Rethinking archaeologies of pilgrimage

Abstract

Pilgrimage instigates relationships between phenomena that produce hierophanies, or sacred, enchanting experiences. In this paper I argue that pilgrimage scholars should focus on the relational qualities of pilgrimage in order to rethink and produce more detailed, sensuous descriptions and analyses of this practice. This can be done by employing “relational approaches,” seen here as perspectives that recognize and prioritize the interconnections among persons, places, things, and substances. I further suggest that focusing on movement, the vitality of places and materials, and the senses is useful in thinking about the relational aspects of pilgrimage. Moreover, archaeologists are well-situated to investigate these phenomena and thus can and should push pilgrimage studies in new directions. I provide a case study of the Emerald Acropolis, an 11th-century Cahokian pilgrimage center. Cahokians traveled to Emerald on certain occasions and, while there, manipulated particular substances—earth and water—in ways that gathered otherworldly powers in affective ways.

Death at distance: Mobility, memory, and place among the late precontact Oneota in the central Illinois River Valley

“…Migration has been a contentious issue in archeology, yet its persistence as a topic of inquiry is a testament to its recognition as a fundamental sociocultural process (e.g., Anthony, 1990, 1992; Burmeister, 2000; Hakenbeck, 2008; Härke, 1998; van Dommelen, 2014). Long‐distance travel related to ritual activity is featured prominently in the literature on the precontact American Midwest and Southeast (e.g., Sassaman, 2005; Skousen, 2018; Slater et al, 2014), and among the Oneota in particular, a propensity for regional and local mobilities as related to subsistence, raw material acquisition, and risk management has been particularly well explored (e.g., Edwards, 2020; Hart, 1990; Jeske, 1992; Logan et al, 2001, Theler & Boszhardt, 2006). The focus of this paper, however, is a consideration of the ways that smaller scale, localized mobilities converge with ritual activity and contribute to the creation of emotional landscapes.…”

Assemblages of practice. A conceptual framework for exploring human–thing relations in archaeology

“…It is important here to note that the human sensorium with its five distinct senses (among which sight (Thomas 2008) and hearing are considered the most important) is an Aristotelian construct and part and parcel of the Western Cartesian world view, whereas sensory experience is in reality always synaesthetic and intersensorial (Hamilakis 2011, 210;2013, 410). There has been a concerted effort in recent years to stress not only the importance of emotion and the senses in archaeology, but also how these can be appropriately studied (Day 2013;Fahlander and Kjellström 2010;Fleisher and Norman 2016;Hamilakis 2011;Harris and Sørensen 2010;Houston and Taube 2010;Loren 2008;Mills 2014;Pellini, Zarankin and Salerno 2015;Skousen 2018;Tarlow 2012). As Antczak (2017, 147-48) has urged, part of reassembling assemblages of practice involves the reassemblingwhere possibleof emotion and sensory perception.…”

New Digs: Networks, Assemblages, and the Dissolution of Binary Categories in Anthropological Archaeology

“…But they stop short of claiming that these things are agentive, as suggested in many archaeological renderings of assemblage theory or object‐oriented ontology (see Bray ; Cipolla ; Harrison‐Buck and Hendon ; Jervis ; for other recent views of material culture and archaeological objects, see Chazan ; Nativ ). Though archaeologists who adopt such theories draw from different philosophical sources (often DeLanda , ; Deleuze and Guattari ), the concept “assemblage” remains center stage, typically referring to the set of things, people, and organisms that make up a social context (e.g., Skousen ; Swenson ; Van Dyke ). To concentrate on assemblages is to trace situated interactions and flows of action while also recognizing that some things come to act and form assemblages in ways that exceed human intentions (e.g., Pétursdóttir and Olsen ; see also Pétursdóttir ).…”

“…Other archaeologists employ assemblage theory or relational approaches to examine the practices that constitute landscapes (Harrison‐Buck, Runggaldier, and Gantos ; Skousen ; Van Dyke ; Van Pool and Van Pool ). Skousen (), for example, provides a detailed analysis of the eleventh‐century Cahokian pilgrimage center called the Emerald Acropolis.…”

“…Other archaeologists employ assemblage theory or relational approaches to examine the practices that constitute landscapes (Harrison‐Buck, Runggaldier, and Gantos ; Skousen ; Van Dyke ; Van Pool and Van Pool ). Skousen (), for example, provides a detailed analysis of the eleventh‐century Cahokian pilgrimage center called the Emerald Acropolis. He orients our attention to the practices by which pilgrims layered earth and water onto the mound's facades during major events of the lunar cycle, a practice of construction that was also a process of “enchantment” (e.g., Gell ), which bundled together people and things in meaningful ways.…”