The Cult of Animals

The early modern history of the festivities associated with Hallowe’en and St Valentine’s Day reveals a significant overlap in early forms of celebration and customary practices. In the eighteenth century, however, each day developed its own distinctive traditional identity. This article argues that this was a result of mass print culture and the spread of literature: primarily in popular verses, the poetry of Robert Burns, and the influence of William Shakespeare.     

海神、海神信仰与祭祀仪式--山东沿海渔民的海神信仰与祭祀仪式调查

山东省是中国古代文明的发祥地之一,历来有“齐鲁之邦,礼仪之乡”的美誉。境内既有绵延起伏的群山丘陵,又有坦荡辽阔的平原大川,中华民族的摇篮黄河从山东人海,五岳之首的泰山雄踞鲁中南,西南部大运河沿湖区穿过山东,东部还有三千里的海岸线。悠久灿烂的历史文化,复杂多样的地理环境,形成了山东民俗古朴淳厚、丰富多彩的特点。     

神话、传说与历史

本文旨在探讨神话、传说与历史的关系。为此,文章重新启用和评价了爱德华·泰勒关于神话传说属于"原始文化"的概念,从而在理论上找到了由神话传说到历史的通道,因为在此概念下神话传说无论以何种形态出现都包含了构建史前史的要素。为了借鉴这些历史因素,作者尝试性地提出了一种考察和解释神话传说的模式,即以"信史"或"真实的历史"为出发点,以信实性为衡量标准,将世界各主要文明的神话传说分成若干层次。作者认为,由于各种神话传说所包含的历史真实因素具有不同的层次和特点,因此必须综合借鉴社会学、人类学、古文字学、考古学、天文学等多种理论和方法,才能对形态各异的神话传说进行有利于历史研究的考察。     

Miami's Little Havana: Yard Shrines,Cult Religion and Landscape

The urban square has been a distinguishing characteristic of European cities for millennia. However, in the context of small towns, where the square is often the sole identifier of their physical urbanity, its role differs from that of large towns. This fact is substantial within national administrative systems that endorse desirable urban status to rural settlements endowed with urban morphology. It is also important in times of extensive EU-subsidized actions aimed at improving the quality of public space in small underresourced towns. However, many projects fail to draw from and respond to the specifics of the local context, and, by focusing on the details and disregarding the basics, they may defeat their purpose. Departing from extensive field observations in Poland, this paper puts theoretical framework and current trends in urban design into relation to various elements of a square's spatial configuration in order to arrive at degrees of their urban significance. By interpreting the fundamental values embedded in the morphology of market squares, this paper attempts to isolate the cultural archetypes that shape our perception of such places as urban. The proposed analysis could be used to meet the main goal of market square revitalization, namely to visually articulate urbanity.     

Building Communities in Ancient Samnium: Cult,Ethnicity and Nested Identities

This article addresses the meaning of community in an area of the ancient world that is normally seen to diverge from the paradigm of the Classical city‐state, by examining the role of sanctuaries in the articulation of identity and belonging. The focus is on Samnium (central Italy) in the last four centuries BC, where archaeological and historical evidence, including a wealth of recent discoveries, supports a dynamic view of a region that is traditionally associated with a cohesive ethnic group. Whilst it is true that the major sanctuary at Pietrabbondante fostered the construction of Samnite ethnic identity, this article highlights the importance of other types and levels of belonging in light of a broader range of cult sites. The concept of ‘nested identities’ (a scenario where individuals identify simultaneously with overlapping groups) can bring about a more nuanced view of how cult was used as a means to negotiate belonging on ethnic and non‐ethnic levels. I hope to show that local communities, and particularly the local elites, were able to function independently rather than simply as the building blocks of the Samnite ethnos.     

The Sun and the Shakers,Again: Enga,Ipili, and Somaip Perspectives on the Cult of Ain

ABSTRACT The ‘Sun and the Shakers, Again’ resumes the conversation begun by Mervyn J. Meggitt in his 1973 article ‘The Sun and the Shakers’ concerning the circumstances and mindset of Enga and Ipili speakers on the eve (or in the early stages) of colonial penetration. The ‘Cult of Ain,’ as Meggitt termed a regional cult that broke out in the mid‐1940s, followed on the heels of devastating epidemics and famine and was in some measure, at least in most areas where it caught on, a response to those traumas. Yet there were other dimensions: apparent cargo cultism and millenarianism. Widening the geographical scope of reporting beyond that of Meggitt's article to include both the Somaip, as reported on by Hans Reithofer in The Python Spirit and the Cross, and the Ipili speakers of the western Porgera valley and the Paiela valley, this second and final installment reviews and critiques existing interpretations of the Cult of Ain in light of the ethnohistorical detail offered in the first installment and goes on to offer an interpretation of the cult that is inspired by the cosmological symbols common to all cult versions: most obviously the sun but also the sky. The Cult of Ain is viewed by participants and their descendants alike as the prelude to colonialism and missionization, and understanding it is crucial to writing the cultural history of the last 65+ years.     

The Fordwich Stone and its Legend

Abstract

The ubiquitous use of the Latin word ‘sedilia’ to refer to the ritual seats to the south of an altar for the use of the celebrant priest and his assistants has led to the notion that it is an authentic medieval term. This paper shows the results of a survey of documentary references to seats of all kinds in medieval England, and demonstrates that in the medieval period the word sedilia was of no especial distinction, meaning merely ‘bench’, only gaining its current meaning in the late 18th century. The word was used along with a variety of others to refer to now lost seating in medieval churches, including benches and individual chairs in the chancel as well as seating in the nave. This piece will make some suggestions for the distinctions made in the terminology in medieval documents regarding the different types of seating in churches. To avoid confusion, the word ‘sedilia’ is italicised when it refers to medieval use of the Latin word, but not when it refers to the modern definition.     

民间传说的文化解读：淄河语境中的孟姜女传说

孟姜女传说的“在地化”研究虽然在研究范式和材料方面为民间文学研究提供了一个新的思路并注入了新的活力,但目前的一些“在地化”研究成果多把孟姜女传说置于宏观的中华民族文化与社会背景之中进行分析,极少涉及孟姜女传说文本的微观区域语境,这样就很难注意到传说与民间生活的相互依存关系,也就很难将传说的内在特征与作为语境的乡土社会做结构性的互文阐释。基于此,本文将以在山东省淄博市淄河镇8村搜集到的22则孟姜女传说文本为例,尝试着将其置于当地村落语境中,从当地村民生活出发予以解读,进而在此基础上探讨乡民对于自身文化文本的理解方式。