Introduction: Enquiries Into Contemporary Ritual Landscapes

'Landscape' and 'ritual' have been largely discussed in the social and human sciences , although their inter-relatedness has gained little scholarly attention. Drawing on earlier studies of ritual and landscape, as well as the authors' own ethno-graphic works, 'ritual landscape' is suggested here as a useful analytical tool with which to understand how landscapes are produced, and how they, in their turn, produce certain types of being. 'Ritual landscape' recognises different modalities of agency, power-relation, knowledge, emotion, and movement. The article* shows how the subjectivity of other-than-human beings such as ancestors, earth

Past Landscapes: The Dynamics of Interaction between Society, Landscape and Culture, 2018

Rituals are a seemingly indispensable – some might say an all-pervasive – aspect of hu-man existence in premodern and ancient as well as in modern times. In the following, some aspects of archaeology, rituals and landscapes will be examined. At the same time, we demonstrate that archaeological interpretation, like any other scientific work, does not exist in a vacuum, but always has and probably will continue to draw on influences from other academic disciplines.

On the liminal relationship and its zone between sea & land

Revista Chilena de Antropología, 2011

This paper discusses how the social construction of landscape and the sense of identity and territoriality can emerge in relation to a ritual space. Through the analysis of monumental constructions or arrangements of rocks, its topographical connection and the location of cave paintings and cemeteries, a ritualized landscape may be defined. The archaeological information of the Sierras Lihué Calel is employed for this. This area is located in the western sector of the pampean region of Argentina.

2017

An Anthropology of Landscape tells the fascinating story of a heathland landscape in south-west England and the way different individuals and groups engage with it. Based on a long-term anthropological study, the book emphasises four individual themes: embodied identities, the landscape as a sensuous material form that is acted upon and in turn acts on people, the landscape as contested, and its relation to emotion. The landscape is discussed in relation to these themes as both ‘taskscape’ and ‘leisurescape’, and from the perspective of different user groups. First, those who manage the landscape and use it for work: conservationists, environmentalists, archaeologists, the Royal Marines, and quarrying interests. Second, those who use it in their leisure time: cyclists and horse riders, model aircraft flyers, walkers, people who fish there, and artists who are inspired by it. The book makes an innovative contribution to landscape studies and will appeal to all those interested in nat...

2019

Beside their economic, sociopolitical and cultural importance, Europe’s mountainous landscapes have always played and partly still play a central role in spiritual or religious activities and beliefs. Marginal, liminal landscapes or prominent peaks as “stairways to heaven” seem to have always fascinated and inspired people to imagine “supernatural” forces living and acting at these higher altitudes. And indeed, there are many examples of “sacred” alpine summits, glaciers and rocks, caves, lakes or mires where gods, ancestors or spirits lived and interacted with humans during the last millennia. Although the possibilities of archaeology are still limited to discover this invisible power or agency, recent discoveries of material remains already allow a more differentiated idea of ritual activities and the symbolic role of mountains. Therefore, this session aims to explore the nature of sacred or ritual topog-raphies in mountainous and upland landscapes to develop a bigger and more coherent picture of different rituals, their archaeo-logical indicators and the common characteristics of high-altitude “sacred” places. For this, it also seems essential to integrate these transitional topographies into other forms of daily life and economy (e.g. settlements, pastures, hunting grounds, exploita-tion of different raw materials, mobility and trade routes), and to critically explore how the perception of sacred landscapes was entangled with ancient communities. We would like to invite colleagues from all fields of archaeology, history, ethnology, biology, anthropology and other relevant fields to discuss various manifestations and methodological reflections on ritual activities in high altitude locations in a European or even global perspective, from hunter-gatherer societies through pastoral landscapes to the sacralization of mountains during the Modern Age.

In agreement with 'the material turn' in the humanities and social sciences and informed by psychological studies of priming, the authors argue that human action can be deeply influenced by objects and other features of the environment coordinated by ritual practices. They suggest that the moods and behaviors catalyzed by an effective ritual result from a 'mangle' of human and material agencies. But this mangle is not the result of an accidental fusion of disparate elements; rather, they consider it a complex adaptive system in which the organic and inorganic interact in such a way that each component provides some of the necessary conditions for the others' activities. In line with this, there is a need to identify the reciprocally causal relationships among people, places, plants, animals, stones, relics, icons and idols that constitute ritual, an approach they call 'ritual ecology'.

In Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, edited by Bruno David and Julian Thomas, pp. 167-175. World Archaeological Congress Handbook Series. Left Coat Press, Walnut Creek CA., 2008