Beyond Sacred: Recent Pagan Engagements with Archaeological Monuments – Current Findings of the Sacred Sites Project
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v11i1.97Keywords:
Sacred Sites, Topophilia, Reenchantment, Pagan protest, HeterotopiaAbstract
Over the last decade, our Sacred Sites project has examined contemporary British Pagan engagements with pasts, focusing on archaeological monuments and associated material culture held in museum collections. Increasingly Pagans are taking issue with problems of disenchantment and reenchantment, opposing landscape exploitation, often equating their (contested) relationships to place and pasts to those of indigenous peoples elsewhere. We present findings and examples from our project, with a particular focus on understandings of the 'living landscape' and how its sacredness is celebrated within today's Paganisms. After a summary of the background to our research as co-directors of the Sacred Sites Project (published in 2007 as the volume Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights: Pagan Engagement with Archaeological Monuments) we indicate tensions and implications for heritage policy and social inclusion in relation to two sites of protest: Southend-on-Sea, where road-building has threatened Prittlewell Saxon Cemetery, and the Thornborough henge complex, threatened by quarrying.References
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———. “Contemporary Celtic Spirituality.” In New Directions in Celtic Studies edited by Amy Hale and Philip Payton, 69-91. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000.
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———. “Re-enchanting Modernity: Imagining Tradition as a Psycho-Social Concept.” Journal of Psycho-Social Studies 2, no. 2 (2003). http://www.btinternet.com/~psycho_social/Vol3/JPSS3-DG1.html.
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———. “The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and Female Divinity.” Sociology of Religion 56, no. 1 (1995): 35-48. doi:10.2307/3712037
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———. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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———. Who Needs the Past?: Indigenous Values and Archaeology. London: Routledge, 1989.
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Sayer, Duncan. “Is there a Crisis Facing British Burial Archaeology?” Antiquity 83 (2009): 199-205.
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Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
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Wallis, Robert. J. “Altered States, Conflicting Cultures: Shamans, Neo-shamans and Academics.” Anthropology of Consciousness 10, no. 2-3 (1999): 41-49.
———. “Modern Antiquarians? Pagans, ‘Sacred Sites’, Respect and Reburial.” In Antiquaries and Archaists: The Past in the Past, the Past in the Present, edited by Megan Aldrich and Robert J. Wallis. Reading, Berkshire: Spire Books, 2009. doi:10.1525/ac.1999.10.2-3.41
Wallis, Robert J., and Jenny Blain. “‘Sacred’ Sites, Artefacts and Museum Collections: Pagan Engagements with Archaeology in Britain.” In Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, edited by Jim Lewis and Murphy Pizza, 591-609. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2009
Wallis, Robert J., and Kenneth J. Lymer, eds. A Permeability of Boundaries: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Art, Religion and Folklore. BAR International Series 936. Oxford: BAR, 2001.
Watkins, Joe. Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2000.
Barkow, Jerome H., ed. Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Biolsi, Thomas, and Larry J. Zimmerman, eds. Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997.
Blain, Jenny. Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neoshamanism in North European Paganism. London: Routledge, 2002.
———. “Tracing the In/Authentic Seeress: From Seid-magic to Stone Circles.” In Researching Paganisms, edited by Jenny Blain, Douglas Ezzy, and Graham Harvey, 217-40. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira, 2004.
Blain, Jenny, Douglas Ezzy, and Graham Harvey, eds. Researching Paganisms: Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira.
Blain, Jenny and Robert Wallis “Re-presenting Spirit: Heathenry, New-indigenes, and the Imaged Past.” In Images, Representations and Heritage: Moving beyond Modern Approaches to Archaeology, edited by Ian A. Russell, 89-108. New York: Springer, 2006.
Blain, Jenny, Andy Letcher, and Robert J. Wallis. Sacred Sites, Contested Rights: Heritage Discourse, Pagan Resistance. Final report to ESRC, 2004. http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ or http://www.sacredsites.org.uk/reports/esrc2003endreport. html.
Blease-Bourne, Aimee, “Changing Lives: The Last Fire: Politics, Identity (Re)construction & Nature at the end of the Nine Ladies Protest Site 2009.” Paper presented at the Sheffield Hallam University Faculty of Development and Society Research Day conference, 19 June 2009.
Boniface, Priscilla, and Peter Fowler. Heritage and Tourism in “the Global Village.” London: Routledge, 1993.
Bowman, Marion. “Cardiac Celts: Images of the Celts in Paganism.” In Paganism Today: Wiccans, Druids, the Goddess and Ancient Earth Traditions for the TwentyFirst Century, edited by Graham Harvey and Charlotte Hardman, 242-51. London: Thorsons, 1995.
———. “Contemporary Celtic Spirituality.” In New Directions in Celtic Studies edited by Amy Hale and Philip Payton, 69-91. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000.
Bradley, Richard. An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge, 2000.
Carmichael, David L., Jane Hubert, Brian Reeves, and Audhild Schanche, eds. Sacred Sites, Sacred Places. London: Routledge, 1994.
Cleere, Henry F., ed. Archaeological Heritage Management in the Modern World. London: Routledge, 1989.
Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London: Allen and Unwin, 1912.
Green, Dave. “Modernity, Magickal Cosmologies and Science: A New Cauldron for a New Age?” The Pomegranate 15 (2001): 22-35.
———. “Re-enchanting Modernity: Imagining Tradition as a Psycho-Social Concept.” Journal of Psycho-Social Studies 2, no. 2 (2003). http://www.btinternet.com/~psycho_social/Vol3/JPSS3-DG1.html.
Greene, Shane. “The Shaman’s Needle: Development, Shamanic Agency and Intermedicality in Aguarina Lands, Peru.” American Ethnologist 25, no. 4 (1998): 634-58. doi:10.1525/ae.1998.25.4.634
Greenwood, Susan. The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness. Oxford: Berg, 2005.
Griffin, Wendy. Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity and Empowerment. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira, 2000.
———. “The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and Female Divinity.” Sociology of Religion 56, no. 1 (1995): 35-48. doi:10.2307/3712037
Gross, David. The Past in Ruins: Tradition and the Critique of Modernity. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.
Harvey, Graham. Animism: Respecting the Living World. London: Hurst, 2005.
Heelas, Paul. “Introduction: Detraditionalization and its Rivals.” In Detraditionalization edited by Paul Heelas, Scott Lash and Paul Morris, 1-20. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
Hetherington, Kevin. New Age Travellers: Vanloads of Uproarious Humanity. London: Cassell, 2000.
Hobsbawm, Eric. “Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1-14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Hubert, Jane. “Sacred Beliefs and Beliefs of Sacredness.” In Sacred Sites, Sacred Places edited by David L. Carmichael, Jane Hubert, Brian Reeves and Audhild Schanche, 9-19. London: Routledge, 1994.
Hutton, Ronald. Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
———. The Druids. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007.
———. “Introduction: Who Possesses the Past?” In The Druid Renaissance: The Voice of Druidry Today edited by Phillip Carr-Gomm, 17-34. London: Thorsons, 1996.
———. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Ivakhiv, Adrian J. Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Kreps, Christina F. Liberating Culture: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation. London: Routledge, 2003.
Lambrick, George. The Rollright Stones: Conservation and Management Plan 2001–2005. Banbury, Oxfordshire: The Rollright Trust, 2001.
Layton, Robert, ed.Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions. London: Routledge, 1989.
———. Who Needs the Past?: Indigenous Values and Archaeology. London: Routledge, 1989.
Letcher, Andy. “The Scouring of the Shire: Fairies, Trolls and Pixies in Eco-Protest Culture.” Folklore 112 (2001): 147-61. doi:10.1080/00155870120082209
Martin, Greg. “New Age Travellers: Uproarious or Uprooted?” Sociology 36, no. 3 (2002): 723-35. doi:10.1177/0038038502036003012
Merrill, William L., Edmund J. Ladd, and T. J. Ferguson. “The Return of Ahayu:da: Lessons for Repatriation from Zuni Pueblo and the Smithsonian Institution.” Current Anthropology 34, no. 5 (1993): 523-67. doi:10.1086/204205
Messenger, Phyllis M., ed. The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property: Whose Culture? Whose Property? Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
Mihesuah, Devon A., ed. Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains? Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
Murray, Tim. “Coming to Terms with the Living: Some Aspects of Repatriation for the Archaeologist.” Antiquity 70 (1996): 217-20.
North-Bates, Sue. The Influence of Complementary Practices and Spirituality on British Design 1930–2005. PhD Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2006.
Peers, Laura, and Alison K. Brown, eds. Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader. London: Routledge, 2003.
Piggott, Stuart. The Druids. London: Thames and Hudson, 1968.
Pomeroy, Melanie. Avebury World Heritage Site Management Plan. London: English Heritage, 1998.
Rose, Wendy. “The Great Pretenders: Further reflections on Whiteshamanism.” In The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 403-22. Boston: South End Press, 1992.
———.“Just What’s All This Fuss About Whiteshamanism Anyway?” in Bo Schöler, ed. Coyote Was Here: Essays on Contemporary Native American Literary and Political Mobilization. Aarhus, Denmark: SEKLOS, 1984.
Rountree, Kathryn. “Reflexivity in Practice. Çatalhöyük Archive Reports 2003.” http://www.catalhoyuk.com/archive_reports/2003/ar03_20.html.
Ruickbie, Leo. “Weber and the Witches: Sociological Theory and Modern Witchcraft.” Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies 2 (2006): 116-130. http:// www.asanas.org.uk/files/002ruickbie.pdf.
Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Constructions of the Orient. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
Sayer, Duncan. “Is there a Crisis Facing British Burial Archaeology?” Antiquity 83 (2009): 199-205.
Smith, Andy. “For All Those Who Were Indian in a Former life.” In: Ecofeminism and the Sacred, edited by Carol J. Adams, 168-171. New York: Continuum, 1994.
Smith, Linda T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 1999.
Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
Swidler, Nina, Kurt E. Dongoske, Roger Anyon, and Alan S. Downer, eds. Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1997.
Tambiah, Stanley J. Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Taussig, Michael. Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage Publications, 1990.
Wallis, Robert. J. “Altered States, Conflicting Cultures: Shamans, Neo-shamans and Academics.” Anthropology of Consciousness 10, no. 2-3 (1999): 41-49.
———. “Modern Antiquarians? Pagans, ‘Sacred Sites’, Respect and Reburial.” In Antiquaries and Archaists: The Past in the Past, the Past in the Present, edited by Megan Aldrich and Robert J. Wallis. Reading, Berkshire: Spire Books, 2009. doi:10.1525/ac.1999.10.2-3.41
Wallis, Robert J., and Jenny Blain. “‘Sacred’ Sites, Artefacts and Museum Collections: Pagan Engagements with Archaeology in Britain.” In Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, edited by Jim Lewis and Murphy Pizza, 591-609. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2009
Wallis, Robert J., and Kenneth J. Lymer, eds. A Permeability of Boundaries: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Art, Religion and Folklore. BAR International Series 936. Oxford: BAR, 2001.
Watkins, Joe. Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2000.
Published
2009-09-04
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Blain, J., & Wallis, R. J. (2009). Beyond Sacred: Recent Pagan Engagements with Archaeological Monuments – Current Findings of the Sacred Sites Project. Pomegranate, 11(1), 97-123. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v11i1.97
