It’s a cliché in archaeology to call anything that can’t be explained ‘ritual’. Indeed, it’s so much of a cliché that it has now become a cliché to say that archaeologists call anything they can’t explain ‘ritual’. But at the heart of this long-running academic joke lies a sobering truth, which is particularly acute for historians of religion and belief – especially if they’re interested, as I am, in reaching back into remote periods when archaeology is our principal guide. That truth is that both archaeologists and historians have become unsure what ritual is or what it is for, which reflects a deep crisis in ritual – and the conceptualisation of human beings as ritual animals – that emerged in the mid-20th century. It was a crisis that afflicted western Christianity in the present, but it also had ramifications reaching into our understanding of the deeper past, aspects of which suddenly became more opaque than ever before.
The Crisis of Ritual
The Crisis of Ritual
The Crisis of Ritual
It’s a cliché in archaeology to call anything that can’t be explained ‘ritual’. Indeed, it’s so much of a cliché that it has now become a cliché to say that archaeologists call anything they can’t explain ‘ritual’. But at the heart of this long-running academic joke lies a sobering truth, which is particularly acute for historians of religion and belief – especially if they’re interested, as I am, in reaching back into remote periods when archaeology is our principal guide. That truth is that both archaeologists and historians have become unsure what ritual is or what it is for, which reflects a deep crisis in ritual – and the conceptualisation of human beings as ritual animals – that emerged in the mid-20th century. It was a crisis that afflicted western Christianity in the present, but it also had ramifications reaching into our understanding of the deeper past, aspects of which suddenly became more opaque than ever before.