Magical Treasure Hunting in Early Modern Wurttemberg: Spirits, Neurocognition, and Sociocultural Change

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One of the most common forms of divination in early modern Europe was magical treasure hunting. In an era before banks, locks, and police were common, people often buried or hid valuables, and sometimes knowledge of the location was lost. Some people later stumbled upon these caches accidentally, but others sought them out. Some treasure hunters tried to use common sense to deduce their location, but far more employed magical implements and rituals to contact spirits thought to be connected with the treasure. The implements included dowsing instruments and ceremonial objects, while the rituals generally involved elaborate and protracted rites, and in a few cases inhaling smoke or powder. This paper will examine a series of treasure hunting episodes in the archives of the Duchy of Wurttemberg between 1600 and 1800, focusing particularly on those that involved ritual activities that appear to have induced in the participants altered states of consciousness in which they contacted spirits, and relating these activities and experiences to both the neuropsychology of ritual trance and the early modern duchy’s evolving culture and society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40360.0