Counterpoint:

Essays in Archaeology and

Heritage Studies in Honour of
Professor Kristian Kristiansen

Edited by

Sophie Bergerbrant

Serena Sabatini

BAR International Series 2508

2013

Published by

Archaeopress
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BAR S2508

Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies in Honour of Professor Krisian Krisiansen

©

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193

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Alexander Gramsch and Thomas Meier

Abstract: This paper outlines an archaeological approach to rituals that separates ritual (praxis) from religion or belief (doxa).
Rather than trying to elucidate what people may have thought, we suggest focusing on ritual as action; these actions have a huge

communicative and transformative potential and thus it is their effect on society that interests us here. This social eficacy can be
scrutinized archaeologically in the longue durée. We apply this understanding to a new approach to the study of hoards and deposits.
These, too, are understood as the results of ritual action, i.e. sequenced and communicative practice that involves handling and
manipulating cultural knowledge, reproducing and maybe altering it, thus affecting social identities and relations. We therefore
suggest focusing on the depositional practice rather than the motivations behind deposition. Moreover we suggest proceeding from the
understanding of depositions as ritual actions to analysing what effect they had on space and how they simultaneously were directed
by culturally perceived spatial structures.

Keywords: Ritual dynamics, landscape, deposition, communication, social eficacy, spatial structure

Introduction

Doing the archaeology of ritual may seem impossible for

prehistoric periods. Images and igurines are rare, and written

sources nonexistent. How are we supposed to assess what a

prehistoric ritual meant – or whether or not the traces we observe

indeed result from a ritual? Isn’t prehistoric archaeology at a

disadvantage compared to the anthropology of ritual? Moreover,

if we want to apply ritual theory to the investigation of hoards or

depositions we are facing a traditional dichotomy that classiies

hoards either as being religiously motivated or driven by economic

interests. This view was challenged by Kristian Kristiansen early

on, emphasizing that the deposition of goods may have been

directed towards supernatural powers while at the same time

affecting ‘political alliances’ (Kristiansen 1976, 1996: 262). As

we will discuss below, analysing depositions as rituals does not

imply limiting them to the religious sphere.

In fact, archaeology is in a position that offers new perspectives

and new approaches to the study of ritual. However, to utilize

these perspectives and approaches fully requires a revision of

some of our assumptions. On the one hand the sources we have

for studying ritual demand us to outline a clear-cut relationship

between material culture and ritual action. On the other hand,

archaeology can contribute to the study of ritual by approaching

ritual through action and body rather than language and mind.

This allows a better understanding for the dynamics of ritual, and

it enables us to assess the long-term effects of rituals on society.

Ritual as action

Traditional archaeology explicitly or implicitly agreed with

Hawkes’ ‘ladder of inference’ that placed religion on the

highest and least accessible ‘rung’ (Hawkes 1954:161f.).

Ritual was understood as the visible expression of religion,

therefore approaches to ritual aimed at unveiling the religious

sphere – the ‘myth behind the rite’ (e.g. Spiro 1973:97; Renfrew

1985). This attitude was not only in line with the dominating

phenomenological paradigm within cultural anthropology (e.g.

Frazer 1890; Otto 1917; Eliade 1959), it was also supposed to

pave the way to ‘prehistoric thought’. Following Durkheim‘s

(1912) deinition a sharp distinction was made between mundane

and religious thought, with ritual being the prime way to express

the latter (Radcliffe-Brown 1952:143; Insoll 2004: ch. 2 on the

history of research).

Moreover, many archaeological approaches to ritual

paradigmatically focused on its supposed conservatism evident

both in its invariable articulation of religion and tradition and in

its sturdiness, its form remaining static.

Meanwhile, not only has Hawkes’ ladder been challenged

(e.g. Bertemes & Biehl 2001), but a shift can also be observed

concerning the understanding of ritual as static on the one

hand and its anchoring in the religious sphere on the other

hand. For example, Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff (1977)

detached ritual from the religious context, employing it also for

non-religious processes. Clifford Geertz (1973) focused on the

signiicance of ritual action for the cultural web of meanings and

for social communication. Attention inally turned to the actions

themselves and how they help social groups to generate and re-

generate and to present and negotiate differences (e.g. Schechner

1977; Tambiah 1979; Bell 1997).

These concepts were also applied to archaeology, turning to the

actual ritual practices (e.g. Meier 2002; Gramsch 2007; Kyriakidis

2007; Marcus 2007; Renfrew 2007). However, these approaches

still often focus on the motives behind the actions rather than on

their social effects. Those who are interested in religion, rather

than in practise and its effects, emphasize that ritual usually forms

an element of religion (Insoll 2004:77). However, the religious or

ideological sphere can also always be understood as part of the

social; Kristiansen, for example, proposes that rituals that were

introduced in Scandinavia by the beginning of the Late Bronze

Age were part of a social and economic consolidation, economy

and ideology thus being uniied in the reproduction of society

(Kristiansen 2010:176, 185).

We want to argue for an approach that centres on the effects

rituals have had rather than on what prehistoric groups may

have thought or how they may have motivated the ritual actions

emically. Not only do explicit motivations – deriving from the

Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies

194

religious sphere or not – and actual effects of rituals diverge, we

moreover cannot assume that all actors would follow the same

(religious) explanation for what they are doing and why. Thus, we

separate cult (praxis) from belief (doxa), focusing on the former

(cf. Durkheim 1912:36f.; Rappaport 1999; Bertemes & Biehl

2001:16).

Ritual action as communication

We therefore argue for an archaeology of ritual that is concerned

with the social effects of ritual and the material expressions of

both rather than with prehistoric religion. Rituals act upon social

actors because they are public and highly visible, repetitive and

nevertheless open to individual adoption, because they involve

a number of different social actors and have the potential to

transform social reality (Michaels 2003; Köpping et al. 2006).

Following Geertz we can say that rituals not only are ‘models of’

social identities and social relations, but also ‘models for’ these

(Geertz 1966, 1987:52): they help in creating, negotiating and

maintaining social identities and social relations.

This transformative power derives from the dialectics of ritual

practice. As public and repetitive actions rituals are governed by

existing structures and at the same time they create and change

these structures (Bell 1997:88ff. and passim; cf. Bourdieu 1972;

Giddens 1984). Rituals are part of the cultural web of meanings

– i.e. the historically derived complex of ideas, references,

meanings, practices etc. – not only because they may be able to

express these ideas etc. in a symbolic form, but because the ritual

actions themselves generate culture. Social actors communicate

through, for example, the treatment of the human body (Gramsch

2007, in print; s.a. Kus 1992; Hamilakis, Pluciennik & Tarlow

2002; Nilsson Stutz 2003, 2008; Van Wolputte 2004; Joyce

2005), and they communicate less about their religious beliefs,

but about notions of identity and body, about historical knowledge

and how this may be transformed, about their attitudes towards
their Lebenswelt

, about their social relations. The action itself is

communicative, and this communication enables them to adjust

their knowledge and social structure and thus to maintain both.

Ritual is therefore much more than a mere relection of religious

thought; it is part of the cultural sphere, which is not one ield

among others – economy, social structure etc. – but cross-cuts

all parts of a society and allows communication and agreement

about values, models and aims. The meaning of ritual therefore

does not rest in an (imagined) doxa, but the concrete performance

in a particular context itself creates meaning.

Criteria for ritual action (religious or not)

We have already mentioned a number of criteria that help to deine

actions as rituals. Summarizing and elaborating these criteria –

following Michaels (2003:4f.) – demonstrates that ‘ritual’ in fact

is not necessarily linked to ‘religion’:

Sequenced performance

Rituals are a sequence of intentional actions, requiring actors and

spectators. They thus are performative actions embodied in space

and time. Often the actors (and bodies) involved are modiied,

both to frame the space and time of the ritual (see ‘Framing’) and

to communicate social transformation (see ‘Eficacy’).

Formalization

Ritual actions are usually repetitive and, due to their public

character, imitable. Mimesis, i.e. their ability to be imitated, is an

important characteristic. Still, precisely because they have a certain

accepted and reproducible form, this form can be challenged and

changed. Not only the change, but also the maintenance of form,

requires the agent’s constant input.

Framing

Using certain objects and/or spaces and/or bodily markers, the

agents frame the ritual. They thus demarcate both beginning and

end as well as ritual and non-ritual action and space, for example

changing clothes, ringing a bell etc. The agents thus stipulate that
this is a ritual.

Eficacy

Rituals are effective because they effect the transformation of

e.g. social identity: from child to grown-up, from student to

academic, from worker to football fan etc. They may also effect

the transformation of space into a place (see below). These effects

may be non-permanent or require recurring renewal.

Web of meaning

Rituals involve cultural markers – objects, gestures, places,

words etc. – that refer to existing and generally accepted cultural

knowledge – values, ideas, norms. These markers sublimate the

actions, frame them and enable the communication through and

about them. They enable rituals to be both models of and models

for social relations and social identities, giving the actions the

potential to be socially committing.

This is in line with Turner’s deinition of ritual as ‘prescribed

formal behaviour for occasions not given over to technological

routine’, without necessarily following his addition: ‘having

references to beliefs in mystical beings or powers’ (Turner

1967:19).

The dynamics of ritual

Rituals, as has been said above, are repetitive public actions.

As such they not only reproduce practice and structure, their

actual performance through social actors eventually leads

to structural changes. Ritual itself is not conservative, it is

constantly reinterpreted, renegotiated and transformed (Rappaport

1999). Again, it is usually neither feasible nor is it necessary to

reconstruct what the actors thought about why they may have

changed a ritual or not. What matters is the eficacy: if these

changes came into effect and were accepted socially, we have

to ask why they were successful and what they resulted in. The

social agents always have to decide – and sometimes they do so

implicitly – whether or not they want to maintain the form or

reform it, adapt it to a changing social structure or to external

inluences, or to give it up altogether.

Prehistoric archaeology has the potential not only to grasp the

performative character of ritual practice, but also its dynamics

and its long-term eficacy. For example, repetitive actions such as

depositions may result in turning space into place (cf. Gramsch

1996) by giving it cultural meaning; the actors themselves may

be unaware of this ‘depth effect’ (Wulf 2005) of ritual action, but

its eficacy and dynamics are perceivable by archaeology. This

approach to ritual actions enables archaeology to tackle questions

concerning the role of objects, bodies, but also spaces in cultural

Alexander Gramsch and Thomas Meier: An Archaeological Outline of Ritual Dynamics

195

and social change without being bonded in a hopeless quest for

(imagined) belief.

Depositions as ritual actions

Recent years witnessed a renaissance in the concern with rituals

in prehistory and history. Archaeology usually focuses on burials

and sanctuaries, and has begun to shift its attention from a formal

analysis of objects to a contextual analysis of actions (e.g. Andrén

2002; Gramsch 1995, 2007; Kyriakidis 2005; Meier 2002).

Following a ‘performative turn’, architecture and grave goods

now are understood as remnants of performative actions that

have the potential to present and maintain or change both social

relations and social identities. A neglected archaeological category

in this respect is deposits (but see Hansen in this volume, and

Kristiansen 2007, 2010 for a social and economic interpretation

of depositional practices as conspicuous consumption).

Unlike burials and buildings, deposits irst and foremost are

deined negatively: they are neither the relics of graves nor of

settlements (cf. von Brunn 1968; Hansen in this volume with

further references). They are the result of acts that we summarize

as depositions, but which may be very dissimilarly motivated.

Nevertheless, deposits are usually interpreted either religiously

– as gift to the gods (Hänsel 1997) – or economically – as hidden

treasures (Künzl 1993 and Fischer 1999 for the Roman period;

critically: Rieckhoff 1998 and Hobbs 2006). Sacral reasons for

depositing goods are sought for where we are observing a high

number of depositional acts without detecting evidence for crises

or riots. Since profane motivations thus seemingly have to be ruled

out, the deposition of ‘riches’ must follow irrational and, therefore,
religious thought.

1

Kristian Kristiansen, on the other hand,

considers the deposition of metal in Late Bronze Age Scandinavia

as ritualized because it can be understood as structured action,

corresponding to the settlement structure (Kristiansen 2010:185f.).

Moreover, where the goods were deposited in a manner that

looks irretrievable to us (but see Geißlinger 2004; Becker 2008)

– in bogs, rivers, lakes etc. – again the actions were perceived

as religiously motivated, as sacriice to numinous powers (e.g.

Bradley 1998). Hansen (in this volume) criticizes that this view

does not encompass the various social dimensions of the practice
itself.

In contrast to this attitude, hoards deposited in warlike periods are

constantly interpreted as the results of safekeeping, even where

the character of the deposit matches that of ‘sacred offerings’ in

wet environments (cf. Hobbs 2006). Finally, certain characteristics

of the material of the deposited objects, such as the sources of

the metals, the kinds of alloys, the types of objects, and the

character of the assemblage, are understood as demonstrating the

depositions of craftsmen or merchants who temporarily buried

their goods without being able to retrieve them (cf. Huth 2008).

All these interpretations have in common that they try to

explain the thinking of the actors rather than their actions and

the subsequent effects. They all follow our own logic, based on

the economically-driven functionality of Western thought (Brück

1999), rather than asking for the historical contingency of the

actions and their outcome.

We suggest understanding depositions as ritual actions: they, too,

are repetitive, following a certain sequence or form (cf. Marcus

2007:45f.). They are mimetic, handling and manipulating a

1

For a critique of the underlying premises see Brück (1999).

certain cultural knowledge, reproducing and maybe altering it.

Analysing the characteristics of hoards or deposits of a particular

period allows inferring the rules that structured the depositing

actions. Criteria that signal the ritual character of deposits can be

the milieu in which objects were deposited, the previous treatment

of the objects (e.g. burnt, bent, broken or undamaged), their

provenance, or the composition of assemblages, i.e. which objects

were selected or excluded. The recurring form of these ritual

actions as well as their alterations can be interpreted concerning

their eficacy, without attempting to reconstruct the thinking of the

actors, be it primarily religious or economic or other.

2

The spatial eficacy and framing of ritual action

Space and landscape are more than the physical background for

human action, they are socially and culturally constructed and

act back into society and culture (Gramsch 1996). Depositions

as ritual actions had an effect on space and simultaneously were

directed by culturally perceived spatial structures (Fontijn 2002;

Ballmer 2010). Depositing single or groups of objects turned

space into place, giving it a certain meaning, a sense of place. The

deposition thus was a transformative act with spatial eficacy. The

deposits acted as markers for the social actor(s) that created them.

Unlike monuments that may have been reused and reinterpreted

by later groups (Bradley 2002; Tore Artelius, this volume), we

may assume that deposits were a part of the cultural knowledge

only of their contemporary society. Thus they potentially mirror

how space and place and spatial structure were understood, (re)

created and changed. However, it is not only the actions resulting

in deposits, but also the landscape features where these actions

were performed that have to be considered. The transformative

acts may have been linked to distinguished natural or previously

culturally deined places such as a pass or a passage, and also

to sites, which are totally meaningless or unspectacular to our

(romanticized) perception of the landscape.

Such an analysis of deposits as ritual actions that are re-structuring

culturalized space asks about the temporal and spatial contexts

in which we can detect manipulations and transformations of

the form of the ritual and their relation to topographical features

(Ballmer 2010:124). Can we reconstruct some sort of ideal form,

i.e. is there an ideal ‘script’? Can we observe a divergence between

that ‘script’ and the actual performance, in accordance with certain

social-spatial or topographical features? To answer these questions

analysis would require a comparison of stringency or tolerance or

deviance of these spatially-framed rituals in particular regions over

a longer period, investigating the conditions in which strictness or

deviancy were possible. Analysis would require scrutinizing these

factors in relation to topographical features to be able to infer how

spatial structures may have been reinterpreted over time. Can we

observe particular places that had to be marked through ritual

action to allow a society to constitute or transform space? Do

some places permit more strictness or more deviancy over others?

Depositions as ‘script’ and

praxis

We advocate an approach to the analysis of deposits that focuses

less on the result – the deposit or hoard – and rather on the

act – the deposition. Depositions can be understood as ritual

actions – repetitive, formalized, following a ‘script’, perhaps

public, involving bodies and objects, framing time and space,

transformative and transformable, and thus socially, but also

2

Not only is economic functionality a characteristic of Western thought, but the

dichotomy between religious and mundane thinking or action also cannot be assumed

for all societies in all periods.

Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies

196

spatially effective. Such an approach scrutinizes the relationship

between ‘script’, praxis, objects and landscape. Comparing

a large number of depositions can enable us to reconstruct the

‘script’. The depositions that are compared must be temporally and

spatially connected and part of the same cultural web of meanings.

The ‘script’ may be reconstructed analysing components such

as milieu (wet, dry), treatment and position of objects, their

previous life histories, their provenances and the composition

of the assemblage. This should enable us to develop criteria for

recognizing the ‘script’ and its modiications, its dynamics. Where

no ‘script’ is discernible, we may assume that the deposit is not

the result of a ritualized deposition.

A next step should relate the depositional praxis to topography (cf.

Ballmer 2010:125f.). This not only includes physical landscape

features, but also their relation to each other and to the wider

landscape. How are deposits dispersed in the landscape? Is space

unfurled to different degrees through these depositions? Can

we connect the dynamics, i.e. the modiications of the ‘script’

with certain landscape features, either topographical or related

to the existing cultural landscape? For example, we may detect

a rather ‘orthodox’ core area and an increase in the dynamics

when moving to the periphery, or ‘unorthodox’ depositions may be

correlated to certain topographical features possibly interpreted as

liminal. Boundaries in space may be special foci for negotiations

over ‘scripts’ or other parts of the web of meaning. Social

communities constitute themselves in particular at boundaries,

where they have to establish the border between self and other

through performative action; thus boundaries directly contribute

to the constitution of collective identities (cf. Donnan & Wilson

1994). Performative actions at boundaries not only present and

transform knowledge about identities, they may also be related

to the crossing of boundaries. Crossing boundaries challenges

one’s self-perception and self-assuredness and may require that

the crossing is manipulated ritually in a rite of passage to counter

the liminality of both space and social actor; this may include

motives of inversion in the script of the ritual (cf. van Gennep

1909, ch. 2; Turner 1969).

In fact, depositions in various prehistoric settings were

performed at landscape components such as deeply cut valleys

or topographical features like rock faces. Bradley (1998:178ff.),

for example, demonstrates that social groups in the Iron Age in

Britain, which can be deined on the basis of the distribution

of coins, deposited goods in large numbers in wet milieux at

borders between two such groups. Fontijn (2002:271) notices that

depositions in Dutch regions were performed offside of intensely

used settlement and agriculture zones, i.e. in peripheries deined

through historically differing types of use. Ballmer (2010:126f.)

shows similar distributional patterns by transforming the

ethnographical example of the Khanty of western Siberia into a

hypothetical archaeological record.

A further step should relate the depositional praxis to time. In the
longue durée

we can try to detect how depositions were adapted

to changing social and cultural contexts and were enabling or

furthering these changes. These adaptions or modiications refer

to the components of the ritual practice speciied above, but also to

the degree of freedom for manipulating the ‘script’ or not: phases

with a strict obedience to the ‘script’ may give way to phases of

greater variation and vice versa.

However, we have to keep in mind that the spatial context also

contributes to the potential variation. Boundaries or passages

may require greater lexibility, core areas may be under stricter

surveillance. The liminality of the passage may have caused

greater dynamics and/or ritual inversion over time in the

depositional practice. An example is ‘foreign’ objects deposited

at topographical passages, such as bronze objects from various

regions and different periods deposited where the river Inn leaves

the Alps (e.g. Meier & Wild 2003). At Ría de Huelva a huge

number of ‘strange’ objects, deposited in a locally unusual (wet,

broken) manner are interpreted as an inverse pattern due to the

liminal position of the place between sea and land (Ruiz-Gálvez

Priego 1995).

In place of a conclusion

With this paper we are very happy to contribute to a collection

of articles honouring our highly esteemed colleague, Kristian

Kristiansen, and we hope that he enjoys our approach – despite the

fact that it may be contrary to some aspects of his own multifaceted

and comprehensive work. Kristian is always highly interested in

prehistoric religion and cosmology and their intersections with

society and economy (e.g. Kristiansen 1984, 2006). He also

contributed substantially to the study of the life history of people

and things and of rituals (e.g. Kristiansen 1999, 2008). In his

PhD thesis he investigated the chronology and social and religious

history of hoards in Bronze Age Denmark (Kristiansen 1976), and

subsequently he pointed to the unrecognized information potential

in the metalwork of Bronze Age hoards (Kristiansen 1996, 1999).

And let’s not neglect his constant critical participation in debates

concerning the history, epistemology, theory and practice of our

discipline (e.g. Kristiansen 1981, 2001, 2004). Without these

debates we wouldn’t have had the terminology, concepts and

critical awareness to develop our approach. His work thus not only

enables but stipulates a critical, self-relexive and theoretically

based approach to depositions as ritual actions with social

signiicance as it is pursued here. Therefore we are in no doubt

that he appreciates our efforts to provide a clear-cut theoretical

basis for the study of rituals and their social and spatial eficacy

– even more so since this approach can indeed contribute to a

wider understanding of Bronze Age ritual practices and social

changes in particular.

Alexander Gramsch: [e-mail]

Thomas Meier: [e-mail]

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