Archaeological Evidence - How will they know?

[KellyP]

This thread is obviously related to an earlier one in which I questioned what types of materials found in an archaeological dig one would accept as evidence that a person was in fact a Druid (of the pre-Christian era).

In reading people's responses and considering my own views, I quickly came to a set of related questions that focused on my religious practices.

"If I died today, what objects would stand in testament to my religious beliefs or practices? Specifically, what would future archaeologists find that could be used to identify me as a Pagan, a Celto-Germanic Pagan, etc?"

"Is it important to me that my religious beliefs be remembered by those I leave behind when I die?"

If you care to share your reflections on these questions I would be most interested to here them.

[Cathubodva]

Your question is the question that archeologist ãsk themselves everytime they dig, everytime they examine material data, everytime they gather together and discuss their personal theories. And every archeologist will tell you something different, and probably wont talk to about "evidence" but, and the thing that matters the most to present archeology: context.

It is impossible to answer your question without firstly look into archeology history, and this because some archologists still aproach their dig sites with a historic archeology, a processualist archeology, a postprocessualist archeology or a contextual archeology point of view. Of course, the different views/ school of thought will change the way the data is interpreted. Furthermore, you can never talk of a unified perception or inference on the reality of a dig. Each arqueologist will enter a dig site with a conclusion already formed and thus, the "eye" will favor somethings more then others. Some will be chose to be recorded in drawing plants, others will be disregarded and rendered non important. As all sciences, archeology is done by the archeologist, and so are the conclusions infered.

To answer your questions more directly, one would have to know how would your objects be found? what interconnections did they have with each other? What connections would the objects have with the house they were in, and what connections does the house have with the other houses close to it? All of this, supported by phisycal evidence of your beliefs would help to infer that the person that lived in that house had pagan symbols, and thus could be, indeed, a pagan. The rest would depend on what things did survive the passage of time :)

[Xentor]

I don't know... even though I'm no druid this is an interesting topic. I'll duplicate it into Just Pagan.

[Stang]

I thought that in archeologese, the term "ritual object" meant "I have no idea what this is, so it must have some religious significance". So a future archeologist who didn't recognize the purpose of a vacuum cleaner or a coffee grinder might misinterpret it as being evidence of some religious cult that never existed.

And while context may help an archeologist understand what they're looking at, and may force them to modify their preconceptions, that's only true if the archeologist interprets the overall context correctly. Plus, context can be explained away by various means. For example, if an archeologist who didn't believe in the existence of a Wiccan cult in the 21st century found an athame with silver fittings, a pair of goat's head candle sticks and an ornamental scrying bowl wrapped in linen and concealed in a secret cupboard in someone's bedroom, the archeologist might interpret the items as expensive and valuable kitchen untensils that were stored in an unlikely place to safeguard them. Whereas another archeologist who's looking for evidence of Wiccan ritual activity might misinterpret a paring knife in a kitchen cupboard as a boline. Like those cross shapes that some archeologists saw as evidence of early christian "house churches", but which other archeologists saw as marks left by dressers that had been fastened to walls to prevent them from tipping over. Discoveries at Pompeii support the latter interpretation, but some archeologists still see evidence of early christian "house churches", because that's what they want to see.

[Willow Rosette]

I thought that in archeologese, the term "ritual object" meant "I have no idea what this is, so it must have some religious significance". So a future archeologist who didn't recognize the purpose of a vacuum cleaner or a coffee grinder might misinterpret it as being evidence of some religious cult that never existed.

They had better see my coffee grinder is a religious object. In my house the act of coffee making is sacred.

I think people move around alot more than they used to so when they look at my "house" well more than likely by that time frame it will have been vacant. I think with our society they will find most evidence of today in our landfills. The problem with that is my Goddess symbolism could in theory end up right next to some caothlic stuff and they could assume they belong together. I have statues that have been made for me that I would want passed down and cherished other than that I really dont care what future generations think of me. Even if they were to learn what mistakes I made or our society made it is doubtfull they would learn from them anyway.

[Stang]

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I think people move around alot more than they used to so when they look at my "house" well more than likely by that time frame it will have been vacant. I think with our society they will find most evidence of today in our landfills. The problem with that is my Goddess symbolism could in theory end up right next to some caothlic stuff and they could assume they belong together.
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I think that's a very good point. There used to be a public Pagan temple in this city, in the basement of an occult shop, and it was quite active at one point. And if it had been buried by an earthquake at that point, no archeologist who subsequently dug it up would mistake it for anything other than a Pagan temple, at least if they knew how to recognize typical Pagan altar tools, symbols and decorations. But the occult shop and temple closed years ago, and the building has been used for something completely different for quite awhile now. I doubt if there'd be any archeological evidence that there was ever a temple there.

And the temple was replaced by a lot of small Pagan groups that follow different traditions, and they meet in people's houses or remote corners of parks, or at community centres. I imagine that the altar tools used by most of these groups are less elaborate than what was used in the temple, and if they were dug up in the ruins of someone's house in a few hundred years, they'd be less easy to recognize for what they were, especially when not found in the context of a temple.

[Thunder]

Archeologists (or more accurately, paleo-anthropologists) don't function in a complete vacuum. Objects found in a "dump" would not be given more significance than those found in a grave or tomb.

These days so many religious items are worn by the non-religious as mere ornamentation that their appearance in a dig at some point in the future would mean little.

[Stang]

Archeologists (or more accurately, paleo-anthropologists) don't function in a complete vacuum. Objects found in a "dump" would not be given more significance than those found in a grave or tomb.

These days so many religious items are worn by the non-religious as mere ornamentation that their appearance in a dig at some point in the future would mean little.

Some archeologists seem to operate in a mental vacuum.

I recently read about a gnostic cross found in Scandinavia in a strata that indicated it was about 1400 years old. Some archeologists claimed the discovery would rewrite the religious history of Scandinavia. It's true that the majority of their collegues felt that the gnostic cross was probably just traded over long distances, and ended up in the hands of someone who saw it as nothing more than a cool bauble. But some archeologists claimed that the cross "proved" that gnosticism reached Scandinavia 1400 years ago.

And I think that opinion proves that interpreting archeological finds requires not only context but also common sense. And that similarly dense archeologists of the future may not consider the possibliity that some members of the long vanished "suburban" culture may have worn religious items as jewelry, while ignoring or not understanding the religious significance of those items. But we don't want to get into another discussion about who should feel entitled to wear a pentacle pendant, so let's not go there.

[Cathubodva]

As with everything, archeology is subject to interpretation. The eye sees what it wants to see but also what it is trained to see. However, more and more archeologists are giving up on the whole "Religious meaning" simply because we do not know it. There isnt one archeology, there are several, and each arqueology will face its own challenges and its own dead ends. We cant talk about religious meaning in pre history. We do not know it, we can't know it. We have no means to reach the inner meaning of an object to a particular person or even a particular group of people if we have no written or other sort of record that will give us a firm base for a clame. Anything else will just be speculation and far fetched conclusions. we are scientists, not crystal ball gazers. We present possibilites, theories, connections. We say what is probable, and most of us are cautious when we do it because we realize that Archeology is an ever growing science that develops its methods of investigation in the field and outside the field. A theory presented now will be outdated in the future due to more research and discoveries. Moreover, archeology doesnt work alone. It works with a countless number of other sciences that help an archeologist reach a certain conclusion. There is little point in arguing the religious meaning of an object if we have no record of it, much less the meaning of that object to a specific individual and say "It is so" However, what we can and do is, as i refered previously, study, investigate, defend what to us is probable. And quite surely, another collegue will look at our conclusions and conclude something else. This happens because we simply don't know and many times can't know. And no, objects aren't represented or displayed in the same manner or with the same significance. The more advanced we grow in history, the more we able to theorize about because we may be able to have records to investigate, lore to study et cetera. An richly engraved athame, goats and all the props you mentioned could be interpreted that way, but then again, i can also say that im a cow and moo. Most probably, the archeologists of the 21st century will be aware of the Wicca "cult" and claim it to be *quite probably* the altar of an wicca practicioner, and so on.