To the Southern Paiutes, the Spring Mountains are the center of Creation. They believe that they, as a people, were created in these mountains at the beginning of time. Southern Paiutes believe that the Spring Mountains constitute a living being that has a zoomorphic shape. This being has a head which is found at the northern end of the range at Mount Sterling, a tail located at Mount Potosi, and in the center at Mount Charleston, a womb which created life. Mount Charleston is the geographic and cultural center of the Spring Mountains. The Spring Mountains are located within the traditional Pahrump and Las Vegas districts of the Southern Paiute Nation. The mountains, today, serve as a boundary between the cities of Las Vegas and Pahrump, Nevada. In 2003, the United States Forest Service (USFS) funded an applied ethnographic study that focused on a cultural landscape assessment of the Spring Mountain National Recreation Area, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The project examined the traditional, religious, and cultural values of Southern Paiute people inherent in the Spring Mountains of southern Nevada. The study design required that Richard Stoffle and his research team from the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology work with tribal representatives to prepare a map through a rapid assessment to identify sites, areas, and landscapes that are of cultural and religious importance to the Southern Paiute people. The second task was to provide the USFS with an overview essay summarizing the ethnographic archival field notes and literature relevant to Southern Paiute cultural values of the Spring Mountains. The third task required field visits and interviews with tribal members that focused on the overall cultural importance of the Spring Mountains and individual places visited throughout the mountain range. This work served as the ethnographic core of the overall report and the basis for USFS management decisions and tribal consultation.

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The objective of this dissertation is to explore the meanings, significance, and functions of sacred space developed in the Hebrew Bible. A wide range of categories, models, and geographical forms of biblical sacred space will be presented: the cosmos, Mt. Zion, the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple, the Tabernacle, sanctuaries and sacred sites, the high places, and the micro-scales of cultic installations, such as the Ark, altars, sacred poles, and sacred pillars. From a biblical point of view, the two realms of the sacred and the profane co-exist. The sanctity of a place can be restricted and intensified to a certain zone of space or micro-scales of cultic installations. It can also be extended to a wider scope of space, such as the entire sanctuary, the entire city, the entire land, or the cosmos. These models of sacred space used in the biblical texts reflect the manifestation of the specific worldview that is governed by the concept of holiness and the particular concepts of God associated with the notions of divine dwelling presence, divine glory, and divine rest. The Israelite model of sacred space emphasized in a particular biblical text can also represent related transformations of the functions, meanings, and significance of the concepts of sacred space. For instance, the establishment of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem signifies the transformation of the legitimate place of worship in ancient Israelite religion, from a dynamic model to a permanent, static one. Its meanings, significance, and functions are now contingent upon the fixed location in Jerusalem. This dissertation provides evidence of the plurality of meanings, significance, and functions of the concepts of sacred space in the Hebrew Bible. This exploration of the biblical concepts of sacred space includes a discussion of various issues: defining forms, sources of sanctity, rules of access and boundaries, and contexts and uses of biblical sacred space. The exploration also includes consideration of the distinctive intentions of various biblical writers and their perspectives on geographical and spatial realities.

Since 1990, at the direction of Congress, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been developing the Legacy Resource Management Program to enhance DoD's stewardship of cultural and natural resources for which it has responsibilities. The Legacy Program is designed to go beyond compliance with various host nation, Federal, tribal, state, and local historic preservation, religious freedom, and natural resource protection laws, policies, regulations, and guidance. The original Legacy legislation specifically directed the Program to assess the adequacy of DoD's stewardship of Native American resources, for which it may have conservation or management responsibilities either as a major landholder or as a Federal agency whose activities affect traditional Native American values and practices. This report is about Native Americans and their cultural resource relationships with the Department of Defense. This study does not consider the Native American relationships of all 16 Defense agencies that report to the Department of Defense. Instead, the study was restricted to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

There is growing interest in attributing sacred value to the environment for its protection and management. Claiming the environment as sacred, however, is different from the environment in sacred sites. Sacred sites, places of heightened religious and spiritual significance, are found in all societies and visited by thousands of visitors. Visitor flows affect the environment in sacred sites in direct and indirect ways. Two distinct approaches can be identified in the discussion of impact on sacred sites: one focuses on the assessment of the physical environment and the other emphasises the effects on the cultural and sacred space. The first approach reports environmental problems such as deforestation, river pollution, and real estate development without supporting infrastructure of roads and environmental services including sewerage, water supply, and accumulation of waste, but fails to explain why these problems do not deter visitors whose numbers continue to increase. The second approach, by negating the physicality of the environment and relying on subjectivity of environmental discourses, avoids questions about environmental responsibility and management. Both these approaches do not consider how the environment in a sacred site is created. This thesis attempts to explain how the environment in the sacred site of Vrindavan is shaped by socio-economic, religious and political processes that take place within, and outside the site. By adopting a historical-spatial analysis, it shows how the trajectory of environmental change in Vrindavan is shaped by broader patterns of changes in political economy, religious patronage, pilgrimage travel and institutional developments. It examines the changes in the iv pilgrimage landscape of Vrindavan through three phases since its establishment as a pilgrimage site in the 15th century: pre-colonial (15th-19th century), colonial (19th-mid 20th century) and post-colonial (post-1947). It details the ways in which social, economic, political and institutional developments from the precolonial and colonial past are linked to some of the contemporary problems and how these are translated into fragmented institutional responses. The thesis examines the contemporary environment in Vrindavan in relation to the shifts in pilgrimage economy and interactions of various actors and institutions that control and manage it. It shows that the contemporary environment in Vrindavan is a poorly regulated market of religious entrepreneurs, tourism operators and real estate developers driven by the opportunities of religious tourism. The lack of institutions to regulate these activities and the inability to cater to the increased demand for environmental services contribute to the continued degradation of the religious urban space of Vrindavan. This institutional vacuum leads different actors to use contesting attitudes in absolving themselves from their responsibility towards environmental management and articulate discourses that reinforce the idea of environmental degradation in Vrindavan. The study illustrates that claiming the sacred and making the sacred/religious environment are two different things. It argues that understanding and addressing environmental degradation in a sacred environment requires an understanding of how sacred space is produced. It shows that the environment of pilgrimage is a dynamic process shaped by the activities, forms of control, perceptions, and representations of the actors involved in the production of sacred sites. The thesis calls for a comprehensive v spatial approach to address environmental change and sustainability issues in sacred sites by integrating concerns for maintaining the religious significance of the place with the physical transformations in sacred sites.

The Blackfoot Confederacy Keepers of the Rocky Mountains provides a first hand account of the Blackfoot intimate relationship with their mountain landscape now known as Glacier National Park, Bob Marshall Wilderness, Badger Two Medicine Unit of the Lewis and Clark Forest Service, and the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. The animals shared the traditional ecological knowledge of the mountains with the Blackfoot Confederacy so they could survive through the "transfer of knowledge" in their elaborate ceremonial bundles made up of plants, animals, and rocks from the landscape. The Blackfoot agreed to share the minerals of copper and gold with the United States government through a lease agreement in 1895 following the policy of the time under the Dawes Act that allowed Indians to lease their land allotments to non-Indians. Although, the Agreement was written as a land cession with explicit reserved rights for the Blackfeet to hunt, gather, and fish upon the land, the Blackfeet have continued to maintain their ties to the mountain in secret to avoid persecution and publicly when asserting their rights. These rights have been limited, denied, and recognized depending on who is making the decision--Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and/or tested in the court of law. Despite the turmoil, the Blackfoot People have managed and preserved the area through resource utilization, ceremony, and respect for their mountain territory mapped out by Napi (Creator). Blackfoot know their status when it comes to their landscape as illustrated through the annual renewal of the bundles: "When we begin the ceremony, we call upon the water and the water animals, the sky people, the animals of the land, the plants, the rocks and so forth with the humans being the last to be called upon until all have arrived and taken their place in the lodge. Without the environment and its beings, we could not have this ceremony"

Η εργασία θα ασχοληθεί με το θέμα των Ενεργειακών Τόπων. Παρά το γεγονός ότι πρόκειται για ένα θέμα εξαιρετικά πολυδιάστατο, θα επεκταθώ μονάχα σε τμήματα για τα οποία έχω αρκετές πηγές, ώστε να κατανοήσω έστω μερικώς το εκάστοτε φαινόμενο. Στο εισαγωγικό κεφάλαιο που ακολουθεί θα προσπαθήσω να κατατοπίσω τον αναγνώστη όσον αφορά το τι ακριβώς μπορούμε να ορίσουμε ως ενεργειακό τόπο, καθώς επίσης θα αναλυθούν ορισμένοι από τους κύριους μηχανισμούς που γενούν έναν ενεργειακό τόπο. Στα επόμενα κεφάλαια θα αναλυθούν χωριστά το φαινόμενο των κύκλων στα σπαρτά και στη συνέχεια θα αναφερθούμε στα μεγαλιθικά μνημεία, όπου βλέπουμε προσπάθειες του ανθρώπου να δαμάσει τα ηλεκτρικά πεδία για την καθημερινή του επιβίωση. / The main purpose of this assignment is to point out some basic aspects of sacred sites and the mechanisms that define them. The chapters refer to some well known physical phenomena which play a vital role in the forming of such a site. Also it refers to crop circles, megalithic structures and human sensitivity to vasrious fields in nature, mainly electric and magnetic in nature.

Sacred sites in Ysyk-Köl area of Kyrgyzstan represent areas of land and bodies of water which are spiritually and culturally meaningful for local people. The present study mapped about 130 sacred sites, which are conserved-through-use by local communities and represent traditional model of conservation. The entire territory of Ysyk-Köl region is a formal protected area as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Thus, sacred sites, as traditional model of community conserved area, are embedded in the formal government-run Biosphere Reserve. The study scrutinizes how these two models of conservation (sacred sites and the Biosphere Reserve) co-exist in the same territory and interact with each other. Results indicate that these two models are parallel. However, recognition of sacred sites can improve formal conservation by: a) providing a complementary culture-based set of incentives for conservation, b) fostering a biocultural approach, and c) serving as a communication hub for YKBR managers and local communities. / February 2016

Bear Lodge/Devils Tower National Monument, a spectacular rock formation in northeastern Wyoming, has a multiplicity of meanings, not all of which were fully acknowledged until the 1990s. It is widely known as a geologic wonder, the first national monument, a marker of local and pioneer heritage, and a premier rock climbing area. In the 1980s and ‘90s, however, the National Park Service began to acknowledge that the Tower also holds cultural and historical meaning for the Northern Plains tribes, dating back long before the colonization of the American West. Some of the tribes expressed to the Park Service that they were offended by rock climbers desecrating the Tower, a sacred site, leading the Park Service to seek to compromise between these competing uses of this public land. The controversy over climbing at Bear Lodge/Devils Tower was, and remains, a debate over history, and this thesis examines the historical foundations for the discourses of climbers, local white residents, tribal members, and the Park Service, as these various groups asserted their claims to this public space. This thesis contends that the language used by climbers and local white residents in arguing against the Park Service’s accommodation of tribal cultures and beliefs appropriated the languages of spirituality and tradition used by the tribes, and sought to delegitimize the tribal claims to the Tower. The Park Service is complicit in controlling the discourses surrounding the Tower and erasing the traditions and complex history of the Northern Plains tribal ties to this sacred place.

Orange County is the traditional homeland of the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation. Though the tribal-nation is not federally recognized, it is a state and county recognized tribe. Development is a constant threat to Acjachemen ancestral homelands. The Acjachemen are faced with the problem that their ancestral sites are now other peoples' lands. Many Acjachemen sacred sites have already been developed, like the burial grounds at Putuidem. The four sacred sites I explore -- the Cogged Stone site at Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach, California, Puvungna in Long Beach California, Putuidem in San Juan Capistrano, and CA-ORA-64 at the Newport Back Bay in Newport Beach -- share very political histories as well as immense ceremonial significances, significances measured in great part by their sacred rocks, their other natural features, and their roles as gathering places. I learned that, by opening my mind to the ways rocks ground ceremony, I could better appreciate Acjachemen ways of being and, in turn, appreciate these spaces' sanctity. My role in writing this thesis is to facilitate an exchanges of ideas -- ideas which explore what is sacred and ceremonial, and why - in hopes of cultivating in the reader a consciousness about these complex issues. This is a celebration of the individuals who have shared their stories with me, a celebration of ceremony and Acjachemen heritage.