Jan Šeiner
UČO: 147022
January 2014
„Ritual“ in Archaeology
In her 1999 article „Ritual and Rationality: some problems of interpretation in European
archaeology” (Brück 1999) Joann Brück focuses on issues connected with the conception of “ritual”
and it's employment in archaeology. The category of ritual, as used in archaeology and (then
current) anthropology she considers a “product of post-enlightenment rationalism” and lacking any
“satisfactory definition in general terms” and “unambiguous archaeological correlates” (Brück
1999, 313-314). Truth is, that for many years in archaeology “ritual” has been, as Bahn puts it,
basically an “all purpose explanation used where nothing else comes to mind” (Bahn 1989, 62).
Unfortunately, in Central European archaeology, this is often still the case.
In Brück's main line of reasoning, “ritual” is a term borrowed from anthropology denoting
an irrational activity of a symbolic, non-technical, formal, prescribed, structured and repetitive
nature. This stress on “irrationality” as opposed to “western rationality” makes it not only a
problematic concept, but also a part of the colonialist discourse (conflated with dualisms like
“them-us” or “traditional-modern”) and a tool serving political purposes (see Brück 1999, 314, 317-
319). What “we” deem irrational, however, are just different conceptions of instrumentality and
causation. Instead, ritual actions are perfectly logical given a particular understanding of how the
world works and following different logics articulated as sets of cosmological beliefs and values
(i.e. different “worldviews”). “Rituals” do not meet modern western criteria for practicality,
therefore they appear to be non-functional and irrational, this is however a misapprehension of
prehistoric rationality and a different approach that explores the essential difference between
prehistoric rationality and our own notions of what is effective action is required (Brück 1999, 314,
317-318, 321, 326).
Problems with identifying rituals (i.e. non-rational actions) in archaeological record and
distinguishing them from non-ritual actions, implicitly assumed to be mutually exclusive, have
already led many archaeologists and anthropologists to question this distinction, since many of the
supposed diagnostic properties of ritual practice are shared by “secular” action (Brück 1999, 315).
The British anthropologist Edmund Leach (Leach 1968, 523) argued that ritual is not a distinct
category of behaviour, but can be understood as the expressive, symbolic or communicative aspect
of all human behaviour and that every human action has a technical aspect (which “does”
something) and an aesthetic aspect (which “says” something). In those types of behaviour, where
the aesthetic and communicative aspects are particularly prominent, are then labelled as “rituals”.
Similar approaches were however criticised as “stripping the concept of it's analytical value” since
they only tended to incorporate wider groups of activities under the banner of ritual and did not help
to distinguish rituals from non-ritual activities in any way (Brück 1999, 315).
Following a similar logic, that because rituals do not appear to do anything, they must be
symbolic, the postprocessualists were interested mainly in the “social role of ritual in reproduction
and renegotiation of social order” (whatever that means). However their “counter-dichotomy” of
“ideal-real” led to the same divorce of ritual and day-to-day living as the previous “ritual-rational”
dichotomies. At the same time, their stress on symbolic aspects of human actions (as opposed to
processualist archaeology) carried the same risk as Leach's approach, that everything would become
subsumed within the category of ritual and human actions would be reduced to the “irrational” and
“symbolic“ (Brück 318, 324-325).
Brück on the other hand does not see “symbolic” and “practical” as two different aspects of
human actions, but rather that they are the one and the same. Cosmologies are not abstract
ideological/symbolic systems but enable people to understand the world and to get on in it by
providing logic for action and an explanation of the universe. In this sense any practical action is
also symbolic, because it reproduces the sets of values and social relations which are embedded in
cosmological schemes. The notion that ritual is special because it draws on and enables the
reproduction of the social and cosmological order is then problematic, because all actions do that
(Brück 1999, 325-326). She thus calls the use of of dichotomies like “ritual-secular” and of the
category “ritual” itself into question. Also because cultures different from our own often do not
distinguish ritual and non-ritual actions, which according to her means they are not universal
categories of human thought (Brück 1999, 319-320).
Brück's conclusions are then that instead of trying to differentiate the symbolic from the
practical we should rather focus on the historically-specific logic and see all activities as people's
practical engagement with material conditions, albeit based on a very different set of ideas about
how the world works. The analytical value of the concept ritual should then be rejected and certain
activities should be regarded as different “fields of discourse” only when the practitioners
themselves see them as “special”, based on their own criteria, which should be discussed (Brück
1999, 327-328).
While I agree with Brück's criticism of the use of the concept of “ritual” in archaeology and
with many points she has brought up, I feel that many issues connected with this topic have not
been addressed adequately and that her conclusions by themselves will not lead to any remarkable
improvement of our understanding of prehistoric cultures. Brück's approach is similar to that of
some cognitive-processual archaeologists like Collin Renfrew (for example Renfrew – Zubrow
1994) or Richard Bradley (for example Bradley 2005), who aim for a better and more scientific
account of the symbolic nature of material culture and human activities than what the New
Archaeology and postprocessualist archaeology have presented. These however do not stray too far
beyond the “borders” of archaeology, not counting the numerous references of anthropological and
ethnographic analogies. This seems to be the most common attitude within cognitive archaeology
and works based on a deeper understanding of human cognition or containing explicit references to
cognitive sciences, like those of Merlin Donald (1998), Steven Mithen (1996; 2001) or David
Lewis-Williams (2004), seem to be rather rare.
This is somewhat surprising, given that archaeology rests somewhere on the edge between
natural sciences and humanities1
and often borrows techniques and methods from the former and
theories from the latter. Unlike, for example, Religious Studies, however, it does have a special
theory (sort of) and a method of its own, which probably leads some archaeologists to the
conclusion, that that is all they need and influences from other fields may or should be kept at
minimum.2
This “isolationist” attitude however may easily lead to misconceptions and may actually
hinder growing understanding of the problems under research. In Brück's case for example, there
are a few rather “shallow” general statements about human mind and behaviour, such as: “human
action is always both symbolic and practical” (Brück 1999, 325), or that “ 'practical' activities
cannot be expected to obey some kind of universal functionalist logic” and conversely that “ritual
activity constitutes a perfectly logical and practical way of dealing with the world, given a particular
understanding of how the universe works” (Brück 1999, 326).3
These statements are however not
discussed in depth and appear to be based simply on anthropological observations without any
1 In fact, many laymen are surprised when told that the Department of Archaeology (in Masaryk University at least) is
part of the Faculty of Arts and not of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Then again, there seems to be a tendency in
the public to mix archaeology together with palaeontology.
2 Note that this is my personal, possibly biased, view of the situation here in Central Europe, where most of the
limited available time and resources is spent on “rescue excavations” and “site preservation” (i.e. data collecting),
rather than on “theoretical research” (i.e. data processing). The situation is of course a bit different on university
departments, where research and education should be more in focus. Even here however, in lower grades especially,
the goal seems to be “to train a successful data-collector” and/or “data-publisher” rather than “teach them what to do
with their data in a critical and meaningful way”. I am not familiar with the “archaeological environment” in
Western Europe or in the Americas, but I assume theory and methodology are discussed a bit more often there and in
a broader perspective.
3 This notion that all human actions have some kind of purpose, whether practical or symbolic/communicative or both
is, I think, a nice example of teleological reasoning, which however does not necessarily reflect the actual state of
things.
involvement of psychology or cognitive sciences. Which is unfortunate. While looking at a problem
from a different perspective may be enlightening in itself, trying to understand an issue outside of
one's field without actually looking at how it is understood in the field that was meant to deal
specifically with the issue in question will, more often than not, lead to more confusion than true
understanding. Addressing “cognitive issues” alone is certainly better than outright ignoring them
(as the New Archaeology did), but an interdisciplinary cooperation is even more desirable. Without
it, interpretations of matters beyond the “casual” cultural-typological-chronological classification of
material culture will remain tentative at best and archaeology risks to put itself into a “short end of
the deal” position. Seeing as contemporary cognitive psychology would probably call into question
many assumptions, both implicit and explicit, some archaeologists have about past (and present)
peoples' minds, this is all the more necessary.
Another issue connected with this is a matter of terminology and it's use. The term “ritual”,
as was mentioned above, was introduced into archaeology from anthropology and was likely
conceived differently than in the Religious Studies from the beginning. In archaeology the term was
conflated with “religion” and the two are often used interchangeably, as can be seen in Brück's use
of dualisms like “ritual-secular” or “ritual-mundane” (Brück 1999, 314, 319, 327). This makes
some sense, since archaeology deals more often with remains of (supposed) “ritual” activities (i.e.
religious practice) than with “theological” notions or counter-intuitive concepts themselves. It may
however become quite confusing when used in a non-archaeological context, more so when there
often is no general consensus on how to use terms that are not archaeology-specific. Another related
issue has already been brought up by Anders Kaliff (Kaliff 2007, 27-28), namely that often the same
term is used both as an operative (and/or descriptive) term and an interpretation of a phenomenon or
a find. As a typical example he mentions the term “grave” used both in a descriptive (a pit or other
object containing human, or in some cases animal, remains) and in an interpretative (assumption
that the deposition of the remains was intentional and part of a funeral/burial rites) way at the same
time. The term ritual is often used in a similar way – for example tools made of inappropriate
materials or otherwise unsuitable (too weak, thin or small, etc.) for their typical use are sometimes
readily described as “ritual tools”, implicitly presuming that they are indeed “tools”, but cannot be
used in a practical (rational?) way and therefore must have been used in “symbolic” = “ritual” =
”religious” acts. The question whether these are actual “tools” or rather “tool-shaped” artefacts of a
different kind (toys, decorations etc.) or whether “symbolism” has to automatically relate to “ritual”
and “religion” and at the same time exclude “practical use” is seldom asked.
The conflation of “ritual” and “religion”, rather typical for central-european archaeological
literature, also has another consequence. Here ritual and ritualized behaviour are always seen as
“religious” while there is no concept of a “non-religious ritual”. The term “ceremony” is sometimes
used for similar activities that did not necessarily have a religious character even in the eyes of
archaeologists, however it's use and exact definition (just as with “ritual”) are almost never clearly
and explicitly designated. This lack of distinction between “religious” and “non-religious” ritualized
behaviour may easily cause terminological problems when confronted with fields where nonreligious
ritualized behaviour is a major topic, like ethology or psychology (not that archaeologists
would adress these fields too often). But more importantly, it enforces a “religious” interpretation
on whatever finds that show features “typical” for or tentatively interpreted as “ritual”, making
these same features “typical” for “religion” as well in the process. That “religion” itself often isn't
clearly and explicitly defined in any way, a state somewhat opposite to religious studies, where
definitions of all kinds abound (only those “universally applicable” and “all-encompassing” are
kind of hard to find), does not exactly improve the situation.
In her conclusion, Brück (1999, 327) stated that the concept of ritual should be abandoned
and that our (archaeologists') attention should focus on “historically-specific logic” of past cultures.
While there certainly are reasons to get rid of the archaeological category of “ritual”, this by itself
does not solve the problem, which lies not in the category itself (since there is no such thing as a
“ritual” in the “real” world) but in the way it is used by archaeologists. If instead we made a clear,
explicit and consensual definition of ritual, which would probably be for the first time ever in
archaeology, and actually stick to it, the situation might have been quite different. The argument that
we shouldn't use the category of “ritual” because the cultures we study often do not distinguish such
category, seems to me like saying that zoologists shouldn't use the category “crustacean” because
crabs don't use that category as well. This argument seems to miss the point of what analytical
categories are and how they should be used.4
Furthermore, even if we did scrap “ritual” and managed to actually get a grasp of how were
the concepts of practicality in past cultures different from our own,5
what should we do then? Create
new separate categories of “perceived-as-practical” and “perceived-as-special/different” for each
and every culture we study? If so, then we would end up with thousands of “unique” categories of
little use, whose “analytical value” would not be much higher than that of the all-encompassing
“ritual-as-an-aspect-of-all-human-behaviour” category by Leach. Analysis without reduction is not
an analysis but a reformulation, instead of a map, we would have the territory. Now, I'm pretty sure
this is not what Brück had in mind, but the fact remains she isn't very specific about it.
Besides, to base a category, we create for our own scholarly purposes, on the distinction
4 For discussion on categories and classifications see works by J. Z. Smith (Smith 1990; 1993; 2000). I borrowed the
crabs from there as well (see Smith 1990, 37).
5 How exactly would we accomplish that is not explained anywhere, surely we can't reconstruct any given
“historically-specific logic” system for each “culture” just from a bunch of shards and some earthwork.
made by the specific culture under study in order to replace a previous category of our own will not
necessarilly lead to a greater understanding of the culture itself. Doing this is not replacing our
“western” subjective perspective with an “objective truth”. It is replacing our “western” subjective
perspective with “their” “non-western” subjective perspective, “enriched” with possible
misunderstandings, misinterpretations and lost-in-translations. Trying to understand “their”
categories and the differences between them and “our” categories is of course commendable, if not
necessary, however replacing one with the other seems to be a bit rash. Distinguishing as “ritual”
only what the people in question distinguish as “ritual” doesn't get us any closer to understanding
what “rituals” are and why are they at all.
So, what other options do archaeologists have? Being a “fan” of E. O. Wilson's concept of
consilience, I would suggest, instead of redefining old archaeological and anthropological concepts,
it might be worthwhile to look at how ritual conceived is in fields “closer” to natural sciences,
namely ethology and CSR, and try to search for a way how to meaningfully implement them into
archaeology. CSR already has two models of ritual or “ritualized behaviour”, those of E. Thomas
Lawson and Robert N. McCauley (Lawson – McCauley 1990; 2002) and of Pascal Boyer and Pierre
Liénard (Boyer – Liénard 2006a; 2006b), which seem to be mutually compatible and can be thus be
“merged” into a more complex probabilistic model of ritual behaviour (Lawson – Liénard 2008),
albeit preliminary and not yet fully tested. This model postulates that ritualized actions follow the
same basic structure as “ordinary” actions, they are however “tweaked” in a way, that makes them
more attention-grabbing and compelling by activating the Hazard Precaution System (HPS), goaldemotion
(through repetition, redundancy and scriptedness) and, in case of religious rituals,
references to counter-intuitive agency. Here, ritualized behaviour is seen as opposite to routinised
behaviour, i.e. people do not act without thinking about what they are doing, but instead have to
fully concentrate on the scripted performance. This “swamps” their memory and blocks access to
any intrusive thoughts (connected with the Hazard Precaution System) that would cause anxiety.
Ritual acts are then “anxiety relievers” and in many cases autotelic, since many of them are
designed to activate the HPS and thus evoke the anxiety-causing intrusive thoughts, which are then
blocked through the goal-demoted prescribed performance.
How can this model be useful to archaeologists? Firstly, the fact that it draws a distinction
between “ritualized behaviour” and “rituals” or “ceremonies”, which, in some of their parts,
incorporate ritualized behaviour, but are seldom entirely ritualized, and that there is a distinction
between “religious” and “non-religious” rituals is by itself quite an improvement compared to
assumptions many archaeologists have been working with so far. Secondly, if this model is to at
least some measure correct, there would be no need to create culture-specific categories for at least
a rough description and understanding of supposed ritual acts indicated by archaeological record.
Thirdly, the connection between ritualized behaviour and HPS means, that potential danger clues,
which may be manifest in archaeological and archaeo-ecological record, can help indicate ritualized
behaviour and specify the context in which it occurred. Fourthly, the ritual form hypothesis
(Lawson – McCauley 1990) predicts that over time cultural selection would channel ritual forms
towards a limited set of preferred stable forms (more arousing and less frequently performed special
agent rituals and less arousing but more frequently performed special patient or instrument rituals).
This prediction can be then brought into play, whenever archaeological data suggest a highly
arousing performance, or, on the other hand, frequent repetition. Fifthly, Lawson and Liénard (2008,
167-170) predict the emergence of “priestly clique” only in more “advanced” cultures with enough
resources to support them, and point out differences in their social standing and that of individual
“soothsayers” in less wealthy cultures. This should be taken into account when interpreting graves
or various other finds connected to supposed “religious specialists”. Sixthly, the role of ritualized
behaviour in demonstrating commitment (Boyer – Liénard 2006a, 818) along with the concept of
“costly behaviour” fit well with observations already made by some archaeologists (Lotte Hedeager
for example) about the various ways of channelling and consumption of wealth in some prehistoric
cultures (see Hedeager 1992).
These are just some of the possible implications of introducing the CSR model of ritual into
archaeology, many more could likely be thought over, given time. What this model does not change
is that archaeologists will still have to look for the same “ritual indicators” as they have so far:
repetition, redundancy, scriptedness (including seperation from the “ordinary”), goal-demotion,
attention-grabbing and arousing features, etc., with a few newly added ones: potential danger clues,
indications of costly behaviour, and overall resource surplus that would allow the emergence of
“priestly clique” with their appeal to special external agents.
I have also mentioned ethology, which is, for obvious reasons, quite remote to archaeology
(unless it's lower palaeolithic archaeology). It may however provide some insights on how
ritualized behaviour emerged and what role it played not just in animal but also in human
populations. Leaving the question of phylogenetical relations between ritualized behaviour in
animals and humans and the question whether it is an adaptation or by-product aside, there is one
point not mentioned in any of the literature above (or at least I didn't notice it) that might be shared
by both animal and human rituals. While I'm not that familiar with ethological theories of ritual,
according to Konrad Lorenz (Lorenz 1992) animal rituals are forms of behaviour that lost their
original meaning and were channelled or re-directed towards new, mostly communicative purposes.
Interesting is, that some of these “rituals” were originally displays of aggression or direct assaults
against an intruder (often of the same species), that were gradually transformed into greeting rituals.
The original behaviour was then a response to a threat, in this case a threat of intrusion, which is
similar to one of the typical themes of human HPS, though it is a more direct than potential threat in
this case. It is then possible that animal rituals have a similar anxiety-relief effect that human rituals
have, as Lorenz demonstrated on the, rather funny, case of his pet goose Martina (see Lorenz 1992,
65-67). Of course, this notions is harder to apply in archaeology, it might however point towards
some more parallels between human and animal cognition and improve our understanding of what
rituals are, where did they come from and what should we do with them.
References:
Bahn, Paul 1989: Bluff your way in Archaeology. Horsham: Ravette Books.
Boyer, Pascal – Liénard, Pierre 2006a: Whence Collective Rituals? A cultural selection model of
ritualized behavior. American Anthropologist 108/4, 814-827.
Boyer, Pascal – Liénard, Pierre 2006b: Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action
parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences
29, 595-650.
Bradley, Richard 2005: Ritual and domestic life in prehistoric Europe. London: Routledge.
Brück, Joanna 1999: Ritual and Rationality: some problems of interpretation in European
archaeology. European Journal of Archaeology 2/3, 313-344.
Donald, Merlin W. 1998: Material Culture and Cognition: Concluding Thoughts. In: Renfrew,
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archaeology of external symbolic storage. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for
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Hedeager, Lotte 1992: Iron-age societies: From tribe to state in northern Europe, 500 BC to AD
700. Oxford: Blackwell.
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