Ritual Closure: Rites De Passage and Apotropaic Magic in an Animate World

Abstract

Magic and witchcraft, classic topics in the anthropology of religion, involve everyday things such as ashes, ceramics, minerals, shell, and projectile points. In many cultures, people attribute agency to such artifacts, as well as architecture, begging the question what is the archaeological record of such animate beings? To understand past human lifeways more fully, we need to explore the formation processes associated with the interaction between people and other non-human actors. For example, what might we learn from a burned pueblo whose rooms contain ash, projectile points, crystals, and other items? In this paper we argue that deposits in ritually closed pueblos of the North American Southwest, like many other Neolithic villages, likely contain purposely deposited objects in an effort to neutralize the anima left in these places and to prophylactically protect their former inhabitants from future witchcraft. We present Cottonwood Spring Pueblo, New Mexico, as a case study.

Ritual Roadways and Places of Power in the Chaco World (ca. AD 850-1150)

“…While in many cases these ceramic fragments are broken wares discarded in middens, there are also many contexts in which small numbers of ceramic sherds are found in association with religious architecture far removed from living areas or middens (such as Llave de la Mano). Many Southwestern archaeologists identify sherds in the latter contexts as intentionally deposited offerings, often drawing connections with practices of offering ceramic sherds among descendant Pueblo cultures (Ortiz 1969: 54;Toll 2001;Walker and Berryman 2022). constructed in the Basketmaker III period, then enlarged and formalized over centuries of use.…”