About This Forum: Social Sciences, Moral and Religious

[marct]

Hi Graphei,

One of my 'guilty' pleasures when it comes to research is Black/Practical/Popular magic. Why? For the simple reason you find out what people really desire in life. Yes, for communal events people will band together and pray for puppies, rainbows, and kittens, but that is only one side to the coin. As long as people have believed in something bigger and more powerful than themselves, people have been trying to harness that power for their own benefit. While you may see it surface more during times of distress or transition, it has been- and always will be, there.

Certainly some form of it at any rate .

What is going in Uganda is unique because ~1% of the population practice indigenous religions. The rest overwhelmingly Christian (42% Catholic) with Muslims representing about 12%. I would be really interested to see if there is some kind of religious syncretism going on- similar to how Catholicism and African/Yoruba religion formed Vodou.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least of there was a syncretic element going on. I've seen the official "belief" figures but, on the whole, that really doesn't say much about either actual belief or practice. 'sides that, there is certainly a long history of "magic" (please note, no "k" ) inside Christianity.

Also, aside from the cultures that were mentioned there is evidence that human sacrifice was practiced by the Minoans on Crete, who had a heavy influence on the Greeks. A dig at Anemospilia had the body of a young man hog tied on what archaeologists believe was an altar with a bronze dagger lodged in his bones. Another dig at Knossos revealed the bones of children who had been slaughtered in a similar manner to sheep and goats. The bones were found in a building archaeologists have dubbed "North House" and I believe no other artifacts were found near the bones.

I'd certainly like to see the references on the Anemospilia dig (I have them on the sacrifice chamber at Knossos). Some of that might have been part of the Sacred King mythos....

In both the cases at Anemospilia and Knossos, archaeologists believe something ritualistic was going on, but why they were doing it is lost to the ages. We, from a 21st century perspective, would like to believe such events were to have an impact on events of cosmological importance, but in these cases, we simply have no religious records to go by.

Not necessarily so, we do have inferential records so we can make arguments from plausibility. Carlo Ginzberg's Ecstacies is a good example of exactly that type of interpretation. Even when we have documentary records, there are always problems with them, usually problems of bias.

Cheers,

Marc

[graphei]

I went digging through my database and the most recent book I found the sacrifice at Anemospilia is mentioned by Kyriakides in Ritual in Bronze Age Aegean: Minoan Peak Sanctuaries. Marinatos put out a book in the early 80s about Minoan sacrifice rituals that delves into it a bit more, if my memory serves me correctly. The going story seems to be that there was considerable seismic activity going on in the region, and a human sacrifice was a last ditch effort to please the gods. The boy (~18) on the altar was already dead and his blood being drained when an earthquake struck and the priest (mid-30s I believe) and priestess (early 20s) were killed. It's been awhile since I had free time to devote to my love of all things ancient (damn al-Qaeda ), so that story may have been revised.

For me, the problem of using methods like those on cultures like the Minoans is this; we can't really read what they were writing down to check the interpretation against. Linear A is still a mystery and anything writing in Linear B has to do with goods- even 'cult' objects found in temples. So what if Fred from Hamlet B brought 3 goat skins of vino and it's inscribed on fork found in a temple? Classicists/Archaeologists believe the Greek chthonic goddesses are Minoan in descent, but can we really reverse engineer religious beliefs from 5th Century Athenians? I don't know. I don't mean to be argumentative. Maybe it's my evil, inner Classicist that is very skeptical.

Anyway, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for human sacrifices in Uganda. Might squeeze and article out of it someday...

[marct]

Hi Graphei,

Thanks for the reference, i appreciate it. Now to find the time to track it down and actually read it ...

For me, the problem of using methods like those on cultures like the Minoans is this; we can't really read what they were writing down to check the interpretation against. Linear A is still a mystery and anything writing in Linear B has to do with goods- even 'cult' objects found in temples. So what if Fred from Hamlet B brought 3 goat skins of vino and it's inscribed on fork found in a temple? Classicists/Archaeologists believe the Greek chthonic goddesses are Minoan in descent, but can we really reverse engineer religious beliefs from 5th Century Athenians? I don't know. I don't mean to be argumentative. Maybe it's my evil, inner Classicist that is very skeptical.

Honestly, I don't know either . It's one of the reasons I like Ginzburg's approach; he doesn't say anything about "truth", just about plausibility. Admittedly, Linear B is pretty useless, but it does allow us to define the problem space better and let us disprove some hypotheses. then again, it's not often we find such great resources as the Pylos tablets....

As far as reverse engineering religious beliefs is concerned, that is a real problem. Some of it we can do pretty well, at least in terms of shaping the problem space. Building the logic chains, however, is a real problem, especially since we aren't dealing with anything that is uniform at all.

Like you, looking at Minoan (and earlier) religious systems is something I did a while back, and I haven't really kept up with what's coming out of archaeology in the area. It's one of those areas that I'd like to get back into - when I have 3-4 months of free time and don't have to earn a living .

Cheers,

Marc

Anyway, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for human sacrifices in Uganda. Might squeeze and article out of it someday...

[Beelzebubalicious]

Ran across this and thought I would post it for feedback. I also suspect that Grant McCracken and Marc are close friends. I mean, they are both Anthropologists and Canadian...

[M-A Lagrange]

Hello,

Just have a look on The Mask of Anarchy from Stephen Ellis.(http://www.amazon.com/Mask-Anarchy-U...3506259&sr=1-1)
Wonderfull book on Liberia and the role of canibalism into the construction of a society and how Taylor used it to destructure the society.
Interresting and chilling. Personnaly I would call that the absolute war: a strategy that aim to use the worst darkest side of a society to destroy not only the cultural tissu but to destroy even the pillars of it.

M-A

[marct]

Ran across this and thought I would post it for feedback. I also suspect that Grant McCracken and Marc are close friends. I mean, they are both Anthropologists and Canadian...

All I can say is ..... .

Oh, yeah,..... "No Comment".

[Beelzebubalicious]

This is a disturbing look in to Liberia's violent past (and present?). Reason I post it here will be obvious when you watch the video and hear all the references to drinking the blood of innocent children and eating people's hearts...

Anthropologist in me sees this as chest thumping stuff, but then again...

[marct]

This is a disturbing look in to Liberia's violent past (and present?). Reason I post it here will be obvious when you watch the video and hear all the references to drinking the blood of innocent children and eating people's hearts...

Anthropologist in me sees this as chest thumping stuff, but then again...

Very disturbing. "Chest thumping"? Maybe, but I would be extremely surprised if it isn't a) going on and b) accelerating in frequency.

[Hacksaw]

You're right... disturbing and I thought I was past being surprised by the brutality of the human race... and we've essentially ignored (or worse) this area for so long...