Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Marcell Mauss in 1950 found that trance was important to magicians and shamans seeking to control unseen forces and beings. This included magic that consisted of creating/using material culture such as charms, offerings tied to locations (e.g., paintings and shrines), feasting/potions/ointments used for blessings and protection, etc. Although early anthropologists recognized trance’s importance and the role of spirits in magic, Mauss and others (e.g., Evans-Prichard) exercised the importance of spirits and trance in magical practices. In doing so, they separated the acts/materials of magic from their ontological and cosmological importance. This in turn cut magic off from its spiritual and cultural importance, transforming it into “superstition” as opposed to being central rituals that structured people’s lives. Anthropology in general, and archaeology specifically, needs to reintegrate magical/spiritual practices into their broader symbolic and cultural context to meaningfully understand and explain how cosmological principles were manifested as ontological realities. In this symposium we explore the use and form of trance and spirits integrated into cultural patterns of magic as it is reflected in modern practices and the ethnographic and archaeological records. These papers look at trance and magical processes at various scales and from different theoretical perspectives.