Untangling the Intangible: Reconstructing Ideologies, Beliefs, and Religion in the Past

Identifying the material expression of beliefs, ideology, and religion has in recent years become a topic of increased importance to archaeologists seeking holistic explanations for past human behavior. Studies of ideology, beliefs, and religion have wide-ranging applicability. For example, since beliefs and ideology are integral to economic, political, and religious power, focus on prehistoric and historic belief systems is particularly apropos to studies of social complexity and the emergence of socio-economic inequality. Further, elucidating the immaterial and reconstructing prehistoric cosmologies is central to interpreting landscapes and worldviews of prehistoric hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. Here, participants are asked to present their methodological and theoretical approaches to ideology, beliefs, and religion in archaeology with the aim to build on emergent scholarship on ideology and religion in the past; demonstrating how they are empirically identifying and studying the intangible. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, memory making, material culture as metaphor, landscape creation, materiality, mortuary studies, symbology and iconography, and the link between sacred narratives/texts and the archaeological record. Discussions on how ideology and belief systems in political, economic, and/or religious contexts may cross-cut traditional concepts and disciplinary boundaries are especially welcome.