ID63: Social strategies and rituality in ancient mountain landscapes

Abstract ID 393 | Date: 2022-09-14 13:40 – 13:50 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Frachetti, Michael David

Mountain environments are often portrayed as liminal spaces for human occupation. Yet extremities in seasonal resources, temperature, and other environmental factors often over-shadow the advantages that high altitude contexts provide for communities seeking political and ideological refuge. This paper examines the theme of political and religious refugia in mountainous regions, introduced broadly by James Scott in his book  “The art of not being governed”, through the lens of two recently documented high altitude cities located over 2000m above sea level in the Pamir mountains of Uzbekistan. The sites of Tashbulak and Tugunbulak represent two large cities situated in an environment not easily supported by large scale farming, yet these cities functioned for centuries as trade intermediaries and political strongholds from ca.850-1125CE. Both centers have significant defensive structures, as well as a large Muslim cemetery, indicating both political and religious functions. These mountain cities further illustrate a suite of political and social advantages conferred on the nomadic polities who controlled them — namely in terms of their ability to leverage religious participation for economic and political gain. By centering political power outside the (more typical) river deltas and oasis environments, Tashbulak and Tugunbulak show how small-scale communities could leverage their geographic location for economic, social, and ritual power, and illustrating how the ostensible refuge of mountain landscapes enabled the rise of medieval nomadic empires of Central Asia.

Abstract ID 419 | Date: 2022-09-14 13:50 – 14:00 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

De Simone, Daniela

The Nilgiri Mountains is a region of montane subtropical forests with peaks over 2500 m forming part of the Western Ghats mountain range in the northeastern corner of the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India. Limited palaeoecological evidence suggests that the forests of the Western Ghats were first occupied in the early centuries CE, when the demand for forest products such as spices, ivory, and gemstones increased due to thriving Indo-Roman trade. The tops and ridges of the Nilgiri Mountains are dotted with megalithic tombs, which were excavated in the 19th century by British colonial officers. The earliest megalithic tombs in South India date to the Southern Neolithic (before 1500 BCE) but the monuments were often used and re-used until the half of the second millennium CE. On the Nilgiri Mountains, the megalithic tombs were built over a burial pit containing a single or multiple ceramic urns along with grave goods including bronze, iron, gold, and stone artefacts, which date between the 1st and the 6th century CE and the 12th and the 16th century CE. The urns usually contain soil and the ashes and bones of the deceased (presumably); however, some of the urns contain neither ashes nor bones, but metal tools and ornaments or only soil. Terracotta figurines representing humans, wild animals, and plants and trees are usually found embedded in a layer of charcoal resting on the stone slabs covering the burial pit. These terracotta figurines are often unearthed in a fragmentary condition and it is likely that they were broken deliberately prior to deposition, probably for ritualistic purposes. The numerous potsherds with burn marks recovered in the proximity of the tombs seem to indicate that feasting might have occurred at the sites, similarly to what happened at other megalithic sites in southern India. It appears that throughout their long history, the Nilgiri megalithic tombs were not merely grave markers but they were also important ritual community monuments. This paper intends to present the preliminary results of the first year of the Nilgiri Archaeological Project (2021-2026), an interdisciplinary research project based at Ghent University and funded by the Flemish Research Council.

Abstract ID 440 | Date: 2022-09-14 14:00 – 14:10 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Fontana, Federica (1); Visentin, Davide (1,2)

The South-Eastern Alps have yielded one of the richest Mesolithic records (11,500-7,300 cal. BP) in Europe, amounting to several hundred stray finds and several tens excavated sites. From a geographic viewpoint, such evidence spans from the pre-Alpine belt and valley bottoms to the highlands of the inner Alps, reaching altitudes above 2000 m. At most sites, only lithic assemblages have been preserved, while a lower number of sites is characterized by a broader and more varied archaological evidence, including faunal and vegetal remains, some dwelling structures and few burial grounds. Since the 70s and 80s of last century several hypotheses have been advanced on the settlement strategies of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups in this area, but none of them can be considered definitive, while evidence emerging from most recent research suggests more complex patterns than previously thought. In this paper we aim is to revisit and discuss such theories and make a point on where we currently stand as well as on the future perspectives, based on on-going projects and studies.

Abstract ID 642 | Date: 2022-09-14 14:10 – 14:20 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Peatfield, Alan Alfred Demetrious (1); Morris, Christine Elizabeth (2)

In Cretan folklore God is imagined as a labourer, who, after he makes the world, throws the rocks left in his sieve into the sea, and so creates Crete. In this imagining, Crete is a land of mountains, even though the highest peak is only at 2456 metres. It is evident that this popular integration of human culture and mountains may be so deeply embedded that it goes back to the Bronze Age. Nowhere is this more so than in the ritualisation of the Cretan mountains in the Minoan Bronze Age (3000-1000 BC), through the phenomenon of mountain “peak sanctuaries”.

Around 30 mountain peaks on Crete have been identified as sacred sites. Not only do they have common assemblages of archaeological artefacts, votive offerings in their thousands and ritual equipment, they also share common topographic features. The distribution of these “peak sanctuaries” over the island indicates a ritualisation concept that was embedded into the civilsation and its interaction with its landscape.The importance of religion to Minoan culture has long been recognised, but most scholarship has focused on elite aspects. The interest of the peak sanctuaries is that they offer insight into Minoan popular religion, vernacular culture and spiritual experience.

The topographic features of the peak sanctuaries (proximity, visual connection, accessibility) emphasise interaction between the people and the lived, exploited landscape.. The predominant archaeological finds are clay figurines (in their thousands) representing the worshippers themselves. In other words they image the spiritual experience of the ordinary people rather than complexities of elite theistic ritual and belief. They express interest in popluar, even ordinary concerns: health, well-being, rites-of-passage, agricultural fertility. Broadly speaking the Minoan peak sanctuaries are the expression of a ritualised mountain landscape as religious communitas

In this paper therefore, we shall present the evidence, the sites and the archaeological finds, from our ongoing research about peak sanctuaries. We shall argue that they offer a significant contrast to the conventional perception of sacred mountains as manifestations of the “other”, the remote, the arduous and dangerous, the abode of the supernatural, even the divine. This phenomeonogical contrast is the contribution of the Minoan Bronze Age peak sanctuaries to the global discourse about sacred mountains, and ritualised mountain landscapes.

Abstract ID 183 | Date: 2022-09-14 14:20 – 14:30 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Cayón Martínez, Carlos; González-Olivares, Cynthia Belén; Sánchez De La Torre, Marta; Mangado Llach, Xavier

The Upper Paleolithic open-air site at high-altitude of Montlleó (Prats i Sansor, La Cerdanya, Spain) is located in the Coll de Saig, a small hill in the middle of the Cerdanya valley at an altitude of 1,144m. The site has been identified as an early settlement in the Axial Pyrenees just after the Last Glacial Maximum, around 18,000 BP. The location of the site is considered to be a strategic point, not only in terms of a hunting site, but also as a camp with probably other aggregation purposes.

To carry on with this study, we have diverse elements of an ornamental nature, such as beads and perforated shells, together with several ochre remains, all of them ranging from the Upper Late Solutrean and the Badegulian to the ancient Magdalenian. These ochre evidences, together with lithics and bone industries, describes a context mainly of hunting activities, but they also suggest a cultural interest beyond their economic value, as could be determined by the analysis of their provenance, reinforced by the repeated use of it in various supports, mainly ornaments, and their appearance in the form of raw material too.

The aim of this work is to present a first cultural approach to correlate ochres, lithic raw materials and ornaments origins from a cultural point of view, considering this high-altitude location of the site of Montlleó.

The methodological approach considers the comparison between archaeological and natural evidences of ochre analysed under the same methodological conditions in order to define its economical functionality, according to its provenance, as well as its potential symbolic use, concerning their presence in various supports, of evident cultural value.

Abstract ID 963 | Date: 2022-09-14 16:00 – 16:05 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Fontana, Federica

Introduction to Session 63 II

Abstract ID 139 | Date: 2022-09-14 16:05 – 16:15 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Wright, Alice

The Southern Appalachian Mountains of what is now known as western North Carolina, USA comprise a unique topographic landscape in eastern North America, featuring the highest elevations east of the Rockies and unparalleled microclimatic and microenvironmental diversity. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the region was also culturally diverse before European contact; it was intensively occupied by ancestral Cherokee, Catawba, and other Southern Appalachian groups, and regularly visited and traversed by Indigenous peoples not local to the immediate area. To the extent that cultural diversity has been inferred from artifacts (mostly ceramics), it appears that social relationships and affinities were strongest within Southern Appalachian watersheds, and that the high ranges separating these watersheds were an impediment to social and material interaction. However, recent research on Southern Appalachian petroglyphs suggest that certain symbolic and ritual behaviors may have cross-cut topographically defined social boundaries. In this paper, I discuss newly discovered petroglyphs near the New River in extreme northwestern North Carolina, and compare them to well documented and deeply contextualized petroglyph sites in the modern Cherokee heartland of southwestern North Carolina, revealing similarities and differences in their formal characteristics. I then consider the relationships between these petroglyphs and their surrounding landscapes – particularly their locations relative to gaps, passes, confluences, raw material outcrops, and known historic trails that may have structured social interactions across the mountains. This study underscores how ritual and symbolic practices are central to far-reaching social interactions among seemingly remote mountain communities in (and beyond) Southern Appalachia, and highlights the inextricable connections between such practices and the unique topographic, geological, and ecological settings associated with mountain environments.

Abstract ID 585 | Date: 2022-09-14 16:15 – 16:25 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Trinco, Letizia

The first systematic accounts of the ecological and ethnic profile of the Nilgiri Mountains of South India date back to the 19th century, in the frame of the British colonial explorations of the Indian subcontinent. Since then, progressive anthropogenic interventions have deeply transformed both the environmental and social configuration of the region.

Five indigenous groups are considered as the traditional inhabitants of the Nilgiris, each occupying a specific ecological niche: the Todas, the Badagas, the Kurumbas, the Kotas and the Irulas. As far as the upper plateau is concerned – an area with peaks above 2500 m – it is possible to distinguish between two types of vegetation: the sholas, i.e. tropical montane forests, and the grasslands, the latter extending over much larger tracts than the former, as already noticed in the 19th-century.

The antiquity of human settlement in this region as well as the ancient distribution of forest areas with respect to grasslands have long been the object of debate and are currently being re-addressed by the Nilgiri Archaeological Project.

Be as it may, it is a fact that some of the forest patches survived to the present day retain a religious value for two of the indigenous communities, the Badagas and the Kurumbas. Although highly differentiated from a socio-economic standpoint, these two groups maintain a tight bond when it comes to some annual rituals which are performed (or used to be performed) at specific sites in the proximity of sacred groves. Interestingly enough, these sites feature the presence of dolmens, which are a distinctive component of the archaeological landscape of the Nilgiris (carvings on some of them date to the 12th-17th centuries).

By moving from cases of rituals jointly performed by Badaga and Kurumba groups at different sites, this contribution tackles the possible correlation between ancient sacred groves and dolmen distribution in the region. This may enhance our understanding of the interaction of those two indigenous communities between themselves and with the surrounding environment throughout history.

Abstract ID 180 | Date: 2022-09-14 16:25 – 16:35 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Mathieu, Jon

From Mount Kailash in Tibet to Uluru/Ayers Rock in Central Australia: around the globe, there are numerous mountains that have been assigned sacredness in the past and present. Religious worship takes place through belief and rituality. There was, and still is, a great diversity of mountain cults, but they all tell us something about attitudes toward nature. In several disciplines, the literature on this topic has multiplied in recent decades. Since the 1990s, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature IUCN and other global institutions have also integrated sacred mountains into their programs. They view them primarily as tools for environmental protection and biodiversity conservation. Their large-scale projects and conferences have stimulated considerable pre/historical research. This paper examines some IUCN initiatives and asks about their background and outcomes. What assumptions did the protagonists start from? How have they evolved? Can “Sacred Natural Sites” be considered the first network of “Protected Areas”, and how is pre/historical scholarship shaped and reinterpreted by such ecological objectives?

Abstract ID 360 | Date: 2022-09-14 16:35 – 16:45 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

De Neef, Wieke (1); Ullrich, Burkart (2); Ferdani, Daniele (3); Demetrescu, Emanuel (3)

This paper presents new research of the monumental mountaintop site Monte Primo near Camerino (Central Apennines, Marche, Italy) and the changing landscape in which it is situated. Monte Primo was in use between the Late Bronze Age and the Roman Republic period and is characterized by a series of large enclosures of uncertain date which cover an area of ca. 2 hectares. The earliest occupation of this 1300 m high summit is often interpreted as a fire offering place (‘Brandopferplatz’) related to increased upland exploitation during the Late Bronze Age. The early rituality of the mountain can be linked to a formalization of community membership in this period, with new polities emerging from a radical change in the settlement system. Iron Age and Roman activity is attested by various bronze figurines possibly related to a pastoral Hercules-cult. The enclosure system may have had an additional defensive and/or symbolic function during territorial conflicts in the centuries leading to the Roman conquest of Picenum in 263 BC.

Geophysical prospection, aerial photography, and surface modeling allow to analyze the spatial organization of the large enclosures and natural features on the mountain, and to model the controlled access to the summit. Archaeological surveys, environmental studies, and GIS analyses of the wider mountain landscape situate Monte Primo in a dynamic environment affected by climate fluctuations, the varying availability of natural resources, and changing accessibility of routes across the Apennines. By placing Monte Primo in a longue durée context of increasing social complexity and landscape formation processes, this presentation proposes how this site was embedded in its cultural and natural surroundings, and how its role changed during its 1000-year occupation history.

Abstract ID 296 | Date: 2022-09-14 16:45 – 16:55 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Sancho I Planas, Marta (1); Sales-Carbonell, Jordina (2)

At the roots of the phenomenon of monasticism is the monks’ desire to withdraw to places that are far from the world where they could devote themselves to the contemplation and meditation which enabled them to draw closer to God. In Eastern Mediterranean lands, where the Christian monastic tradition began, this need for isolation was met by heading to the vast, extensive desert where the monks, either alone or in communities, found the environment for which they were searching. When the monastic movement spread and reached the West, the deliberate quest for isolation sought other unpopulated places, especially in forests and mountains, called ‘green deserts’. These landscapes offered the ideal ingredients for the contemplation which their spirituality required of them.

In the Pyrenees, the phenomenon of monasticism penetrated the Pyrenees in the first half of the sixth century, given that the first known reference to a monastic community mentions Saint Martin (later called Saint Victorian of Asan), which is documented in 551 already in full swing. It was founded by Saint Victorian, a hermit from across the Pyrenees; therefore, it was originally a hermit community founded in El Pueyo de Araguás, near Lainsa (Huesca), which gradually transitioned towards communal life. Located in a mountainous region in the Pre-Pyrenees of Huesca, initially probably taking advantage of natural shelters or caves, this community’s influence spread with the creation of similar communities.

The archaeological research we have been undertaking in the Catalan Pre-Pyrenees since 2004 has enabled us to excavate, identify and interpret one of these monasteries in the site known as Els Altimiris. The founding level dates back to the first half of the sixth century, and we have detected a peak between the late sixth and late seventh centuries. The site is located on the northern face of the Montsec range, mid-mountain perched on a rocky spur surrounded by thick forests which make it difficult to reach. In short, the site perfectly meets the stringent conditions imposed by these monks’ spirituality; the austerity, solitude and isolation, along with the harshness of the environment around it, were likely some of the reasons it was chosen.

Yet despite this deliberate isolation, products from the East also reached Santa Cecília dels Altimiris, and some of the archaeological finds indicate that they were also capable of crafting products that may have been in demand within their exchange network.

Abstract ID 793 | Date: 2022-09-14 16:55 – 17:05 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Fogliazza, Silvia

Surveys conducted on some hilltop sites of the Ligurian and Tuscan-Emilian Apennines has shown traces of ritual activities linked to the peaks. These findings allow to put forward hypotheses on the role of mountains as places of worship and perpetuation of cultural memory. Indeed, the ecological, economic, and political context of these sites, located along trade routes, contributed to the creation of an impermeable social space that guaranteed the maintenance of cultic practices.

In light of what has just been expounded, this paper will therefore seek to investigate the social and economic strategies behind ritual behaviours of Iron Age communities of Ligurian and Tuscan-Emilian Apennines.

Abstract ID 711 | Date: 2022-09-14 17:05 – 17:15 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room U3 |

Norberg, Nils Erik

In 2018 Saemien Sijte was contacted by a local Sámi who wanted to protect a holy mountain from intrusion and exploitation. He also wanted his experiences of sacrifice to be documented and made known. Why one sacrifices and under what circumstances. It was a small but long project, with many challenges and many lessons learned along the way.

Until the 18th century, sacred landscape such as mountains and watercourses were part of the South Sámi understanding of reality, something which is well documented by Church priests and missionaries. Mountains and watercourses were reference points in mental maps, learned through place names and stories of events. They were part of basis for common understandings of rights, area affiliation and legal perception. They also contributed to the description of history and time perspectives. Various mountains contained the stories back in time in the form of the descendants of deceased relatives. The Sámi also summoned their helpers (Saajvh), from the mountains when needed. There does not seem to have been anything strange about doing so. Perhaps it was just a time with a different reality than today?

How do we try to understand this in time and space? How is the challenges connected to the intangible cultural heritage to mountains and streams handled?

Key words: Saajvh, Bissie, Sjïelie, Sámi tradition bearer, challenges

Erik Norberg,

Head of Research,

Saemien Sijte (South Sami Museum And Cultural Centre), Snåsa, Norway.

Erik.Norberg@saemiensijte.no