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Ritual Activities (ritual + activity)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences80%

Selected Abstracts

Our Science is Better than Yours: Two Decades of Data on Patients Treated by a Kardecist-Spiritist Healing Group in Rio Grande do Sul1

ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 2 2009
SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
ABSTRACT This article examines whether a group of Brazilian Kardecist-Spiritists are using the symbols of medicine and science to gain respectability and to better promote their beliefs and ritual activities or whether they are using the view of the world proposed by their founder to forge a new paradigm to replace science, as we know it. Their therapeutic practices, which range from the performance of surgeries without anesthesia and antisepsis to "teleporting" the astral bodies of patients to the spirit world where they are treated for illnesses acquired during previous lifetimes are described and analyzed in terms of their worldview which postulates reincarnation. Data indicating positive results from a sample of patients treated for illnesses they claim to be caused by experiences in previous lives are presented. [source]

The Expansion, Diversification, and Segmentation of Power in Late Prehispanic Nasca

ARCHEOLOGICAL PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, Issue 1 2004
Christina A. Conlee
During the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000,1476) the organization and foundation of power in Nasca was transformed from earlier times. Previously, religious resources were central to the development and maintenance of the political and social hierarchy. After the collapse of the Wari Empire and a period of balkanization, the resources used to establish and maintain power broadened considerably. The expansion of the power base into new realms coincided with an increase in the number of local elites in the drainage. There was no longer a focus on regional ceremonial centers; instead, elites were able to build power through a variety of activities including exchange, craft production (with a focus on utilitarian items), feasting, community-based ritual activities, and probably warfare and defense. During this period the levels of the political hierarchy grew and a more heterarchical type of regional polity developed. [source]

Afro-Cuban Religion, Ethnobotany and Healthcare in the Context of Global Political and Economic Change

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 3 2008
ERICA MORET
,Globalisation', driven by neoliberal-based policies, can be seen to have significant impacts on ethnobotanical practices, particularly through the commercialisation of traditional knowledge and rise in identity-based social movements. Despite its relative political and economic isolation in comparison to more ,neoliberalised' areas of Latin America, local-level shifts occurring in post-Soviet Cuba are similar to those occurring elsewhere in the region. Afro-Cuban ritual activities have proliferated, particularly in Havana, leading to an increased dependence on the rich magico-medicinal pharmacopoeias employed in hybridised religions such as santerķa and palo monte , suggesting that ,globalisation' may have profound, albeit indirect, implications for even the most economically marginalised countries such as Cuba. [source]

Geoarchaeology of the Milfield Basin, northern England; towards an integrated archaeological prospection, research and management framework

ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROSPECTION, Issue 2 2002
David G. Passmore
Abstract This paper presents the results of geoarchaeological investigations undertaken on the valley floor of the Milfield Basin in Northumberland, northern England. The area has a regionally and nationally important archaeological record, including a series of major neolithic and Anglian settlements, but has hitherto lacked archaeological assessment and management guidelines appropriate to the wide range of late-glacial and post-glacial environmental settings in the basin. This project has used geomorphological techniques to delimit and classify a total of nine valley floor landform elements in terms of their geomorphology and their known and potential archaeological and palaeoenvironmental associations. Terraced glaciodeltaic and glaciofluvial sand and gravel landforms comprise the oldest landform elements described here and have formed the primary regional focus for prehistoric and early historic settlement and associated subsistence and ritual activity. These landforms have experienced little post-glacial geomorphological activity, but their multiperiod archaeological landscapes lie beneath a shallow soil cover and are vulnerable to land-use activities that disturb terrace soils and underlying sediments. A second group of landform elements are of Holocene age and include localized surface peats, alluvial fans, colluvial deposits and extensive deposits of terraced alluvium. Archaeological landscapes in these environments may lie buried intact and unrecorded beneath protective covers of sediment although locally they may have been subject to erosion and reworking by fluvial and slope processes. Holocene alluviation may account, at least in part, for the paucity of recorded archaeology in these parts of the basin. However, peat and organic-rich sedimentary sequences identified here (including four 14C dated peat sequences) offer an opportunity to elucidate the environmental context and land-use histories of local prehistoric and early historic communities in the basin, and hence also should be regarded as an archaeological resource. Discussion of landform elements and their archaeological associations is followed by a brief outline of evaluation criteria developed with the aim of ensuring effective long-term management of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental resources. It is concluded that geoarchaeological analysis of landform elements may be considered central to development of frameworks intended to underpin future programmes of archaeological research and the development of cultural resource management and evaluation strategies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

THE SACRISTY OF SAN MARCO, VENICE: FORM AND FUNCTION ILLUMINATED

ART HISTORY, Issue 3 2009
LYDIA HAMLETT
The sacristy at San Marco in Venice had a crucial functional role, both within the daily liturgical life of the basilica and especially during the ritual activity of Holy Week, which is reflected through its artistic programmes. This article focuses solely on the sacristy as a key site within the church, and its renaissance rebuilding and decoration c. 1491,1546. It examines the major elements of the programme in turn, including the mosaics, door, tarsie and tapestries. For the first time, each of these developments is viewed as complementary to a deliberate and coherent programme revolving around liturgical requirements, iconography of the Passion and overarching themes of triumph and redemption. Without surviving documentary evidence for the instigation of such a monolithic project, this article argues that the sacristy be looked at anew in light of contemporary understanding of the sacristy as a space. The practical and symbolic associations of the sacristy at San Marco are thus considered in this wider typological context in order to illuminate our own appreciation of the development of the sacristy's artistic programme. [source]