The paraphernalia of cult life in the late copper age

Abstract

The monotony of daily life was and still is coloured by various rituals, festivities and celebrations, and community ceremonies. Repeated community events eventually turn into tradition and mature into a narrative of the events and major incidents between the present and the past, handed down from generation to generation. Tales, narratives of mythical origins, and myths are born, which are incorporated into a community’s religious beliefs (the forerunners of later canonised religions). Put very simply, the myths of a particular community serve as the “sacral confirmation” of what members of a community hold about their ancestors and their own past. Myths can be regarded as “miniature dramas”, narrated through various rituals. Rituals can be regarded as a set of symbols narrating various customs as defined by tradition. By enacting various rituals, members of the community hope to influence supernatural powers in order to achieve a human goal. Rituals are based on a predetermined sequence of a set of events, during which various artefacts are used in order to symbolically narrate and present those events. Cults represent the sum of rituals performed with various intentions, which incorporate the symbolic presentation and performance of all events, which are important to the community. In other words, these terms are not synonyms, but express different aspects of a dramaturgical process. The ability to create symbols is a human faculty, whereby various artefacts are vested with a meaning, which is unambiguous and clear to the members of the community, but elusive to others. Extraordinary paraphernalia were sometimes used for the metaphorical presentation of extraordinary events. Rare, enigmatic artefacts of unknown function are generally described as cult artefacts in archaeological studies. The archaeological material, settlement features and burials have preserved but a minute portion of the one-time daily life of prehistoric communities. The paraphernalia of mortuary rituals, fertility rites, sacrifices presented before the construction of a new building, initiation rites, and of a host of unknown ceremonies have been brought to light on several sites. The primary context of the artefacts once reflecting religious beliefs and the sacral sphere has been lost, and thus any assumptions and conclusions concerning prehistoric cults, religious beliefs and rituals must be made with extreme caution. Studies in this field are encumbered by the fact that a uniform culture evolved across extensive territories during some periods and thus the artefactual material from distant regions (principally pottery wares) share many similarities. In other periods, even the finds from neighbouring regions differ from each other to the extent that prehistorians tend to assume different ethnic groups settling in those regions. A tendency towards uniformisation can be noted during the Late Copper Age Baden period (3500– 3000/2800 BC) across extensive territories of Europe from the southern Balkans to northern Germany. Several hypotheses have been advanced for the possible causes of this uniformisation. The apparently identical pottery wares and their decoration, the many similar finds brought to light at great distances from each other suggest some sort of integration, whose nature and underlying causes (cultural, ethnic, political, commercial) are still