Ritual Procedures Research Articles

New cases of trepanations from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC in Southern Russia in the context of previous research: Possible evidence for a ritually motivated tradition of cranial surgery?

It is a big challenge to diagnose the motives behind trepanations in prehistoric crania. Surgical-therapeutic attempts may be apparent by the presence of fractures, however, ritual or nonmedical motives are rarely supported by visible evidence in the bones. This article presents data on the trepanations of several individuals from South Russia dating to the Eneolitic and Bronze Age that may indicate a ritual procedure. In these crania an operation was performed in the identical location, the midline, furthermore in one of the most dangerous places, on the obelion. No evidence for traumatic or other pathological reasons for performing the operations was observable. Investigations of two nearby areas of South Russia revealed 13 individuals showing complete perforations in the midline of the cranium. Another one, displaying a depression in the same place, primarily diagnosed as an incomplete trepanation, is discussed considering all differential diagnoses. The trepanations were investigated macroscopically, by plain radiography and computed tomography. The lesions were described in detail, including data on technique, position, size, shape, state of healing, and complications. Males and females received the operation between the age of 10 years and mature/senile age. Only grooving and scraping techniques were used and their application differed between sexes. The majority of the patients survived the intervention for a long time. The region of Southern Russia seems to be a center for special trepanations performed by skilled surgeons, the specific position of the perforations implying more a ritual than therapeutic reason for trepanning. Am J Phys Anthropol 160:665-682, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

『사의(士儀)』를 통해 본 혼례문화 연구

The purpose of this study is to seek ways to utilize the wedding culture described in 『Saui』, written by Heo Jeon (1797-1886), a Silhak and Yehak scholar in late Joseon, as cultural content applicable for the present era. Relevant literature and data, including 『Saui』 itself, were reviewed to analyze wedding culture for this study. The main results of this study are as follows: First, based on 『Saui』, there is a strong belief that a proper ritual becomes a foundation of social discipline and custom in the sociocultural background of wedding culture. The wedding is considered a crucial component of a marriage, which is the basis of the family, society, and country. Second, both the intrinsic/mental aspect (that emphasizes the true meaning and value of the wedding) and extrinsic/material aspect (that stresses the ritual procedures of the wedding) coexist in harmony in wedding culture. Third, this study proposes diverse ways to utilize wedding culture as cultural content as follows: (1) deriving the content of wedding value education for prospective couples; (2) developing tourism products related to wedding culture as historical and cultural resources; (3) creating storytelling of wedding culture in movies or dramas; and (4) planning Myohyeon tea ceremonies for the performances or exhibitions of tea culture festivals in Gyeongnam.

Attempts at the Militarization of Physical Education and Sport During the Dictatorship Period in Greece, 1967–1974

Among the changes brought by the political system during the dictatorship (1967–1974) in Greece was the militarization of physical education and sport. The persons who contributed to these changes were active and retired members of the military and politicians accommodating to the regime. The ideological control of citizens, especially young people, from the dictatorship, was attempted through youth organizations (alkimos, scouts), aiming for their consent as well as the acquisition of full control. School gymnastic demonstrations were treated as ritual procedures of discipline, initiation and conduct of pupils in order to stamp the ideals that advocated the regime (discipline, obedience, militarization). Responsible for military sport was the Highest Sports Council Armed Forces, with the mission of the proper functioning and implementation of physical education and sport in the Armed Forces. The aim was to build stadiums and, gymnasiums and to organize championships for the Armed Forces, with the competence of conscripts in all Olympic disciplines. Attempts to use and promote political messages were effectively circulated in sport through organizing games (especially football), demonstrations and celebrations of the martial virtues of the Greeks.

Procedimientos Rituales en la Resolución de Ejercicios en Contexto Algebraico en Estudiantes de Profesorado de Matemática

ResumenEn una investigación sobre el sentido de los símbolos (ARCAVI, 1994, 2007) en estudiantes de último año de la carrera de Profesor de Matemática para la enseñanza media, en un instituto de formación docente de Uruguay, detectamos la presencia de procedimientos rituales (VINNER, 2000) en la resolución de tareas algebraicas. Durante el análisis de las respuestas al cuestionario que se aplicó, observamos que algunos de los estudiantes resolvían un mismo ejercicio por dos procedimientos distintos. Luego de obtener por el segundo procedimiento el mismo resultado que por el primero, daban su respuesta. Mostraremos algunos ejemplos de este fenómeno, veremos que la elección de un procedimiento ritual le da confianza al estudiante en que el trabajo realizado es adecuado, veremos que este fenómeno está vinculado a las prácticas de aula y alejado de un aprendizaje significativo del álgebra.

나이팅게일 선서식 의례 연구

The purpose of this study was to explore the experience the Nightingale pledge rituals of nursing students. Rituals are how people have always passed on their value system to the young, the next generation. Data were collected using focus group interviews and participant observations from 2012 to 2014. First researchers attended and observed Nightingale pledge rituals. And the three focus group interviews were held with total 22 nursing students participating. All interviews were recorded and transcribed as they were spoken, and data was analyzed using ethnography methodology. The results were the participants experienced the nurse identity and connectedness with others through Nightingale pledge rituals. Also, they experienced a river that cant be crossed,, thus go through transition stage such as rite of passage with firm determination on their nursing career. The Nightingale pledge rituals allowed to the nursing students close relationship and the sense of community by going through ritual procedures.

Female figurines in early christian egypt: reconstructing lost practices and meanings

This paper addresses the great diversity of female figurines produced during the Christian period (iv–vii ce) in Egypt, from Aswan to Karanis to the Abu Mina pilgrimage city. While not documented in any texts, by their sheer number the figurines offer important evidence of local religious practices performed under the aegis of Christianity (e.g., at saints’ shrines) yet without any ostensible connection to Christian liturgy or mythology. Their usage seems to have been predominantly votive, signifying a desired procreative body to deposit in hope, while the diversity of figurines points to an autochthonous, rather than imported or imposed, ritual tradition. The paper, part of a larger project on the local sites of Christianization, uses these figurines and their forms to reconstruct the iconographic strategies of the workshop, the ritual procedures of the client or ritual subject (at shrine or tomb), and the nature of domestic altars as stages for images.

Gudstjeneste og erkendelse – en Donaldsk analyse af kirkens gudstjenester og deres deltagere

The worship service of the Church has been an object of intenseinterest within both scholarly work and the everyday work of thecongregations. This article contributes to this ongoing discussion by acognitive analysis of selected services and groups of ritual participantsin the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark. The theoreticalframework is the Canadian evolutionary psychologist Merlin Donald.His theory of the evolution of the human cognition is illustrated bya model that guides the analyses of both services and types of ritualparticipants. The analyses show differences between the cognitive approaches that dominate among the participants and the cognitive appealsthat dominate in the ritual procedures. In continuation of theseanalyses, the conclusion points to cognitive appeals within the ritualprocedures of the established church that may be elaborated on to adjustto the group of participants as well as to appeal to the full spectrumof cognitive strategies that any human being possess.

The Tomba dei Tori at Tarquinia: A ritual approach

In a recent publication (Brandt 2014b) an attempt was made to single out recurring pictorial motifs in Etruscan tomb paintings and to interpret them as elements of funerary ritual procedures with reference to Arnold van Gennep’s rites-de-passage model (1908) and Mary Douglas’ views on purity and danger (1996). The model is here applied on the Archaic and well-known Tomba dei Tori at Tarquinia in order to see if the tomb’s many enigmatic pictorial scenes can be read as coherent elements of such procedures.

Strukturální analýza romské religiozity na příkladu rituální praktiky „přísahy u kříže“

The following text is based on the outcomes of a long-term field research carried out in eastern Slovakia, and it focuses on the character and specifics of religiosity of the Romany settlements inhabitants. One of the characteristic features of this religiosity is the fact that its core is still based on magical practices while Christianity only covers it on the surface. We will attempt to document this feature by examining a particular example of a chosen institution, this institution being the ritual procedure of the oath at the cross. Even though this practice is commonly known and frequently mentioned in literature, we are of the opinion that most references have so far been of the character of a mere record without an attempt to comprehend its inner nature. Thus, our objective is to explore the intrinsic logic of this institution, which may moreover be helpful in terms of illuminating the whole of the religious system of the Romany settlements inhabitants because in many aspects it may be treated as a model example of a magical procedure concealed under the garb of Christianity. Consequently, this concrete consideration may be generally valid on the structural level.

Mourning Ritual Disputes in 17th - Century Korea

This paper is to investigate the influence of the disputes, which is issue of mourning rituals of 1659 and 1674 in the 17th century. On the whole, the Namin and the S?in vicariously asserted their views on the status of the deceased Hyojong and also on the status of the monarchy in general in relation to the class of scholar-bureaucrats. These distinctly political issues were related to the legitimacy of Hyojong, who succeeded to the throne as the second son of King Injo. So I think it is necessary to understand the introduction of Neo-Confucianism to Korea and the spread of the Family Rituals in the history of Korea, and recognize the big picture of the change of the world order in East Asia: the Ming dynasty’s demise and the Qing dynasty’s appearance. In addition, this paper focused primarily on two political events. First, problems caused by the deaths of Prince Sohy?n and the illegitimacy of Hyojong’s succession to the throne as a second son were mentioned. The next point considered was the political disputes between two factions over the proper duration of the mourning period for the death of King Hyojong in 1659 and his wife in 1674. In both events, the most important consequence was ideological differences, not the conflict of royal succession and the sharpening power struggle between both factions and between the monarchy and the bureaucracy. The extremely sensitive question of balance between monarchic and bureaucratic power had now been brought into the open through the challenge of the Namin. In effect, they had accused the S?in of making a concerted effort to systematically expand and consolidate their authority at the expense of the monarchy by attempting to set precedents of ritual procedure that blurred the distinctions between royalty and the class of scholar-officials. On the other hand, the S?in claimed that the Namin were politicizing the debate to alienate their rivals from the throne.

Media and the scaling of ritual spaces in Morocco

The author explores how members of the Moroccan Sufi brotherhoods of the ‘Isāwaand Ḥamadša shape their activities and transnational networks through the use of technical media. Trying to think beyond notions of the local, regional and transnational, the article focuses on the mediators and practices by which actors understand the scope of their actions and redefine their agency at different locales through ‘scaling’. More particularly, he explores how actors engage in ‘downscaling’ complex issues into ritual procedures, and in ‘upscaling’ these procedures by inscribing them into a media chain and a more encompassing network of people, signs and things.

三輪流神道灌頂の場の特質

This paper clarified the characteristic of the place of Miwa-ryu Sinto Kanjo. Points are forrowings;1. The "Shintou Kanjo dojo" is formed of the frame of ritual procedure and space from esoteric Buddhism, and equipment of symbol, icons from Shinto.2. The characteristic of Shintou Kanjou is that, the authority of the created Shinto ritual was guaranteed by using esoteric buddhism Kanjo as a frame of ritual.

Störung und Reparatur eines religiösen Ritus: Die erloschene Osterkerze

This article describes the interactive implications of the extinguishment of a paschal candle in the pre-liturgical phase. These implications are presented from a multimodal perspective and within the conceptual framework of »significant objects«. The analysis reconstructs in detail how the unintentional event takes place and how various churchgoers handle the event gradually and conjointly. Initially, the extinguished candle, which disrupts the regular ritual procedure, becomes an object of collective perception. Then it gains ›imposed topical relevance‹ for the affected confirmands and causes a corrective intervention by an elderly churchgoer. Finally, the candle becomes the object of tangible repair work by the »causal agent« of the event. In methodical terms, the analyzed excerpt constitutes a type of social situation which is characterized by »missing« verbal action. Therefore, the interaction cannot be analyzed by hearing what is said, but only by seeing how participants behave.

ENCOUNTERS WITH POLYNESIA IN BRITAIN: Art, Ancestors, Artists, and Curators

AbstractThe exhibition, Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760–1860, shown in 2006 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, United Kingdom, involved many Polynesians in opening and closing rituals and a program of artists‐in‐residence. The ancient artworks displayed, called taonga (“treasures”) in New Zealand Maori, were explicitly treated as embodiments of ancestors who were activated and enlivened by the ritual procedures and chanting in their vicinity. The relationship between ancestors, artworks, and descendants, particularly artists and ritual practitioners, is examined in the context of ethical and political debates about the role and location of such artworks, as many of them are held in museums and collections outside Polynesia. A new environment is explored using a conceptual model of kinship between the cultural descendants of makers and the cultural descendants of collectors, in which exhibitions can be vehicles for new productive collaborative relationships based on mutual respect.

Brief research on Nectar Offering in Tibetan medicine

As a part of the culture of Tibetan medicine, the Nectar Offering has a long history of a thousand year. There are some contents of Esoteric Sect in its ritual procedure. It was improved and established a special theory in the development. On the basic of literature research and investigating the senior inheritors, the contents of ritual procedure, including instrument, participants and procedure, its characteristics and significance were introduced. Nowadays, the culture of Nectar Offering is diluted gradually, and facing the danger of disappearing.

Textual Authority in Ritual Procedure: The Śvetāmbara Jain Controversy Concering Īryāpathikīpratikramaṇa

The ceremony of īryāpathikīpratikramaṇa in which a renunciant or lay person repents for any violence inflicted on living creatures during motion is one of the central rituals of Jain disciplinary observance. The correct procedure for this ritual and its connection to sāmāyika, temporary contemplative withdrawal, were discussed during the first millennium CE in the Śvetāmbara Āvaśyaka literature. The Āvaśyaka Cūrṇi and the Mahāniśītha Sūtra offer two alternative orderings, with the former text prescribing that īryāpathikīpratikramaṇa be carried out after sāmāyika and the latter text recommending that no religious activity should be engaged in without being preceded by īryāpathikīpratikramaṇa. The validity of these apparently contradictory ritual structures was debated by Dharmasāgara of the Tapā Gaccha and Jayasoma of the Kharatara Gaccha in the context of intra-Śvetāmbara controversy over scriptural hermeneutics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Practical Buddhist Thaumaturgy: The Great Dhāraṇī on Immaculately Pure Light in Medieval Sinitic Buddhism

The Great Dhāraṇī on Immaculately Pure Light ( Wugou jingguang da tuoluoni jing , T 1024) was used extensively in Korea during the middle and late periods of Silla (668-935) after its introduction in the early eighth century. Although some scholars maintain that it provides evidence of Tantric or Esoteric Buddhism or the synthesis of Pure Land and Tantrism in Silla, my research indicates instead that the dhāraṇī and ritual procedures contained in this sūtra were mainstream Mahāyāna practices more closely associated with repentance practices in medieval East Asian Buddhism. Tantric/Esoteric Buddhism should be defined as consisting of ritual procedures such as initiations or coronations, graduated systems of meditation, and procedures using dhāraṇī in the recreation of the body, speech, and mind of the Buddha. The language of the Great Dhāraṇī provides little internal evidence of such conclusively Tantric or Esoteric elements, especially because many of the procedures and spells it describes—like most medieval Sinitic Buddhist ritual literature—attempt to resolve practical religious concerns for individuals and to protect states from harm, both internal and external: eradicating sins and extending one's lifespan; recovering from serious illnesses; avoiding rebirth in the evil paths and achieving rebirth in heavens; receiving predictions of the attainment of buddhahood; acquiring the spiritual penetrations and not backsliding in spiritual progress; generating merit and wholesome roots; destroying all obstacles and unwholesome karma and enabling practitioners to fulfill all their vows; and acquiring a fullness of the six perfections in one's life.

Dramatic Aspects of Medieval Magic in Scandinavia

This article deals with the performance aspects of medieval spells and rituals. Magic might take various shapes from benedictions to maledictions, adjurations and conjurations, divinations and omens. Some spells were written, others spoken or performed in rituals. Spells could be shouted in a shrill voice or combined with ritual procedures where magic gained efficacy. It was important that this was done in the right way, or else the magic could fail. Most of the spells and rituals were performed by professional sorcerers or sorceresses but clerics and ordinary people in some cases might expel the demons who were believed to cause illness or harm in other ways. Special interest in the article is invested in the spells and rituals where the performance aspects are explicitly or implicitly stated. The most important spells and rituals from the Scandinavian counties are cited in extenso and commented upon.

Regimes of Cannibality

There are many evidences of anthropophagy in the history of mankind, from the ritual preparation and consumption of the brain mass of dead men in the Paleolithic age (2), to the recent erotic rituals of a discreet German citizen. However, the cannibalistic act in itself is considered unacceptable due to reasons that can be successively referred to the intolerable and the unthinkable in most civilizations. However, the harshest rejection seems to come from Western culture. In fact, the silence about and condemnation of the cannibalistic act sets the ego of the modern individual against the cannibalistic imprint of the irrational, where one finds the morbid failure to distinguish between anthropophagy, insensitiveness and cruelty, in short, what any missionary might regard as a basic form of demonism. The effects of such a judgment are seen in the indifference and fear of researchers who approach this subject, sometimes with the best intentions. (3) Taking a different path, this essay argues that cannibalism is not just a verifiable social fact but may also clarify a considerable part of the dynamics of the death impulse in different social formations. But, instead of regarding the problem as a dilemma--about the differences between the logical formulation of arguments that guarantee a scientific 'foundation' for the thanatic impulse that characterizes cannibalism and the reconstruction of mythical traditions, ritual procedures and symbolic systems--I think it would be more productive to choose a strategy which runs in both directions: an ethnographic interpretation as well as a deconstruction of the limits that every age places on the topic of cannibalism, from a conceptual perspective that acts as a framework for the general dynamics of Latin American culture. In this sense, the denial of cannibalism by Hispanic culture is part of a general project aimed at the abolition of Amerindian thought as a prior condition for the construction of a new type of individual and the implementation of new ways of individuation. The result has been an interposed identity, that is, a simulacrum of a subject that appears before the conquered man as ideal by means of the linguistic, policing, and institutional power of the conqueror. Such a construction of the subject ends up producing a collective unconscious that, paradoxically, puts the stigma of cannibalism (4) on the initial identity of the indigenous people of America, but at the same time, refuses to recognize the trace of cannibal thought and ritual in the constitution of psychic life, as a vector that guides the destiny of the flows of desire and leaves an imprint on the processes of social inscription. (5) In the methodic search for such a relationship between the traces and the act of cannibalism, it is interesting to consider certain research guidelines set forth by Foucault and Derrida. On the one hand, according to Foucault, it would be necessary to describe the field of enunciates on cannibalism that begins with the chroniclers of the Indies and which, along with other hypotheses and results, became an important nucleus of Americanist ethnography in the second half of the 20th century. On the other, Derrida, through his proposal for interpreting the traces, footsteps and gestures that characterize language, opens up the possibility of addressing the mythical and ritual language about cannibalism and its 'cultural metonymies', as a part of a written archive preceding the spoken word and the alphabetical practice of writing. (6) The result is a paradoxical conjunction between the archaeological method that provides certain archiving techniques and dynamics, and the deconstructive obsession with pointing at everything that proves to be unarchivable in the very emergence of the archive. (7) From this point on, I assume that these two moments can be incorporated as alternating, successive motions of an archival dynamics that records the appearance--while recreating the metonymical absence--of the cannibal act. …

Auctioning Patronage in Northeast Brazil: The Political Value of Money in a Ritual Market

ABSTRACT Fundraising auctions help people in a small rural town in Northeast Brazil reckon with the effects that currency stabilization and democratization have had on municipal politics. These simultaneous processes have made politics confusing for the people of Passerinho by creating multiple modalities of electoral reciprocity. In this article, I argue that the ritual procedures of the auctions commensurate these modalities of reciprocity through a semiotic procedure in which money signifies both exchange value and more personal forms of value. I consider the auction's impact on municipal politics by looking at its effect on the narrative of democratic progress and on the prestige of grassroots politicians, traditional elites, and voluntary associations.