does the idea of historical accuracy mean a lot to you? Or are you quite happy to accept a great deal of nonsense in say tv and film?

And as an aside to that: if you were to visit a "living history site" (not necessarily a museum) would you expect the organisers or original creators to have professional qualifications? If you visited somewhere like say a Viking settlement or some sort of colonial village in the US would you be okay with the fact that the people running it were just "lifelong enthusiasts"?

If when replying to this you could say what country you were from that would be a big help!

Cheers

UK person here:

1) When it comes to TV and Film my answer is that "it depends". I can be annoyed that a series like NCIS can generally find, investigate, resolve and deal with a murder in around 24-48 hours of their own world with loads of bits of science that don't actually make real world sense. However the series remains generally faithful to its own developed ideals and remains very character driven - even though the science is a "big part" its still the backdrop in many ways. Furthermore I honestly am not well studied in ancient times, I don't know what many things "should" or "should not" be. Furthermore I know enough to know that there's often a vast over simplification when one understands a concept like "the middle ages" wherein a huge span of time and geographic space gets squished down into the most extremes that tend to rise to the top even if some were never at the same time nor place as each other and some are made up and some are half truthes.

I think that a good grounding in proper understanding does help a series though. I think it gives it a more solid backbone both if they go with the realistic approach; but also if they deviate from it because in deviation if they know its a deviation then a presentation of a reasoning as to why there's a deviation has to take place. Ergo it increases the series own world building. However with most peoples very spotty actual understanding many series also have to present the real facts of the era as well. So unless one is well studied chances are the fake and the real require equal display and elaboration.

2) As for that I have no problem what so ever. A degree is just a bit of paper that proves a person can afford in time and money to study and can write good essays. The actual knowledge someone has is a different thing and there are many who hold not a single bit of paper to their name; but who are experts within their fields of interest. Heck I've worked in volunteer positions (conservation) and some of the most skilled and experienced didn't have anything beyond basic school grades, some of which, I suspect, were likely not all that outstanding (which is not a knock on them, just a reflection of how they perhaps paid attention or responded to schooling).
I think in a position where one is interacting with the public the greater skill is being a good communicator and educator; having a passion and the skill to pass on what they know is far more important than certifications.

Now, of course, this assumes that the enthusiasts have a decent level of understanding of the subject, enthusiasm can only carry a person so far, they've got to be able to back it up with actual knowledge and/or the ability to direct a person to where they can further their own understanding. This latter point means even someone with a lower level of understanding can be valuable if they are good at interacting with people can can direct those more eager and receptive toward other staff or resources for understanding.


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 LordofHats wrote:
As to the aside, I think it's a matter of budget. There are some places people can be surprised how bone thin the budget is. Most historical sites I know of in the US do have qualified people actually running the show, but are very dependent on lifelong enthusiasts for their day to day affairs.

This is also very true, its one thing to desire to have all doctors and academics running events and museums; but by and large they are going to cost far too much to employ. Indeed many historical sites often have volunteers, retired people and low pay staff filling many of their more public positions. It fits not just with their limited budgets, but also with the seasonal variation in work and workload. Come the off-season for tourists and many of the tour and interaction jobs are just not needed; so they shift into either another position or role or take a break themselves. So it ideally suits those who can take several months off or shift from public interaction to polishing coins for a while.

Even where there are good budgets there's often a lot of competing interests fighting for that limited money.

 Olthannon wrote:
To bring this slightly back round to my original topic intention, I have a general question for people on here. Does the idea of historical accuracy mean a lot to you? Or are you quite happy to accept a great deal of nonsense in say tv and film?

And as an aside to that: if you were to visit a "living history site" (not necessarily a museum) would you expect the organisers or original creators to have professional qualifications? If you visited somewhere like say a Viking settlement or some sort of colonial village in the US would you be okay with the fact that the people running it were just "lifelong enthusiasts"?

If when replying to this you could say what country you were from that would be a big help!

Cheers

UK originally, NZ now.

Yes, historically means a great deal to me and I get pretty salty when things are not accurate. In the media and in real life. If one is going to the trouble of making a historical programme/book then the least one can do is get it right. Doubly so if your a tour guide...

I would much rather have an enthusiastic amateur than a burnt out academic. I did the ECW trail back in 99 and the amateurs were fantastic (cosplaying helped!) whilst most of the academics had the charisma of a walnut. As per point 1 though, it helps if one knows what one is talking like not thinking the new model army was founded at the start of the war.

UK perspective.

Historical inaccuracy annoys me, especially if it is based upon publicly accepted myths about the past.

I am something of a medieval enthusiast, so something that always particularly bugs me is tissue-paper armour. People wouldn't bother making the stuff if some good-looking hero can just slice though it with a dagger in a reverse grip like it ain't there!

I don't mind things being added or adjusted to suit the story or how it appears on camera, but I do mind things being taking wildly out of context, especially if it is to serve some kind of agenda within the film. Braveheart would be an excellent example here, or the Patriot.

Not at all bothered by amateur enthusiasts running historical museums. At least they are typically enthusiastic. I think degrees do provide beneficial skills in parsing data and critical thinking, but I don't think they are the only ways of learning those skills, and plenty of enthusiasts are very knowledgeable in their chosen areas without falling into common pitfalls.

Any reputable museum will have subject experts to organise and approve the content of the displays.

This is simply basic. You wouldn't organise a museum and have an ice-cream van driver do all the lighting, you would get an electrician to do it.

It in no way invalidates the contribution of enthusiastic amateurs, who often are very knowledgable and engaging with the public.

It's important to remember, however, that those amateurs get their knowledge from books written by experts.

Depends on the show. Is it purporting to be an accurate documentary? Then it should be (I can think of scarily few, sadly). Is it just a show set in a particular period? Then I think provided they're at least attempting to avoid the particularly problematic pitfalls like misrepresenting ethnicities and relentless anachronisms (all-white-British Roman legions in the UK, Picts at Hadrian's Wall, Neolithic druids, homogenised pagans etc) then I don't think it really matters. Little things bug me - horns on Viking helmets, massive stiches on everyone's clothes, leather-fetishism, slashing through plate armour and so on, but if the show isn't claiming to be a docu-drama - then rule of cool wins.

In terms of 'living history' sites, which I'm taking to mean specifically immersive sites with actors going about life 'in the fashion of' X period, I don't think you need professional qualifications at all - though it'd probably be pretty easy to have them staffed exclusively by people with masters level degrees since archaeology is so ludicrously overqualified as a sector, anyway I do think sites telling the public that they are a realistic window into the past have an obligation to be that, though - within reason: speaking English and having plumbed toilets on site for visitors is all fine!

In this instance, the hypothetical living history place is a brand new space, a small team with limited funding but nobody professional within the management. Perhaps a group who work in an office all week and on weekends want to dress up as Vikings and bring other people in to educate them about the past. They are presenting something in a certain light based on how they've say googled it over the years or what they've watched on tv. Would you question their motives or just enjoy the setting as a place to say take the kids or simply enjoy a different weekend experience?

As I'm trying not to skew these too much I'm leaving my opinions out of it for now thanks for the responses though, really interesting