THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF CULT AND RELIGION Edited by PETER F, BIEHL and FRANCOIS BERTEMES with HARALD MELLER © BUDAPEST 2001Table of contents Editorial Erasébet Jerem ...... : . sg 7 Preface Harald Meller ........ see geaes ARH 8 ‘ ' 1. Introduction | Francois Bertemes — Peter F. Biehl | ‘The Archaeology of Cult and Religion. An Introduction . vo ul { 4 IL. Symbols of the Other World: Representation and Imagery y y Robert H. Layton } Intersubjectivity and Understanding Rock Art .. 27 } Svend Hansen q Neolithic Sculpture. Some Remarks on an Old Problem 37 | Escter Banffy 4 Notes on the Connection between Human 4 and Zoomorphic Representations in the Neolithic .... . vocereeenee 3 4 Dragos Gheorghitt 4 The Cult of Ancestors in the East European Chaleolithie. A Holographic Approach B a fT John Chapman d Object Fragmentation in the Neolithic and Copper Age of Southeast Europe cece 89 x Nenad Petrovic a The ‘Smiting God’ and Religious Syneretism in the Late Bronze Age Aegean ............. 107 q it IIL Sacred or Profane: Conceptions of Cult Places 4 Katarzyna Marciniak 4 Ideology and Material Culture. The Creation of a Religious Cult Place of Worship 123 4 Vassil Nikolov of Neolithic Cult Assemblages from the Early Neolithic Settlement at Slatina, Sofia 133 dl Christina Marangou y Sacred or Secular Places and the Ambiguous Evidence of Prehistoric Rituals 139 4Notes on the Connection between Human and Zoomorphic Representations in the Neolithic ESZTER BANFFY Problems in Research History Several rather incoherent facts have caused the research of cult finds to slowly lose credit over the last two decades. Since figural representations, house models, small clay altarpieces and anthropomorphic vessels have belonged to the category of interesting small finds, they often have been studied independently, neglecting all surrounding other finds and archaeological phenomena. Such works deal with cult objects as mere curiosities of art history. Without a standard method of description and interpretation, these works can never help us get closer to understanding how cult objects were used and for what they were prepared. Interpretations of cult objects have both offered a lange scope for commonplaces and ili-based, adventurous ideas of prehistoric religion ‘As a result, when publishing a cult object, any interpretation can be neglected or restricted to some general remarks (such as “used in the course of some fertility cult”, or “agrarian rite”). Or, the opposite can occur, with ritual customs and Neolithic goddesses and gods described in detail. In both cases, there is hardly any ‘connection established between the finds themselves and the main theses of historians of religion. | Meanwhile, prehistoric archaeology itself followed a totally different development. At a time when | prehistory is becoming more and more incorporated into different fields of natural sciences, both traditional descriptive typology and unverified obscure ideas have lost much credit. Itis thus no wonder that several archaeologists have tured their back on any kind of cult material. For them, there is no perspective to deal with such objects today. However, this attitude can also be ill-based and almost as harmful as the illegitimate favor cult objects sometimes enjoy. We are not so rich in information about the Neolithic and Chalcolithic | periods that we can afford to neglect any source of material. In a period when almost everything is decomposited except some stone, bone or baked clay objects, cult objects form a very important source group. Therefore, we must combine the results gained from very different methods. Fortunately, in the last years a new tendency seems to have emerged, giving new air to this otherwise exhausted | topic. New analyses have set up cult objects as one part of a whole material assemblage. In doing so, they have gained a much broader view of interpretation. As P. Ucko recently summerized, “...what ‘we must insist on asking is that archaeologists should (1) avoid the constricting nature of assumed | monolithic classificatory categories, and (2) conscientiously continue to attempt to match the details, of the uncovered material culture to the implications of any interpretation profferred by them. What is certain is that interpretations can go much ‘further’ now than in the 1950s and 1960s. Afterall, we are | in the era of multiple meanings...” (HaMiLTON #r at. 1996: 304). In the following pages, I would like to add to this problem by combining the traditional typological approach with context analyses in order to interpret a certain cult object type. In prehistoric research, human and animal representations have always been treated differently. All forms of zoomorphic figurines have often been put into one category, although they apparently belong to several subtypes. Firstly, we have animal figurines which are formed in a realistic way, so that it is apparent to which species it belongs (e.g. the fox representation from the Gumelnita culture, Dumrrrescu 1968: Fig. 103), However, some other finds are similarly realistically formed animal figures or heads which have been applied to obviously non-realistic bodies. Many kinds of zoomorphic altarpieces can be arranged in this category (e.g. the deer shaped altarpiece from Muldava, Karanovo I culture - Tovorova — Vassov 1993: Fig. 146, or from the Eneolithic period: Jasa Tepe ~ Tovorova 1978: Pl. 1/1; Koshilovtsi ~ Eneolit SSSR: Pl. 87/4) (Figs. 1, 2). Secondly, any three dimensional sculpture representing animals that cannot be identified as a certain species