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Historically, archaeologists working on non-state societies have tended to interpret religion and large-scale religious architecture as necessarily integrative, that is, as naturalizing the social order or producing an abiding sense of community. I argue here that this focus on integration has limited our ability to understand how and why religion changed through time and how religion may have been a driver of social change. We will benefit from considering the political dimensions of religious practice in non-state societies as much as in more "complex" settings. This study explores the articulation of religious practice and religious architecture with social and spatial boundaries in the prehispanic U.S. Southwest. In particular, I examine variability and change in rectangular great kivas—large, semi-subterranean religious structures—in west-central New Mexico and east-central Arizona between 1000 and 1400 CE in relationship to socially diverse contexts that might be viewed as borderlands or frontiers. The study pulls together two broads strands of research. The first is an examination of the unusual great kiva at the thirteenth-century CE Fornholt site (LA 164471) near Mule Creek, New Mexico, in relation to the broader history of the surrounding Upper Gila area. This portion of the research is based on two seasons of excavation at Fornholt and on an examination of records and ceramic collections from the Upper Gila. I suggest that the Upper Gila may be considered a borderland or frontier through time and that viewing Fornholt as a borderland site sheds light on the site's material culture, including its great kiva. The second strand of research is a comparison of great kiva architecture and assemblages across the larger study area based on the examination of museum collections and the aggregation of published and unpublished architectural data. The broader study demonstrates that, while these great kivas make up a coherent tradition and fit within the larger world of southwestern religion, great kivas in borderland contexts show experimentation and change in ways that more centrally located great kivas do not. I argue that this diversity can be viewed in light of the negotiation of social boundaries in borderland contexts, including the role of great kivas as political venues or contested spaces.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2003. / Title from title screen (viewed April 6, 2009). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of Archaeology, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2003; thesis submitted 2002. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

This research focuses on artefactual assemblages from temples in the south-east and east of England from 50 BCE to 250 CE. In order to evaluate these data, which primarily consists of faunal remains, coins, and items of personal adornment, quantitative methods to perform intra-site and inter-site analyses are utilised. As a result of the analyses conducted, a range of social practices were identified, including those specific to individual temples, and those that were shared to varying degrees across the breadth of the study area. The study also examines how a site’s unique environmental and political conditions characterised the assemblages of each temple. Moreover, it reveals that the pre-Roman Eastern and Southern kingdoms continued to influence the nature of practices on temple sites into the Roman period, and that the impact of Roman conquest was much less persuasive as might be expected from previous research on religion in Roman Britain. The conclusions of this study emphasise the significant future potential of the finds evidence to illuminate studies of religion in the Roman empire, as well as highlighting the diverse nature of religion in early Roman Britain.

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala universitet, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 399-435).

There is no abstract available for this thesis. / Department of Anthropology

The goal of this study is to give an archaeological comprehension of Água de Meninos Bay (Salvador/Bahia) as a sacred site, formed by layers of material and intangible meanings, due to the submerged presence of an iron structure attributed to Exu. Thus, the intentional presence of a religious structure characterizes this space as a historic site, making it possible to think of the processes of religious appropriation of the landscape, the handling of the materiality and the construction of diasporic realities on the New World. Exu possesses mythical powers related to trade and communication, presently worshipped on the extension of Benin Gulf and in the Afro Brazilian religions, the deity is considered to be the protector of fairs and markets as well as the patron of the circulation of goods and knowledges. The religious structure was found near the Ferry Boat station. The Ferry-Boat station site is located between the historical region where successive fairs took place in the 19th and 20th centuries and the Salvador sea Port, which is at work since the 16th century on Água de Meninos. Therefore, the Archaeology of Religion was taken as the theoretical and methodological field to be applied in the problematization both of the afro-religious material culture and the Bay s landscape, in order to allow the ritualistic, religious and sacred aspects Bahian Afro descendant populations to acquire archaeological sense and meaning. / O objetivo desse estudo é compreender arqueologicamente a Enseada de Água de Meninos (Salvador/Bahia) como uma paisagem sagrada, composta por camadas de significados materiais e intangíveis, devido à presença submersa de uma estrutura de ferro atribuída a Exu. Dessa forma, a presença intencional da estrutura religiosa ao fundo da Enseada configura esse espaço como um sítio histórico, permitindo pensar sobre os processos de apropriação religiosa da paisagem, de manipulação da materialidade e da construção de realidades diaspóricas no Novo Mundo. Exu possui poderes míticos relacionados ao comércio e à comunicação, cultuado atualmente na extensão do Golfo do Benin e no interior das religiões afro-brasileiras, é considerado o protetor das feiras e dos mercados como também patrono da circulação de bens e saberes. Por sua vez, a estrutura religiosa, foi registrada próxima ao Ferry Boat. O espaço do Ferry Boat está situado entre a região histórica da presença de sucessivas feiras, entre o século XIX e XX e o Porto marítimo de Salvador, em funcionamento desde o século XVI, em Água de Meninos. Para tanto, a Arqueologia da Religião é entendida como o campo teórico-metodológico a ser utilizado na problematização da cultura material afro-religiosa e da paisagem da Enseada, permitindo que os aspectos rituais, religiosos e sagrados das populações afrodescendentes na Bahia ganhem sentido e significado arqueológico.

This thesis examines the changing form and function of non-funerary cult buildings in early Latial and Etruscan settlements in order to better describe and understand the advent of monumental temples in the archaeological record. It draws on a significant quantity of material excavated in the past forty years and developments in relevant theoretical frameworks to reconstruct the changing appearance of cult buildings from huts to shrines and temples (Chapters 2 to 4), and to place monumental examples within wider religious, topographical, and functional contexts (Chapters 5 to 7). This broader perspective allows a more accurate assessment of the extent to which monumental temples represent continuity and discontinuity with earlier religious architecture, and furthermore clarifies the respective roles of Latium and Etruria in the transformation of cult buildings into distinctive, prominent parts of the built environment. Although it is possible to find many different accounts of religious monumentalisation in existing scholarship, this thesis holds that traditional narratives no longer accurately reflect the archaeological evidence. It sets out a sequence of developments in which early religious architecture was a dynamic, rather than conservative, phenomenon. It demonstrates that temples were not the inevitable product of a natural progression from open-air votive deposition to monumentality, or simply an imported concept, but rather a deliberate response to the opportunities offered by an increasingly mobile Mediterranean population. It also contends that Latium played a more important role in formulating the characteristic components and functions of central Italic temples than previously thought. This thesis consequently offers a new account of early religious architecture in western central Italy as well as an alternative interpretation of its monumentalisation.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis examines the material correlates of religious behaviour. Religion is an important part of every culture, but the impact religion has on structuring material culture is not well understood. Archaeologists are hampered in their reconstructions of the past because they lack comparative methods and universal conventions for identifying religious behaviour. The principal aim of this thesis is to construct an indicator model which can archaeologically identify religious behaviour. The basis for the proposed model stems directly from recurrent religious phenomena. Such phenomena, according to anthropological and cognitive research, relate to a series of spatio-temporally recurrent religious features which relate to a universal foundation for religious concepts. Patterns in material culture which strongly correlate with these recurrent phenomena indicate likely concentrations of religious behaviour. The variations between sacred and mundane places can be expected to yield information regarding the way people organise themselves in relation to how they perceive their cosmos. Using cognitive religious theory, stemming from research in neurophysiology and psychology, it is argued that recurrent religious phenomena owe their replication to the fact that certain physical stimuli and spatial concepts are most easily interpreted by humans in religious ideas. Humans live in a world governed by natural law, and it is logical that the concepts generated by humans will at least partially be similarly governed. Understanding the connection between concept and cause results in a model of behaviour applicable to cross-cultural analysis and strengthens the model’s assumption base. In order to test the model of religious behaviour developed in this thesis it is applied to a regional archaeological matrix from the Blue Mountains National Park in New South Wales, Australia. Archaeological research in the Blue Mountains has tentatively identified ceremonial sites based on untested generalised associations between select artefact types and distinctive geographic features. The method of analysis in this thesis creates a holistic matrix of archaeological and geographic data, encompassing both qualitative and quantitative measures, which generates a statistical norm for the region. Significant liminal deviations from this norm, which are characteristic indicators of religious behaviour are then identified. Confidence in these indicators’ ability to identify ceremonial sites is obtained by using a distance matrix and algorithms to examine the spatial patterns of association between significant variables. This thesis systematically tests the associations between objects and geography and finds that a selective array and formulaic spatiality of material correlates characteristic of religious behaviour does exist at special places within the Blue Mountains. The findings indicate a wide spread if more pocketed distribution of ceremonial sites than is suggested in previous models. The spatial/material relationships for identified religious sites indicates that these places represent specialised extensions of an interdependent socio-economic system where ceremonial activity and subsistence activity operated in balance and were not isolated entities.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis examines the material correlates of religious behaviour. Religion is an important part of every culture, but the impact religion has on structuring material culture is not well understood. Archaeologists are hampered in their reconstructions of the past because they lack comparative methods and universal conventions for identifying religious behaviour. The principal aim of this thesis is to construct an indicator model which can archaeologically identify religious behaviour. The basis for the proposed model stems directly from recurrent religious phenomena. Such phenomena, according to anthropological and cognitive research, relate to a series of spatio-temporally recurrent religious features which relate to a universal foundation for religious concepts. Patterns in material culture which strongly correlate with these recurrent phenomena indicate likely concentrations of religious behaviour. The variations between sacred and mundane places can be expected to yield information regarding the way people organise themselves in relation to how they perceive their cosmos. Using cognitive religious theory, stemming from research in neurophysiology and psychology, it is argued that recurrent religious phenomena owe their replication to the fact that certain physical stimuli and spatial concepts are most easily interpreted by humans in religious ideas. Humans live in a world governed by natural law, and it is logical that the concepts generated by humans will at least partially be similarly governed. Understanding the connection between concept and cause results in a model of behaviour applicable to cross-cultural analysis and strengthens the model’s assumption base. In order to test the model of religious behaviour developed in this thesis it is applied to a regional archaeological matrix from the Blue Mountains National Park in New South Wales, Australia. Archaeological research in the Blue Mountains has tentatively identified ceremonial sites based on untested generalised associations between select artefact types and distinctive geographic features. The method of analysis in this thesis creates a holistic matrix of archaeological and geographic data, encompassing both qualitative and quantitative measures, which generates a statistical norm for the region. Significant liminal deviations from this norm, which are characteristic indicators of religious behaviour are then identified. Confidence in these indicators’ ability to identify ceremonial sites is obtained by using a distance matrix and algorithms to examine the spatial patterns of association between significant variables. This thesis systematically tests the associations between objects and geography and finds that a selective array and formulaic spatiality of material correlates characteristic of religious behaviour does exist at special places within the Blue Mountains. The findings indicate a wide spread if more pocketed distribution of ceremonial sites than is suggested in previous models. The spatial/material relationships for identified religious sites indicates that these places represent specialised extensions of an interdependent socio-economic system where ceremonial activity and subsistence activity operated in balance and were not isolated entities.