Material culture of religion

Latour, Prepositions and the Instauration of Secularism

by Anna Strhan

published in Political Theology, Vol. 13, No.2, 2012

Bruno Latour’s understanding of different modes of existence as given through prepositions offers a new approach to... more Bruno Latour’s understanding of different modes of existence as given through prepositions offers a new approach to researching “secularism,” taking forward attention paid in recent scholarship to its historically contingent formation by bringing into clearer focus the dynamics of its relational and material mediations. Examining the contemporary instauration of secularism in conservative evangelical experience, I show how this approach offers a new orientation to studying secularism that allows attention to both its history and its material effects on practice. This shows how Latour’s speculative realism extends and provides a bridge between both discursive analysis of religion and secularism and the recent turn towards materiality in empirical study of religion.

St. Eustatius Excavation Field Report and the Jews of Statia - January 2010

by Sidney Shapiro

Field Report - Overview
The Projects on Statia - Overview
Schottsenhok
Robles Compound
The... more Field Report - Overview
The Projects on Statia - Overview
Schottsenhok
Robles Compound
The Excavation
Mapping of the Jewish Cemetery
Conclusions
Interview with D. Miller
Notes

"Bibel og liturgi som verdensbilledets fundament - litteratur, kunst og musik i senmiddelalderlige kvindeklostre." ("The Bible and Liturgy as Fundament to the World View: Literature, Art, and Music in Late Medieval Female Convents", in Danish and with numerous illustrations). In: Middelalderens Verden: Verdensbilledet, tænkningen, rummet og religionen, ed.s Ole Høiris & Per Ingesman, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2010, pp. 225-242

by Linda Maria Koldau

Review of Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia, 618–960 (Sarah Fraser. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003)

by D. Neil Schmid

Review of Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia, 618-960 (2004), by Sarah Fraser. History of Religions, Spring 2007, pp. 175-178

Revisioning the Buddhist Cosmos: Shifting Paths of Rebirth in Medieval Chinese Buddhism

by D. Neil Schmid

Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, 17 (Etudes sur l'histoire de l'art chinois: en hommage à Lothar Ledderose)

[French abstract -- article in English]

On considère généralement que le cosmos bouddhique chinois médiéval... more [French abstract -- article in English]

On considère généralement que le cosmos bouddhique chinois médiéval est toujours conçu comme composé de Cinq ou Six Voies de renaissance, selon la présence ou l’absence du royaume des Asuras ou dieux guerriers. En fait, un modèle alternatif domine la documentation textuelle et matérielle à partir du milieu de l’époque Tang. Un examen détaillé des documents écrits, des rituels et des représentations de cette époque révèle qu’au VIIIe siècle le chemin des buddhas (fo dao) devient interchangeable avec le chemin des êtres célestes (tian dao) et mêlé des notions de Terre pure et de cieux paradisiaques. Ici, la distinction entre les Cinq Voies et les Six Voies n’a rien à voir avec la présence ou l’absence de la Voie des Asuras mais elle est liée à une relocalisation de la moralité et de l’émancipation : les Cinq Voies sont « mauvaises » alors que la Sixième Voie mène au salut. De cette façon, il y a toujours simultanément Cinq et Six Voies. Devenir un Buddha en suivant la Sixième Voie implique une transformation corporelle, comme tout processus transmigratoire, mais sa destination est transcendante et sotériologiquement défi nitive : la renaissance dans un lieu paradisiaque, soit Terre pure ou soit Ciel. Ce cas montre qu’il est important de comprendre que le bouddhisme chinois a été intégré d’une manière profonde dans la société chinoise, à la suite d’une interaction intense entre les deux parties (le bouddhisme et la société chinoise).

The Material Culture of Exegesis and Liturgy and a Change in the Artistic Representations in Dunhuang Caves, ca 700 to 1000 AD

by D. Neil Schmid

Asia Major (Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Professor Victor H. Mair). Daniel Boucher, Neil Schmid, and Tansen Sen, eds. (Third Series) Vol. XIX, parts 1-2 (2006):171-210.

"This article examines specific depicted objects found in Tang Dynasty caves at Mogao, Dunhuang — the western... more "This article examines specific depicted objects found in Tang Dynasty caves at Mogao, Dunhuang — the western niche as a mock platform, the large painted murals as hanging silk paintings, and the faux winged screens — in order to establish how the caves were conceptualized in ritual terms. My finding is that the platform element, that is, the caves’ western niche occupied by a statue of a Buddha, was in fact a replication of the literati zhang 帳 (chuangzhang 床帳), a tent-like structure mounted on a platform that was used from the fourth century BCE onwards as a seat of authority and instruction. This object with its scholarly associations, notably of textual exegesis, marks the interior of the cave as a place of learning and rearticulates the Buddha as a classical literatus. The zhang as a teaching platform works together with the format and scriptural content of the mural paintings to establish a programmatic correlation with materials and texts used in the then-current exegetical styles of sutra lectures (jiangjing 講經), while the caves as a whole replicate the liturgical scene of sutra lectures and of the lay or “popular lecture” (sujiang 俗講) that developed during the Tang and Five Dynasties periods."
"[Dunhuang] family shrines were configured around the very visible but immaterial liturgical ritual of expounding the Law, modeled in this case on the contemporaneous sutra lecture. Through their material donations the patrons constructed an “as-if” space. ...[F]ew activities were ever held in the caves, because something else was already going on, namely an interaction with the Buddha within the familiar setting of the sutra lecture. The primary function of the caves was in creating an ideal imagined world, an as-if world that condenses time and space. ...an ideal world where the Buddha is continually present.

The Material Culture of Household Apotropaia in the Eastern United States

by M. Chris Manning

Paper and accompanying PowerPoint presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, January 5, 2012. Part of the symposium, "Manifestations of Magic: The Archaeology and Material Culture of Magic and Folk Belief."

Paper Abstract:
Significant research on apotropaic concealments has been conducted by scholars in Europe and... more Paper Abstract:
Significant research on apotropaic concealments has been conducted by scholars in Europe and Great Britain, as well as in Australia. Similar research in colonial and post-colonial contexts in the United States, however, is still in its infancy. This paper examines the material culture of magic and folk belief in the eastern United States focusing on magical apotropaia associated with domestic and public structures. In particular, it explores the European origins of these practices, their transformation and reinterpretation in the United States and their continuation into the twentieth century.

Symposium Abstract:
Although it has been twenty-five years since British archaeologist Ralph Merrifield published his seminal work, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, the archaeological study of magic in European contexts is still a relatively new field. Bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, this session will explore the material culture of magic and folk belief, both above and below ground. Emphasis is on the manifestation of magical traditions in Europe as well in various colonial and post-colonial contexts in Australia and North America, interaction with non-Western magico-religious traditions, and the ways in which archaeologists and scholars in related disciplines engage and interpret material evidence of magical belief and practice.

‘Textiles not made by hands’: the agency of the maker of ecclesiastical embroidery in Russia from 1990 to the present.

by Luba Dovgan Nurse

Dissertation, MA History of Textiles and Dress (distinction), Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton, UK, 2006.

Cities of the Dead: Architectural Motifs and Burial Practices in Curaçao’s Religious and Ethnic Communities

by Laura Leibman

Co-authored with Kent Coupé . Published in Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies. XXVII, pp. 56-87.

In this study we analyze the cemeteries of Curaçao, a small desert island in the Dutch West Indies near the coast of... more In this study we analyze the cemeteries of Curaçao, a small desert island in the Dutch West Indies near the coast of Venezuela that was once a crucial player in colonial smuggling and the slave trade. Our study compares the island’s Jewish (Spanish-Portuguese), Protestant (primarily Dutch), and Catholic (Afro-Curaçaoan) cemeteries. Following the work of Dickran and Ann Tashijian, Keith Cunningham, Lynn Gosnell, Suzanna Gott and others, we interpret these stones within the religio-cultural context of the people who used them. We argue that whereas ethnic cemeteries in the United States often emphasize the distinctiveness of the communities, Curaçao’s cemeteries emphasize both ethnic distinction and ethnic elision. The permeability of racial and religious boundaries in the cemeteries reflects the island’s complicated racial history and is an important reminder of how race is often constructed differently outside of the United States. This permeability should not be confused with social equality: indeed, as racial categories became more fluid following emancipation, islanders used other categories such as wealth and status displays to reinforce social privilege within (as opposed to between) ethnic groups.

'Consuming the Body: Contemporary Patterns of Drug Use & Theological Anthropology,' in Public Theology in Cultural Engagement, ed. Stephen Holmes (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), pp. 94-130.

by Luke Bretherton

The ‘Body of Christ’ on the Streets of Dayton: A Cultural Account of the Corpus Christi Parish Patronal Procession of 1933

by Emily McGowin

Presented at the University of Dayton Humanities Symposium: Exploring Dayton, 2011.

Treasuries, Tombs and Reliquaries: A Group of Ottoman Qur'an Boxes of Architectural Form

by Margaret Graves

Margaret S. Graves, 'Treasuries, Tombs and Reliquaries: A Group of Ottoman Qur'an Boxes of Architectural Form', in Amanda Phillips and Refqa Abu-Remaileh (eds), The Meeting Place of British Middle East Studies: Emerging Scholars, Emergent Research and Approaches, Newcastle, 2009, pp. 78-98.

Images not included in this PDF.

Islam and the Devotional Image in Pakistan

by Jamal Elias

In Barbara D. Metcalf, ed., Islam in South Asia in Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 120-134.

Lords and Labour

by Robin Fleming

in The Short Oxford History of the British Isles, vol. 3: Britain and Ireland in the Ninth through Eleventh Centuries, ed. Wendy Davies (Oxford, 2003), 107-38.

Court and Piety In Late Anglo-Saxon England

by Robin Fleming

(co-author with Mary Frances Smith and Patricia Halpin), Catholic Historical Review, 87 (2001), 569-602.

The Evidence of the Senses and the Materiality of Religion

by Webb Keane

Marked, Absent, Habitual: Approaches to Neolithic Religion at Catalhoyuk

by Webb Keane

Book review: A Zoroastrian Tapestry: Art, Religion and Culture, by P. Godrej and F. Punthakey Mistree

by Tehmina Goskar

Review: A Zoroastrian Tapestry: Art, Religion and Culture, by P. Godrej and F. Punthakey Mistree (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2002), Material Religion 2 (1) 2006.

My review of this lavishly produced tome (it's enormous!) on various aspects of Zoroastrian religion and culture. My review of this lavishly produced tome (it's enormous!) on various aspects of Zoroastrian religion and culture.

Buried Buckets: Rethinking Ritual Behavior before England's Conversion

by Austin Mason

Published as part of a series of three linked papers co-authored with Alecia Arceo and Robin Fleming, “Buckets, Monasteries and Crannógs: Material Culture and the Rewriting of Early Medieval British History,” Haskins Society Journal, 20 (2008), 1–36.

Changing contexts, changing meanings: Flint axes in Middle and Late Neolithic communities in the northern Netherlands

by Karsten Wentink

by Karsten Wentink, Annelou van Gijn and David Fontijn.
in: Vin Davis & Mark Edmonds (eds.) 2011: Stone Axe Studies III, Oxford (Oxbow Books)

Throughout prehistory, axes played an important role in both ritual and domestic life. In fact, the axe is perhaps the... more Throughout prehistory, axes played an important role in both ritual and domestic life. In fact, the axe is perhaps the implement par excellence to illustrate the interconnectedness of the two domains. However, by tracing the biographies of flint axes, it is possible to identify a variety in the ways that different blades were caught up in the flow of social life.

This paper draws together evidence from the northern Netherlands to track changes in the character, use and deposition of axes from the Funnelbeaker (TRB) Culture through to the appearance of Bell Beakers and the first metalwork.

Patterning in this evidence demonstrates that axe blades were pivotal in the representation of systems of meaning for well over a thousand years. They were prominent in traditions of selective deposition, traditions that differentiated blades on the basis of their biographies; their form, size, use and origins. Details on the character and chronology of these deposits suggest that these traditions underwent subtle changes with the passage of time.

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