This Way to the Sacrificial Table: The Mystification of the Mundane in the Archaeological Record

Summary

In the Martian Chronicles, author Ray Bradbury describes the ruins of an ancient Martian city in this way: "Perfect, faultless, in ruins, yes, but perfect, nonetheless." The notion that archaeological sites are perfect, precisely because of an appearance of decay, resides at the center of a worldview in which the archaeological record is inherently mysterious, removed from any connection to the mundane world of hunting camps, farmsteads, and industrial complexes of ordinary human beings. In this alternative perspective, the places where archaeology shows that people conducted the activities that characterized their economic lives, including housing, the storage of vegetables, and the production of soap and apple cider are, instead, the powerful and mysterious remnants of portals to other dimensions, vortexes of earth energies, the houses of fairies and gnomes, beacons for extraterrestrial visitors to Earth, and yes, the altars upon which Celtic virgins were cruelly sacrificed. This paper explores that process of mystification.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeology and New or Alternative Religious Movements

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15198