The Lushanmao site of the Neolithic Age in Yan’an City, Shaanxi Province

The Lushanmao site is a large-scale settlement site from the late Miaodigou Phase II culture to the late Longshan age located in Yan’an City, Shaanxi Province. The core zone of the settlement is on a hill ridge, on the top of which four large-sized rammed-earth platform foundations are distributed, each of which had large-sized rammed-earth architecture sites on top. On the top of the excavated Da Yingpan Liang (Large Garrison Ridge), one large courtyard and two smaller courtyards were distributed. Of them, the large courtyard was facing south, which would be the earliest palace complex in an axial symmetrical plan known to date in China, and the two smaller ones would be its guardhouses. In the large courtyard, a set of roof tiles, which would be the earliest ones known to date in China, were unearthed; and jades were also found in the rammed-earth foundation or walls. These discoveries are significantly valuable for the studies on the early capital city planning, origins, and evolutions of palaces and the developments of the early ritual systems and architectural materials of China.

The last Talmudic demon? The role of ritual in cultural transmission

Recent work on the evolution of religion has approached religions as adaptive complexes of traits consisting of cognitive, neurological, affective, behavioural and developmental features that are organized into a self-regulating feedback system. Religious systems, it has been argued, derive from ancestral ritual systems and continue to be fuelled by ritual performances. One key prediction that emerges from this systemic approach is that the success of religious beliefs will be related to how well they are connected to rituals and integrated with other elements of the religious system. Here, I examine this prediction by exploring the rich world of Jewish demonology. As a case study, I briefly survey the historical trajectory of demonic beliefs across Jewish communities and focus on one demon, a ruach ra'ah , that has survived the vicissitudes of Jewish history and maintained its relevance in contemporary Jewish communities. I argue that it has done so because of its linkage with a morning handwashing ritual and its effective integration into the core elements of Jewish religious systems. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours’.

Producing legibility through ritual: The Inka expansion in Huarochirí (Lima, Peru)

This article builds a framework for the analysis of the Inka Empire’s (1400–1532 CE) expansion in the Peruvian highlands. Drawing from recent archaeological excavations at the site of Canchaje (Huarochirí), I propose that the Inka built upon cultural familiarities between them and their subjects by using ritual emplacements (rock outcrops and plazas) as arenas of mediation. At the same time, the construction of mutual legibility enabled subjected communities to maintain and redefine their cultural practices in ways that survived the Inka Empire. By recasting the Inka from foreign conqueror to new kin within local ritual systems, the people of Huarochirí reinvented their traditions to garner political agency. Using archaeological data and colonial-period documents, I show that local agency informed empire-building, leading to the reinvention of local traditions. Ultimately, my work shows how mutual legibility was built on the ground while exploring specific instances of negotiation through ritual.

Ritual & Practices to Attain Spirituality in the light of Religious Scriptures of the World Religion

Humans are spiritual beings and preferred to be an element (one way or the other) of this potent mighty power that fascinated him. Men have been urged to look or visualize the Mighty Lord. Different kind of tools and means were designed in various religious communities to offer a few beautified methods to meet this fundamental intuition. To attain spirituality, many ancient religions had their own rituals and ceremonial systems that mostly consist of external rites and practices. The purpose of the study is to examine and determine the importance of rituals that are being practice in the world religions? What the methods religious scriptures has mentioned for their followers to adopt to attain spirituality? The study is to find out similarities and differences in rituals & practices to attain spirituality as mentioned in their religious scriptures? Research methodology for this study adapted is descriptive. This research study has fined out that some ritual systems are concerned with inwards purification rather than outwards. The major purpose of all such practices; fasting, sacrifices, charity etc are all to free men from the entire evil deeds, make him pure as the will of the Lord and closer to it.

Ritual Systems, Ritualized Bodies, and the Laws of Liturgical Development

The “laws” of comparative liturgical development (Baumstark, Taft) are derived from pre-modern liturgical texts and the findings of early biology and linguistics. Yet Christian liturgy is not an organically evolving species; it is a ritual system, a cultural, political, self-regulating, self-reproducing set of rites that are used to interpret and correct one another. Focusing on the reception of new practices by practiced communities, a performance theory approach spotlights the systemic interrelationships of rites and the ritual habitus of human bodies. A ritual system makes particular meanings seem natural, permitting some new liturgical developments, impeding others. Ritualized bodies constrain rapid changes, while the entrance of bodies ritualized in a different system changes the environment, leading some to attempt to reinforce the status quo. Technologies for passing on liturgies are developed and used when a crisis demands change or imperils valued practice. Accounting for differences in liturgical recording, early and medieval liturgical reception may inform our understanding of the colonial expansion of liturgy, when technologies for transmitting liturgical rites were brought to bear on bodies ritualized in indigenous systems of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Performative evidence from the colonial context may in turn help interpret ambiguous sources from earlier periods.

The Archaeology of Villages in Eastern North America

The emergence of village-communities profoundly transformed social organization in every part of the world where such societies developed. Contributors to The Archaeology of Villages in Eastern North America employ archaeological and historical evidence to explore the development of villages among eastern North American indigenous societies of the deep and recent past. Rich data sets from archaeology and contemporary social theory are employed to document the physical attributes of villages, the structural organization and aggregation of such entities, what it means to be a villager, cosmological and ritual systems, and how villages were entangled with one another in regional networks. The result is a volume which highlights the similarities and differences in the historical trajectories of village formation and development in eastern North America, as well as the larger processes by which villages have the power to affect large-scale social transformations.

The Ritual Landscape of the Inca

At the time of the European invasion of the Andes (1532 ce), many of the shrines (huacas) around Cuzco were organized along ritual pathways (ceques) that radiated out from the Temple of the Sun, at the heart of the city. According to the few existing descriptions of this ritual system, there were more than 328 shrines, and they were conceptually organized along forty-two paths. The shrines were represented by a wide range of natural features, such as caves, boulders, springs, and mountaintops, as well as by artificial features, such as houses, fountains, and canals. Each of the shrines required prayers and offerings. Responsibility for maintenance of the shrines along each ceque was divided among the various kin groups of the city. Frequently called “the Cuzco ceque system,” this network of shrines and lines represents the most complex ritual systems yet identified in the ancient New World.