Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Anthropological and historical research suggests that anatomical parts and bodily substances of humans and nonhuman animals (e.g., crania, mandibles, horns, blood, fat, brains, marrow) likely played an important role in the religious beliefs and practices of many past societies because they were considered to be imbued with spiritual power. That such is the case is not widely appreciated in archaeology at the moment, however. This is a problem not only because it means we are probably overlooking data that shed light on the religious beliefs and practices of a number of past societies, but also because it means we are probably misinterpreting some of the animal bones at some archaeological sites: we are interpreting the bones in terms of economic behavior when they were actually deposited in connection with religious rituals. The present symposium’s goal is to begin the process of changing this state of affairs. The symposium brings together several of the most prominent of the small group of researchers currently working on the phenomenon of the religious use of anatomical parts and bodily substances with a view to identifying commonalities and differences among the societies and archaeological cultures in which it has been documented and stimulating collaborative research.

Other Keywords
Ritual and Symbolism • Paleolithic • ontology • Ideology • Zooarchaeology • Ethnohistory/History • Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology • and Memory • Mortuary Analysis • Neolithic

Geographic Keywords
Republic of Turkey (Country) • Republic of Armenia (Country) • Georgia (Country) • Isle of Man (Country) • Kingdom of Sweden (Country) • Kingdom of Norway (Country) • French Republic (Country) • United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nort (Country) • Ireland (Country) • Kingdom of Belgium (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-14 of 14)

  • Documents (14)
Documents
  • Cycles of Time and Body Partibility at the Ancient Maya Site of Chan Chich, Belize (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record of the ancient Maya reveals many examples of the living returning to human interments to exhume skeletal elements, expose the elements to fire or smoke, or to paint them with red pigment. At the ancient...

  • Deer Offerings in the Stone Age of Eurasia (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nataliia Mykhailova.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Deer Cult was a primary element of the myth-ritual complex of ancient hunter-gatherers. Deer worship included rituals related to natural and economic cycles, including the human life cycle. In the Upper Paleolithic,...

  • The Ensouled Body: A Cross-Cultural Meta-Analysis of Spiritual Beliefs about Human Bodily Parts and Substances (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Brea McCauley. Jayc Sedlmayr.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many societies, human bodily parts and substances have been seen as symbolically significant and imbued with spiritual power. Over the years, several scholars have recognized the importance of these bodily parts and...

  • Fat, Potency, and Respect: The Holy Triad of Human-Animal Relationships in the Paleolithic (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ran Barkai.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals played a major role in human subsistence, well-being, and relationship with the world around them since time immemorial. Humans were highly dependent on their animal counterparts for their successful survival and...

  • Horse Mandibles in the Paleolithic as Liminal Bodies (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ella Assaf Shpayer.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The deep bond between humans and horses is well reflected in the Paleolithic record from its earliest stages. The significant role of horses (Equus) in Paleolithic diet is evident from the presence of horse skeletal remains, and...

  • Human Body Parts from the Monumental Special Buildings at Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) Göbekli Tepe, Southeast Türkiye (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Gresky. Lee Clare.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 9500–8000 BC) site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey has seen the emergence of some major hypotheses based on results from ongoing fieldwork. Perhaps the most significant new insight...

  • An Ideology of Blood at the Root of Symbolic Culture (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Watts.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At ~160ka, roughly at the end of our African speciation, archaeologists identify a change from sporadic to habitual use of red ochre. This has been interpreted as primarily a pigment for decorating performers’ bodies during...

  • Keeping the Dead Close (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karina Croucher. Jo-Hannah Plug.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the use of anatomical body parts—namely, skulls and crania—in the Neolithic of southwest Asia. It is clear that for many, the dead were kept close to the living, with their remains physically used by the...

  • Medical Cannibalism in Scandinavian Folklore: Practical Uses and Religious Rationalities (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Terje Oestigaard.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although cannibalism is a contested theme in anthropology, there is one area and era that has received little attention: Scandinavian folklore in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The widely documented practices...

  • The Mexica Tzompantli ("Skull Rack") as Life-Energy Battery Pack (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Maffie.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mexica tzompantli (“skull rack”) consisted of multiple, agricultural-style ordered rows of human skull-seeds. As such it constituted an enormous “battery pack,” or milpa, that contained, stored, and radiated the...

  • A Neanderthal Hunting Sanctuary in the Interior of the Iberian Peninsula (Pinilla de Valle, Madrid, España) (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Enrique Baquedano. Juan Luis Arsuaga. César Laplana. Belén Márquez. Rosa Huguet.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Des-Cubierta Cave, in the Central System Range of the Iberian Peninsula, 35 crania of large herbivores (Bison priscus, Bos primigenius, Cervus elaphus, and Stephanorhinus hemitoechus) were recovered in an area where the...

  • The Ontological Mammoth Body: Varieties of the Human-Mammoth Ritual Drama Mediated by Cultural Interactions with Mammoth Remains in Pavlonian Moravia and Mezinian Ukraine (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jayc Sedlmayr. Martin Oliva.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnohistoric sources show hunters burnt the bones of prey or hung them on trees, heaped them on piles, deposited them in bogs, etc., in order to propitiate nature spirits such as the “Master of Animals” for game resurrection...

  • Recent Manifestions of Belief in Embodied Spiritual Power in the Western World (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Collard. Jayc Sedlmayr.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When considering the claim that it has long been common for people to attribute spiritual power to certain body parts and bodily substances of humans and nonhuman animals and incorporate them into their religious beliefs and...

  • Trans-species Archaeologies and Ritual Bone Deposits: Respecting the Animal Ancestral Dead (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian McNiven.

    This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although created by people, marine mammal bone (e.g., whale, seal, dugong) ritual installations on land and in the sea are also expressions of marine mammal agency given that the sites are materializations of a social and moral...