An Ethnological Analogy and Biogenetic Model for Interpretation of Religion and Ritual in the Past

Michael James Winkelman

doi:10.1007/s10816-021-09523-9

Michael James Winkelman

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-021-09523-9

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Abstract

This paper provides a method- and theory-focused assessment of religious behavior based on cross-cultural research that provides an empirically derived model as a basis for making inferences about ritual practices in the past through an ethnological analogy. A review of previous research provides an etic typology of religious practitioners and identifies their characteristics, selection-function features, the societal configurations of practitioners, and the social complexity features of the societies where they are found. New analyses reported here identify social predictors of the individual practitioner types in their relationships to subsistence and sociopolitical conditions (foraging, intensive agriculture, political integration, warfare, and community integration). These relations reveal the factors contributing to social evolution through roles of religious organization in the operation of cultural institutions. The discussion expands on the previous findings identifying fundamental forms of religious life in the relations of the selection processes for religious practitioner positions to their principal professional functions. These relationships reveal three biogenetic structures of religious life involving (1) alterations of consciousness used in healing rituals, manifested in a cultural universal of shamanistic healers; (2) kin inheritance of leadership roles providing a hierarchical political organization of agricultural societies, manifested in priests who carry out collective rituals for agricultural abundance and propitiation of common deities; and (3) attribution of evil activities, manifested in witches who are persecuted and killed in subordinated groups of societies with political hierarchies and warfare. These systematic cross-cultural patterns of types of ritualists and their activities provide a basis for inferring biogenetic bases of religion and models for interpreting the activities, organization, and beliefs regarding religious activities of past societies. Cases are analyzed to illustrate the utility of the models presented.

Highlights

Cross-cultural Research as a Basis for Archaeological InferenceEvidence of ritual and religious practices in the archaeological record or historical accounts raise questions as to the nature of the activities involved and the characteristics of the practitioners
The types of religious practitioners presented here are based on that previous research, with the current report presenting new analyses of their social predictors based on the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS) data in the online CosSci1 database
The practitioner types previously identified by the cluster analyses described below provided the basis for several areas of analysis that establish ethnological analogies for archaeological interpretations in identifying: Etic types of religious practitioners and their respective characteristics; Their configurations of co-occurrence of practitioner types; and The relationships of selection procedures and training to professional functions

Summary

Introduction

Evidence of ritual and religious practices in the archaeological record or historical accounts raise questions as to the nature of the activities involved and the characteristics of the practitioners. Physical the artifacts of this past religious behavior might be, direct information regarding the nature of the ritual practices and the characteristics of the functionaries involved is generally limited. An ethnographic analogy is normally used, where artifacts and practices from a current or historical culture provide a model for interpreting something from past. Cross-cultural patterns can inform archaeological inference, providing a basis from which to generalize about societal types, infer causes of phenomena, attribute interpretations to material findings, and make inferences about diverse cultural practices of the past based on associations found in worldwide data. Comparative ethnology can provide models that allow artifactual remains (i.e., settlement and dwelling size) be used to interpret populations features such as sedentary lifestyle, marital residence, marriage patterns, kinship and social organization, warfare, political hierarchy, and even religious practices ( see Václav et al, 2020; Kahn, 2015)

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