Prehistory of Religions Methods

Prehistory of Religions - A field within the History of Religions, concerned with both the prehistory and meaning of prehistoric religious phenomena, attempting to do justice to both without sacrificing either, and to systematize the results and to reflect on the structure of the religious phenomena as such. Early pioneers in the mid-twentieth century of the Prehistory of Religions include G. Rachel Levy (The gate of horn: Religious conceptions of the stone age); Teilhard de Chardin (The phenomenon of man), and Johannes Maringer (The gods of prehistoric man). Mircea Eliade also wrote on the subject.

In addition to drawing upon the disciplines of Processual and Post-Processual Archaeology and Archeomythology and Cognitive Archaeology, the Prehistory of Religions draws upon other key related disciplines such as Palaeoanthropology, Anthropology of Religion, and Psychology of Religion.

I propose the following methods for the Prehistory of Religions and applications of these methods are presented on this OriginsNet site. One method that may be applied to artifacts that are potentially palaeoart or palaeo-symbolism includes the following methodological principles for the inference of 'meaning'. The principles are listed in a rough sequential order of application.

Select objects of secure archaeological provenance and dating.
Identify artifactuality, i.e., that the object is a human-made artifact or curated 'naturefact,' typically rock art or mobilary engraving, stone sculpture exotic object, or other artifact of 'palaeoart.' An object is not excluded from examination simply because it 'does not look like a tool.'
Determine taphonomic reliability—what survived, what didn't
Accurately determine material features of the object and context.
Rule out if appropriate pseudo-operators or background noise, such as random cutmarks, carnivore marks, vascular grooves, parasitic holes or marks, natural fractures, etc.; although any of these might be incorporated into a semiotic or symbolic intention and this might be decidable by context or ‘intext’. This may be termed the ‘archaeological moment.’
Examine ‘internal context’ or 'intext' to determine if marks are restricted in number, repeated, paired or otherwise associated, set in binary oppositions, correspondences, or have iconic potential and thus suggest basic design elements, motifs, a message or story.
Identify indications of semiotic operators in external context such as 'non-utilitarian' aspect, 'superfluity of form', paradoxical location in site, or comparative markings on related objects or sites
If the subject appears semiotic, identify possible ‘sign’ mode or ‘signifying competence’, whether code, icon, signal, or word.
If subject appears semiotic, identify possible symbolic mode or 'symbolic competence', whether classical metaphor or similitude based on analogy, diaphoric metaphor based on juxtaposition and energy-tension, emblem, or archetype. . Symbol = the right-brain, primary process complement of the sign, itself having qualities of complementarity or a coincidentia oppositorum of metaphoric dimension.
Reconstruct, decode and decipher the overall 'semiotic competence', i.e., the differential features and common medium that offers a structured capacity to articulate meaningful narrativity and discourse, including conceptual, thematic, semantic, pragmatic, syntactic and glyphic deep structure. At this point the method may draw upon structuralist grammar (N. Chomsky), structuralist semantics (A.J.-Greimas) and so on. This stage may be termed the ‘structuralist moment' of interpretation.
Decipher ‘meaning’ or ‘message’ being communicated using differential features of the semiotic competence as employed in a particular subject-matter to generate and amplify a meaning 'for them' and a poetics of feeling-toned meaning 'for us.'
Consider limits of interpretation within a hermeneutic method or exegetic procedure amplifying meaning 'for them' and 'for us' (e.g., Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wolfgang Iser, reader response theory).
Explore amplification of archetypal symbols as thea/opoetics, (Hopper and Miller) that is as a poetic performative presencing of supernatural beings, spiritual principles, or divine powers.
Attempt to systematically reconstruct, within the limits of residual artifacts and contextual factors, tentative prehistoric beliefs and thea/ologies, rituals or myths or their underlying structural themes, based on the decoding of the semiotic competence and decipherment of actual products of this competence 'Systematicity' criteria may include:
1. Coherence, consistency and comprehensiveness of accounting for the semiotic evidence.
2. A rigorous critical method, such as mythic group-theoretic structure (Levi-Strauss) or set-theoretic inclusion/exclusion dialectics (deconstruction and critical theories of privilege and marginalization).
Check adequacy of the decoding to the processual archeological context--a check on validity of the decoding.
Check the reconstruction against the evolutionary, stage-specific, model of mind (mental model, paradigmatic mental template) inferred from the archeological and ‘cognitive archaeological’ context.
Scan for precursors or survivals of the decoding--a further check on validity.
Amplify and check via ethnographic and mythological analogies, restricting analogies by factors such as geographic, cultural, and genetic propinquity.

A second basic method for reconstructing prehistoric religions is applicable to and extrapolates from archaeologically determined coherent sets of technological or subsistence strategies. It roughly follows the following steps:

Identify a particular, coherent, paradigmatically related set of subsistence and/or technological strategies (modes).
Deduce a hypothetical mental template (model, meme) that provided a capacity for generating that set.
Identify later mythological or ritual forms--especially those having geographic, cultural, or genetic propinquity--that refer to the invention of, or otherwise reflect, those subsistence and/or technological sets.
Determine if these mythic forms are structurally interrelated and thus may be, or may reflect, survivals of the particular prehistoric culture that generated those technological and subsistence sets.
If so, then extrapolate backwards to reconstruct a hypothetical religious template (model) compatible with the hypothetical mental template.
Decode the psychological and thea/opoetics message of the religious template (hermeneutical moment).
Test the mythological set's meaningfulness as a coherent religious form.
Test the hypothetical religious template against archeological and palaeoanthropological evidence.

Rock Art - Deliberate marks or images on a rock surface, comprising two principal classes: pigmented art or pictographs, produced by adding pigment to a rock surface, and extractive rock art, or petroglyphs, resulting from techniques involving the removal of surface layers of rock. [Flood, J. (1997). Rock art of the dreamtime: Images of Ancient Australia. Sydney: Harper Collins.]

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