A Context for Concealment: The Historical Archaeology of Folk Ritual and Superstition in Australia

Burke, Heather; Arthure, Susan; Leiuen, Cherrie De

doi:10.1007/s10761-015-0318-1

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The creation of architectural deposits is a widespread human practice, noted from prehistory to the modern period in Australia (Burke et al 2016), Africa (Bartosiewicz 2000;Müller 2018), the Near East (Gebel 2002;Helmer et al 2004;Russell et al 2009;Verhoeven 2002aVerhoeven , 2002b, Europe (Bailey 2018;Herva and Yilmaunu 2009;Woodward and Woodward 2004), the Americas (Hendon 2000(Hendon , 2010Kunen et al 2002;Manning 2014a), and elsewhere. In ethnographic and historical examples, the practice is consistently characterized as a "folk" tradition, that is to say, as a widespread symbolic activity undertaken by individuals that is determined by magical or religious thinking and is structured in order to explore analogical relationships between humans and the world around them (Herva and Yilmaunu 2009).…”

Section: Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note that this is the virtual opposite of the type of "communality" present in the Neolithic (Verhoeven 2002b), noted above. In many cultural contexts where foundation and other architectural deposits are made, concealment seems to be an important aspect of their design and efficacy (e.g., Manning 2014a; Burke et al 2016). Chris Manning, discussing deposits in North America, sees this aspect as such an important part of the practice that he prefers to call the items "ritual concealments".…”

Section: Seeingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Not Seeing Is Believing: Ritual Practice and Architecture at Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük in Anatolia

2021

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Chalcolithic religious practice at the site of Çadır Höyük (central Anatolia) included the insertion of ritual deposits into the architectural fabric of the settlement, “consecrating” spaces or imbuing them with symbolic properties. These deposits are recognizable in the archaeological record by their consistent use of ritually-charged material, such as ochre, copper, human and animal bone, and certain kinds of ceramics. During the 800-year period considered in this paper, the material practice of making these ritual deposits remained remarkably consistent. However, the types of spaces where the deposits are made change as shifting social organization reforms the divisions between private and public space.

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Section: Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Seeingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not Seeing Is Believing: Ritual Practice and Architecture at Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük in Anatolia

2021

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“…Ritual concealment is usually considered to be an aspect of folk superstition to avert misfortune (Easton, 2014; Eastop, 2006; Houlbrook, 2013; Merrifield, 1987). Many of the components of such assemblages are ordinary domestic objects – clothing, pins, shoes, personal effects – but also items with particular qualities, such as sharpness, bent, broken or folded objects, items displaying evidence of a long use-life and sometimes extreme age, and deliberate alteration (Burke et al., 2016: 47; Eastop, 2006). The Ladies’ Cottage collection evinces some of these criteria, particularly their quotidian nature and deliberate alteration, although its context within an asylum suggests that behaviours apart from superstition were likely at play.…”

Section: Structured Depositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secret and safe: The underlife of concealed objects from the Royal Derwent Hospital, New Norfolk, Tasmania

Bryant

Burke

Ireland

et al. 2020

Journal of Social Archaeology

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This paper focuses on a collection of objects deliberately concealed beneath the verandah of a ward for middle-class, female, paying patients at Australia’s longest continuously operating mental health institution, the Royal Derwent Hospital in Tasmania. Cached in small discrete mounds across an area of some 50 square metres, the collection was probably concealed in the mid-20th century and contains over 1000 items of clothing, ephemera and other objects dating from 1880 to the mid-1940s. In achieving a possessional territory of such magnitude, this patient achieved a level of personal self-expression that is rarely encountered archaeologically, particularly within an institutional context. Analysis of this collection as an ‘underlife’ illuminates both functional aspects of the hospital and the hopes and desires of this particular, though still anonymous, patient and her vibrant world of things.

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“…Likewise, Drummond-Wilson (2018) reported the caching of numerous toys and items valuable to children at the Perth Girls Orphanage, while Winter and Romano (2019) reported the deliberate placement of drug paraphernalia below floorboards at the Artillery Drill Hall in Fremantle. Burke et al (2016) also discussed the caching of specific artifact types (e.g., shoes, garments, modified coins) under floors for ritual or superstitious purposes, though they note the difficulty in interpreting this behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Underfloor and Between Floor Deposits in Standing Buildings in Colonial Australia

Winter

Green

Benfield-Constable

et al. 2020

Int J Histor Archaeol

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Archaeological deposits build up inside standing buildings both under and between floors and these have the potential to provide considerable information about human behavior in the past. Under and between floor spaces provide a unique depositional environment that allow the survival of rare and fragile organic materials that typically do not survive in other archaeological contexts, including paper, cardboard, fabric and other fibres, seeds, leather, and human hair and skin cells. However, they require a clear understanding of depositional processes to allow their interpretation. Experimental archaeology was conducted to understand the process of artifact deposition and the interpretation of underfloor deposits in twelve standing buildings in Western Australia. Floors were built and a range of artifacts swept across them to determine how artifacts travelled across floorboards or fell through gaps between boards. Size, shape, and angularity of artifacts were key determinants of the likelihood of deposition. Sweeping activity makes it more likely that material will be deposited around the margins of rooms, and particularly, to either side of doorways. Underfloor deposits excavated from two specific Western Australian buildings, Ellensbrook Homestead, and the York Residency Museum, are interpreted based on the results of these experiments.

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A Context for Concealment: The Historical Archaeology of Folk Ritual and Superstition in Australia

Cited by 7 publications

References 31 publications

Not Seeing Is Believing: Ritual Practice and Architecture at Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük in Anatolia

Not Seeing Is Believing: Ritual Practice and Architecture at Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük in Anatolia

Secret and safe: The underlife of concealed objects from the Royal Derwent Hospital, New Norfolk, Tasmania

Investigating Underfloor and Between Floor Deposits in Standing Buildings in Colonial Australia

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