grasping the elusive and unknowable: material culture in ritual practice

Studies of ritual and religion have increasingly taken account of the rich material dimension of ritual practice. Nonetheless, and in parallel with similar tendencies in the wider humanities and social sciences, such studies have often framed material culture as a passive reflection of cultural values, thoughts, and cosmological beliefs that are understood to prefigure them. In contrast, this paper argues that the material aspects of religious practice may serve a very different end than do texts and symbols. By doing away with language partly or perhaps even entirely, at certain points in time, both material culture and certain more experientially oriented types of ritual activity are able to alter human thought and understanding by relating it directly to experience of the material world, the environment, the body, and the emotions. Archaeologists and anthropologists must beware of allowing language-oriented, representationalist understandings of material culture and ritual to limit elucidation of the myriad of ways in which these two components of human activity often work together to alter human perception and understanding. While language may frequently be adequate for dealing with everyday activities and experiences, ritual, often materially, emotionally and sensually oriented, helps to grasp the elusive and unknowable at the margins of these experiences.