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've duplicate this thread into Just Pagan.

Once I start building my monolith circle, there will be hard evidence for my existence, but that wouldn't necessarily have anyone recognise me being pagan.

Some pagans have rune stones... those might survive the times. Perhaps I should carve statements into stone slates? Even the many web pages I created on the subject merely are a fleeting media: pull the plug and cyberspace is void.

[Windsmith]

I assume there'll be nothing left of me for archaeologists to find. I hope to have a natural burial - no headstone - and if that's not possible, I'll be cremated and my ashes scattered someplace(s) special to me (my house? the Valley Grove Oak Savannah? the Illinois River? the possibilities go on and on). After I die, my possessions will be divvied up to relatives, friends, maybe strangers, and my house will be sold to someone else who could be of any religion or none at all. Unless some sort of catastrophic natural disaster covered me and my house sometime in the next year or so, by the time the archaeologists roll around, there will be no trace of me left.