Anthropology and the Subject of Religion and Animism Essay

Votive deposition, religion and the Anglo-Saxon furnished burial ritual." In this article, Crawford examines burial practices for what they tell us about early religious belief's systems. View the following video by the anthropologist Nick Herriman; he describes the logic underneath belief systems. He does this with a few different societies. Explain what Nick Herriman examples provides to Crawford's article which is focused on burial evidence. Overall, connect the two sources to explain the ways that anthropologists are interested in uncovering clues about a group's belief system.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpgAtylzMQE

According to Crawford (2004), gravesites are often seen as physical reflections of abstract spiritual belief systems. In her analysis she "questions the distinction between grave sites and other sacred places" and "whether deposits should only ever be interpreted as reflections of social structure."[footnoteRef:1] The focus of anthropologists upon burial grounds and surrounding rituals, as noted in the video narrated by anthropologist Nick Herriman, may be due to the fact that humans are unique as a species in the significance accorded to burying the dead. Even professed atheists in our own society tend to look askance at profaning the body of a corpse, for example. [1: Sally Crawford, "Votive Deposition, Religion and the Anglo-Saxon Furnished Burial Ritual, " World Archaeology, 36, no.1 (2004): 88]

Crawford notes that in Anglo-Saxon burial sites, there is often very little distinction between the types of objects found in areas with a primarily votive versus mortuary context. A blended 'regenerative role' fusing both uses "would be even more relevant in the context of the mortuary ritual, where the act of burial" has a healing function.[footnoteRef:2] However, the fact that the artifacts were often broken and not of a particular age or type argues against the use of a consistent, votive ritual regarding their disposal -- they may simply have been used to memorialize the dead. Herriman similarly argues that funeral rituals become ways to bind the community together in a coherent fashion. Through rituals, authority figures such as shamans (or priests) can cement their authority. In Crawford's view, this is the only way to explain the sundry objects consigned to the dirt: "they represent a deliberate and committed policy of artefact destruction on a wide scale by a rural, agricultural community," and in a community that was geographically dispersed and also divided between paganism and the emerging Christian faith, it emerged as all the more important. [footnoteRef:3] [2: Crawford, 91] [3: Crawford, 96]

Another problem with determining the exact significance of Anglo-Saxon burial rituals is the fact that the previously-accepted notion that the idea that the burial of corpses with "grave goods" as a distinguishing feature between pagan past and Christian present has been shown to be incorrect "because it is clear that the early medieval church in the West tolerated burial with grave goods."[footnoteRef:4] To further complicate identification, in some of the excavated grounds there are apparent uses of Christian symbolism but the burial grounds are found far away from churches. Finally, "although the burial artefacts may have been Christian in intent, it does not necessarily follow that the wearer was a Christian."[footnoteRef:5] Also, merely because someone was buried in an unenclosed burial area does not necessarily mean that he or she was not a Christian, rather this could be a function of the exclusion and inclusion of particular social classes. [4: Crawford, 97] [5: Crawford, 94]

"Thus, while there are very good arguments indeed for using the Final Phase cemeteries and their associated grave assemblages as an indicator of economic and social changes taking place in seventh-century Anglo-Saxon England," including the increasingly elite status of Christianity within the society, the readings of these grave sites are far from clear.[footnoteRef:6] Pagan practices did not entirely die out but rather the social demographics which embraced them experienced a fundamental change. "Cult rituals did not cease, but they did move from the wetlands to magnate halls and cult houses, arguably reflecting a strong change in ideology and the concentration of power in the hands of individuals, rather than in the community."[footnoteRef:7] The archeological evidence reflects not a clear, linear shift in terms of the status of Christianity as revealed through the presence of grave goods and other community rituals surrounding death but rather ambiguity and the syncretism between Christianity and paganism, particularly amongst the lower social classes. [6: Crawford, 94] [7: Crawford, 96.]

Question 2.

Consider Hornborg's reading (2006) Animism, Fetishism, and Objectivism as Strategies for Knowing (or not Knowing) the World. Also choose any of the fairy readings on animism if you wish. Then watch the video by researcher John Reid on the importance of animism. Explain the examples provided by Reid about how animism is actually communicating experience of a belief, rather than just the belief. Consider the examples of animism used in Western and indigenous societies. Also describe the similarities and differences (if you see any) between the two sources. Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhFRarkw8E

As noted in the lecture by John Reid, animism, or the belief in the animate or living nature of apparently inanimate things has long been considered a primitive belief system. The conventional Western narrative, as noted in Hornborg (2006), is that while past societies have been primitive and ascribed feelings to objects, in today's modern context we are above such things, thanks to Cartesian rationalism. This, however, he says is nonsense. In fact, "human beings everywhere impute personhood and agency to entities which according to official modernist doctrine ought to be classified as objects."[footnoteRef:8] Reid points out that it is highly accepted in our society that dogs have personalities and are considered part of their family. This is not the case for animals designated as food, it should be noted. "Amazonian Indians view animals as fundamentally persons concealed under their animal surface" and were once called primitive for this practice but "any one of us who has looked into the eyes of a dog or a cow would be prone to agree with the Amazonians."[footnoteRef:9] Early vivisectionists "felt compelled to sever the vocal chords of the dogs whose living anatomy they explored" in an apparent wish to dehumanize the dog.[footnoteRef:10] This highlights the relatively arbitrary nature with which particular beings are invested with personality and humanity and others are not. Animation is a culturally constructed notion, not something that can be logically deduced, as the modernist Cartesian view of the world would suggest. As well as animals, Reid also speaks of the humanlike qualities often ascribed to places by certain communities. This could be seen in our own society by the sentimentality we invest in houses and other places. [8: Alf Hornborg, "Animism, Fetishism, and Objectivism as Strategies for Knowing (or not Knowing) the World." Ethnos, 71, no. 1 (2006): 22] [9: Hornborg, 24] [10: Hornborg, 24]

However, Hornborg takes Reid's plea for respect for indigenous cultures to a new level, arguing that animism is in many ways compatible with the current postmodern versus modern epistemology, which stresses the relationship between the subject and the object, regardless of whether the object is human. "Rather than viewing knowledge as either representation or construction, animism suggests the intermediate view that knowledge is a relation that shapes both the knower and the known."[footnoteRef:11] The object, including nature and the environment, affects us as well as we affect it. This makes an argument for a more potent form of environmentalism, given if human beings see themselves as part of nature and the earth, they may feel more of a compulsion to step in to try to save it, versus viewing nature as something outside themselves. Relatedness becomes a fundamentally better way to organize society, not a different state of consciousness because of its ability to promote compassion and understanding. [11: Hornborg, 36]

Conversely, Hornborg also suggests that animism can also help us question some of our unspoken assumptions and fears about technology and the extent to which we ignore the power of these manmade inanimate objects: "we should realize the extent to which our technologies are in fact politically constituted, our machines would cease to be 'pure' objects and conceivably be accredited with a malicious agency far surpassing that of any pre-modern fetishes." [footnoteRef:12] The power of technology to store information about us and engage in surveillance, for example, is real, and questioning our modern notions of animism thus has a political dimension to better enable us to appreciate this fact.

Question 3.

Consider Johnson's thesis (2011) "The Croagh Patrick Pilgrimage: Identity Construction and Spiritual Experience at Ireland's Holy Mountain." Think about the connection between the religious belief system and practices as Johnson shows in his thesis, and the video by anthropologist Chelsea Shields. What does Shields show us about identity within a religious belief system? Compare and contrast the discussion in both sources.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyaiTGmwxnU [12: Hornborg, 30]

Chelsea Shields' Ted Talk is so powerful because it answers the apparently inexplicable question of how someone can be opposed to sexism within her Mormon Church and still work to change it. The Church…