Hugging rocks and shaking trees
Feb. 20th, 2009 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbSo. "Hug a rock and shake a tree: shamanic bodies in Minoan culture?" was the most fascinating lecture I've attended in a while. I'll put my rambly enthusiasm behind a cut, but, well, damn.
I had no idea that one of my lecturers had research interests in 'embodied' archaeology and 'shamanic bodies'. You could fit what I know about shamanism on the head of a small pin, so this was very informative for me.
So, as we all know, Minoan culture reached its height in the mid to late second millennium BCE. And it's from that period that we have a number of gold rings and seal-stones - elite objects, obviously - which display a species of iconography not found in other types of Minoan art.
Professor Morris (a lovely woman and a Stargate fan) started out by pointing out that there are a number of modern mythologies about Minoan society: its grace, its 'flower-loving' peacefulness, its position as an ancestor of modern (western) Europe, its complex as opposed to 'primitive' nature, etc.
Arthur Evans, in his original work on Knossos and Minoan culture, described objects like the gold rings as showing 'ecstatic religion,' although this is not usually defined: modern scholarship potentially over-intellectualises ritual action.
What Prof. Morris and some of her colleagues are aiming to do is to think about the past from the point of view of human experience: a branch of experimental archaeology sometimes referred to as 'embodiment' archaeology or 'sensual' archaeology. For example, how do you do 'ecstatic religion'?
There was a lot of stuff about material, use of space, experience, light, trance states, enthiogens, brain waves and inducing theta waves in the brain, ASC, SSC, Minoan use of caves and possible use of sistra, and the embodied experience. It was really, really fascinating.
Also learned this week: what scrofula actually is (ick); and how experimental archaeologists/reenactors make chain mail.
I have come to the conclusion that you could probably dump any ancient historian from youth to middle age back in their period of speciality, and if they didn't die of disease or random violence, they'd probably make out quite okay.
Some of them have the oddest skills.
I had no idea that one of my lecturers had research interests in 'embodied' archaeology and 'shamanic bodies'. You could fit what I know about shamanism on the head of a small pin, so this was very informative for me.
So, as we all know, Minoan culture reached its height in the mid to late second millennium BCE. And it's from that period that we have a number of gold rings and seal-stones - elite objects, obviously - which display a species of iconography not found in other types of Minoan art.
Professor Morris (a lovely woman and a Stargate fan) started out by pointing out that there are a number of modern mythologies about Minoan society: its grace, its 'flower-loving' peacefulness, its position as an ancestor of modern (western) Europe, its complex as opposed to 'primitive' nature, etc.
Arthur Evans, in his original work on Knossos and Minoan culture, described objects like the gold rings as showing 'ecstatic religion,' although this is not usually defined: modern scholarship potentially over-intellectualises ritual action.
What Prof. Morris and some of her colleagues are aiming to do is to think about the past from the point of view of human experience: a branch of experimental archaeology sometimes referred to as 'embodiment' archaeology or 'sensual' archaeology. For example, how do you do 'ecstatic religion'?
There was a lot of stuff about material, use of space, experience, light, trance states, enthiogens, brain waves and inducing theta waves in the brain, ASC, SSC, Minoan use of caves and possible use of sistra, and the embodied experience. It was really, really fascinating.
Also learned this week: what scrofula actually is (ick); and how experimental archaeologists/reenactors make chain mail.
I have come to the conclusion that you could probably dump any ancient historian from youth to middle age back in their period of speciality, and if they didn't die of disease or random violence, they'd probably make out quite okay.
Some of them have the oddest skills.
