Archaeology of religious change: introduction

Shaw, Jonathan

doi:10.1080/00438243.2013.783968

Cited by 26 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…In modern nation-states, government legislation informed by scientific consensus, shapes public recognition of specific environmental hazards (Holm et al 2015). Viewing religion as 'worldview' (Shaw 2013b), and in contexts such as ancient India where empirical knowledge is often modulated by religio-philosophical bodies, deeper probing of religious perceptions of purity/pollution, or harmful/non-harmful human:non-human relationships is crucial.…”

Section: Archaeology Religion and Environmental Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Shaw

2016

World Archaeology

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This paper assesses archaeology's contribution to debates regarding the ecological focus of early Buddhism and Hinduism and its relevance to global environmentalism. Evidence for long-term human:non-human entanglement, and the socioeconomically constructed element of 'nature' on which Indic culture supposedly rests, challenges post-colonial tropes of India's utopian, 'eco-friendly' past, whilst also highlighting the potency of individual human:non-human epistemologies for building historically grounded models of Indian environmentalism. For early Buddhism,I mediate between two polarized views: one promoting the idea of 'eco-dharma', as a reflection of Buddhism's alignment with non-violence (ahiṃsā), and the alleviation of suffering (dukkha); a second arguing that early Buddhist traditions have been misappropriated by western environmentalism. I argue that the latter view subscribes to canonical models of passive monks removed from worldly concerns, despite archaeological evidence for socially-engaged monastic landlordism from the late centuries BC. Others cite this evidence only to negate Buddhism's eco-credentials, thereby overlooking the human:non-human entanglement theme within modern environmental discourse, while the predominant focus on non-human suffering overlooks convergences between modern and ancient ecological ethics and environmental health. Case studies include examples of Buddhist land and water management in central India, set within discussions of human v. non-human-centric frameworks of well-being and suffering, purity and pollution, and broader Indic medico-ecological epistemologies, as possible models for collective responses to environmental stress.

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Section: Archaeology Religion and Environmental Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Shaw

2016

World Archaeology

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“…We know that reality falls somewhere between "pristine" natives who practice their traditional religions unaltered, and fully Westernised people who converted (Lydon and Burns 2010). But in many ways archaeology has lagged behind in developing better understandings of these dynamics, which is unfortunate as our unique approach to the past has much to offer to discussions of religious change worldwide (e.g., Hayden 2003, Shaw 2013.…”

Section: History and Religious Transformation In Polynesiamentioning

confidence: 99%

After the missionaries: Historical archaeology and traditional religious sites in the Hawaiian Islands

Flexner

McCoy

2016

jps

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Globalisation has a simple mythology. As the story goes, beginning in the 15th century, Europeans began exploring the world. Within a few centuries, the major powers of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain and France had established expansive colonies and empires. Wealth flowing back to Europe from the colonies provided the capital to fuel the Industrial Revolution, and thus the inequalities between the West and the rest of the world were established. Missionaries provided the moral means to rationalise conquest and colonialism through wholesale conversion to Christianity. Anthropologists, historians, and many others, including generations of indigenous peoples, know that this simplistic story does not reflect reality, and yet, many aspects of it continue to shape approaches to archaeological research. We know that people continued to practice traditional religions in various ways long after the missionaries arrived and through to the present. In archaeological studies of indigenous religion in Polynesia, with a few laudable exceptions, the implicit purpose of studying marae, heiau and langi (Polynesian sacred sites) is as a window to the pre-European past, and not as a window to how life changed in a post-European world. In the life history of sites of religious ritual, there is the pre-contact period when they were built and maintained for generations, and there is the modern-day; but the time in-between the traditional and the modern is lost or at least unacknowledged. In this paper we outline several ways to bridge the "prehistory/history divide" (Lightfoot 1995) via religious architecture in Polynesia. We argue that the study of the long-term evolution of indigenous religious practices of Känaka Maoli or Native Hawaiians, including those of the post-contact era, offers a way to take steps towards replacing colonial just-so stories with a more realistic analysis of the past built on archaeological facts (Flexner 2014). Känaka Maoli continue to practice traditional religion in various forms in the present, particularly in engagements with heiau 'temple' sites, and will continue to do so in the future (Kawelu and Pakele 2014, Tengan 2008). What historical archaeology offers is a set of links for understanding

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“…Religious change can have broad ramifications, not only in the ideological realm, but in socio-economic and political structures (Shaw, 2013). The development of dedicated religious specialists (i.e., priests) is an important factor leading to increased social complexity in chiefdoms, states, and empires (Steadman, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying residences of ritual practitioners in the archaeological record as a proxy for social complexity

Kahn

2015

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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a b s t r a c tDedicated ritual specialists often had indispensable roles in ancient religions and significant impacts on political histories. Few studies have developed methodologies for recovering direct evidence for ritual practitioners in the archaeological record. I argue that the study of religious practitioners must take a holistic micro-scale approach, documenting not only the places where ritual paraphernalia (sacra) were stored, but places where priests and their assistants lived and practiced intimate and communal rituals. I begin with a discussion of ethnohistoric and ethnographic data to model what priests did in ancient societies, and what the material correlates of their dwellings and activities might look like. I then present archaeological data from two late prehistoric house sites identified as priest dwellings from East Polynesian. Utilizing multiple lines of evidence, including portable artifacts, botanical specimens, site architecture, and site distribution patterns, I argue that there is close complementarity between the eth nohistoric-ethnographic model and the archaeological remains. That priests' houses houses are often situated within corporate ritual centers speaks to the import of such sites and their associated ceremonial activities in the strategic use ideology to institutionalize social hierarchies and political status, a pattern seen in many other ranked societies in Polynesia and other case studies world-wide.

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Archaeology of religious change: introduction

Cited by 26 publications

References 21 publications

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

After the missionaries: Historical archaeology and traditional religious sites in the Hawaiian Islands

Identifying residences of ritual practitioners in the archaeological record as a proxy for social complexity

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