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This long awaited book discusses both ancient and modern shamanism, demonstrating its longevity and spatial distribution. The book is divided into eleven thought-provoking chapters that are organised into three sections: mind-body, nature, and culture. It discusses the clear associations with this sometimes little-understood ritualised practice, and asks what shamanism is and if tangible evidence can be extracted from a largely fragmentary archaeological record. The book offers a novel portrayal of the material culture of shamanism by collating carefully selected studies by specialists from three different continents, promoting a series of new perspectives on this idiosyncratic and sometimes intangible phenomenon.
Light plays a crucial role in mediating relationships between people, things, and spaces, yet lightscapes have been largely neglected in archaeology study. This volume offers a full consideration of light in archaeology and beyond, exploring diverse aspects of illumination in different spatial and temporal contexts from prehistory to the present.
Archaeoastronomy and archaeology are two distinct fields of study which examine the cultural aspect of societies, but from different perspectives. Archaeoastronomy seeks to discover how the impact of the skyscape is materialized in culture, by alignments to celestial events or sky-based symbolism; yet by contrast, archaeology's approach examines all aspects of culture, but rarely considers the sky. Despite this omission, archaeology is the dominant discipline while archaeoastronomy is relegated to the sidelines. The reasons for archaeoastronomys marginalized status may be found by assessing its history. For such an exploration to be useful, archaeoastronomy cannot just be investigated in a...
This book’s aim is to go beyond the limits of the contemporary scientific paradigm of “material culture” by presenting some of the issues confronting archaeology, as it attempts to approach the spirituality of the past. It brings together archaeologists from Western and Eastern Europe, and the USA who, more or less obviously, have used their experientiality to approach the world view and mystic experience of ancient peoples. The book intends to present several arguments in support of an archaeology of spirituality through a series of seven case studies. What method should we use to approach spirituality? Are we still dependent on quantitative methods? Is phenomenology an appropriate in...
What does it mean to live in harmony with all of God's creation? How might our spiritual practice contribute to the healing of this place we call home, and to our own healing along the way? Rachel Wheeler offers compelling testimony for the value--and the life-giving power--of "rewilding." For conservationists, rewilding is a strategy of human restraint, of letting the wild enact ecological repair on its own terms. The "wild" is a quality of life beyond the control of the human. For Christians, a rewilding spirituality restores the life-generating and life-sustaining norms in which we were created to dwell. Radical Kinship: A Christian Ecospirituality provides readers with both theoretical f...
"The sky was our original calendar, our original storybook, the first illustrated edition, the prototype GPS. Beyond its pragmatic usefulness, the sky was the domain of spirit, traversed by deities and a place to which human souls departed. Let's re-enchant it, shall we?"-Renna Shesso Impeccably researched by one of the most eclectic pagan scholars working today, this book aims to reengage our fascination with the planets and stars. Shesso looks at the mythology, legend, science and lore about the planets and most significant stars in a chapter-by-chapter format. Included are nearly 150 diagrams and illustrations--of the heavens, astrological views, depictions of gods and goddesses, sky totems, Tarot symbols, star charts, and more. Anyone with even a vaguely pagan bent, anyone with a reverence for the natural world, who has ever marveled at the night sky will love this enchanted view of the planets and stars. Previously published as A Magical Tour of the Night Sky 9781578634958
The present book explores the complexity of the past, by analysing the relationships between place, territory, the material value of objects and landscapes, time and ritual, during archaeological investigations. It presents the archaeology of place as a series of interconnecting and interactive relationships. It is clear that things and places do not emerge without some form of agency, usually through the concept of material manipulation, coupled with elaboration, innovation and time. Depending on the raw material used and the process of manipulation and its relationship with the environment, materiality gains value. How do we as modern humans work within the complexity of place, materiality...
By drawing on a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, this book illustrates the immense complexities of Svalbard as a place, point of reference, or social concept. It portrays the multiple, situated perspectives that characterize understandings and imaginings of Svalbard, and brings together contributions from academic fields that rarely interact with each other. Svalbard Imaginaries contributes to a number of research contexts, ranging from a broadly conceived, multi-disciplinary field of ‘Arctic Studies’ to more disciplinary specific debates on how places are reworked at the interstices of various global flows and vice versa. It assembles contributions on imaginaries that cover a wide array of issues, including—but not limited to—Svalbard as a geopolitical site, a landscape, an image, a (mining) heritage assemblage, a tourist destination, a wilderness, a built environment, a site of knowledge production, a site of artistic engagement, and projections of the future. It deliberately assembles analyses that refer to a variety of timescales and covers representations of the past, the present, and possible futures of Svalbard.
This edited volume analyzes the belief in supernatural gamekeepers and/or animal masters of wildlife from a cross-cultural perspective. It documents the antiquity and widespread occurrence of the belief in supernatural gamekeepers at the global level. This interdisciplinary volume documents both the antiquity and the widespread geographical distribution of this belief along with surveying the various manifestations of this cosmology by way of studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Some chapters explore the manifestations of this belief as they appear in petroglyphs/pictographs and other forms of material culture. Others focus on the environmental impacts of these bel...
This volume represents the first which interfaces with astronomy as the fulcrum of the sciences. It gives full expression to the human passion for the skies. Advancing human civilization has unfolded and matured this passion into the comprehensive science of astronomy. Advancing science’s quest for the first principles of existence meets the ontopoietic generative logos of life, the focal point of the New Enlightenment. It presents numerous perspectives illustrating how the interplay between human beings and the celestial realm has informed civilizational trends. Scholars and philosophers debate in physics and biology, the findings of which are opening a more inclusive, wider picture of the universe. The different models of the universal order and of life here presented, all aiming at the first principles of existence—accord with the phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life within the logos-prompted primogenital stream of becoming and action, which points to a future of progressing culture.