Annemarie de Waal Malefijt, Religion and Culture
Questions on chapter 5, Prehistoric Religion
Note to students: Because this book was first written in 1968, much of the evolutionary terminology and many of the archeological statements are now obsolete. There are some insights, however, that remain valid. My questions are directed at those insights.
Know the meaning of the following terms
Mousterian
art mobilier
home art vs. cave art
palimpsest
menhir
cromlech
dolmen
tumulus
alignment
barrow
passage graves
hallcist
Know the country and relevance of the following archaeological sites.
Chou Kou Tien
Monte Circeo
La Chapelle-aux-Saints
La Ferrassie
Mugharet es-Skuhl
Teshik-Tash
Willendorf
Brassempouy
Trois Freres
Altamira
Cogul
Carnac and Menec
Stonehenge
Be able to answer the following questions
Certain 19th century writers claimed that some tribes were so “low in culture’ that they had no religion. What was Tylor’s response? Tylor asserted his belief in the universality of ______.
The three periods into which anthropologists still divide cultural evolutionary history are ______, ______, and ______, each of which is defined by ______.
“Magical cannibalism” appears to have been practiced by ______, who would today be classified as Homo erectus. (The genus name given to this fossil back then was ______). The religious nature of ritual cannibalism and head-hunting is attested to by ethnographic work among the Jivaro and the Amahuacha of the ______continent
Neanderthals were traditionally associated with the ______Paleolithic. The burial of an old man with a broken nose was found at ______, possible indication of ______. In the ______regions of German and Austria there are indications that the Neanderthals gave ritual attention to ______. In general evidence of possible Neanderthal religion is clearest in archeological sites that had been used in the distant past for ______.
Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian refer to ______traditions found among people who belong to the ______Paleolithic. The term Cro-Magnon refers to a place in ______where railroad workers unearthed skeletons similar to those of modern humans in the year ______. Besides the tools and food remains found in Neanderthal burials, Cro-Magnon skeletons are in addition surrounded by ______and painted with ______. The bodies were often protected with ______. A Cro-Magnon burial in South Wales illustrates the animals hunted; along with human remains there were remains of five animals, namely_____.
“The presence of animal bones, tools, and ornaments in burial sites indicates belief in the after life.” What permits that inference? In addition to bones and tools with the dead, two other practices in Cro-Magnon burials have provoked discussion. Which practices and objects?
The Venus figures at Laussel, in France, differed in genre from the typical Venus figurines. How? An unsual carving of a female head in mammoth ivory was found in southwestern France, in the town of ______, A total of about _____ Venus figurines have been found in five countries, namely______. A very unusual type of painting practice was found in Font-de-Gaume in France. What was it?
The centers of Paleolithic cave art are the countries of _____ and _____. In the cave art the artists paid great attention to depicting ______but made crude drawings of ______. The best executed drawing of a human is the one known as ______, found in the French cave of ______.
According to Malefijt, the theory that the cave paintings of animals represent religious or magical scenes is supported by seven features of the paintings, namely: ______
The caves of northern Spain, like Altamira, have art that is similar to that of southern France. But in the cave of Cogul, further south, there is an unusual scene depicted. What is it?
In the lakes near Hamburg Germany an unusual ritual was found. Which? In Ofnet, in Germany, a burial of many skulls was found. What was unusual about the site that leads us to believe, on the basis of analogies with certain Native American groups, that there was a belief in an afterlife.
What is the dominant characteristic of the Neolithic that distinguishes it from Paleolithic and Mesolithic? How can we infer that agriculture was associated with population growth? Apart from the food issue, denser populations increased the problem of ______, and this led to a larger number of ______/
In Jericho the deepest and oldest layer contains skulls that were treated in a very special way. What was the treatment? Some skulls of children were found. Something about them leads to the hypothesis of child sacrifice. What?
Early Neolithic Egyptian burials indicate a new burial practice in human history. Which practice? What is the most common burial object accompanying the corpse? It is in Egypt that we first see social stratification. What objects did the graves of the wealthy have that the graves of the poorer people did not have? Some wealthy graves had separate deeper storage rooms connected to them. What was the possible function of these?
The earliest megalith burial monuments were found in four countries, namely. ______The custom then spread to Europe, particularly in three areas, namely, ______.
The introduction of metal signals the end of the ______.
The most famous megalith in Europe is ______, located in Salisbury, England. It was built in _____ phases, the earliest beginning about ______B.C.E. During Stonehenge I there was built a circular ______and an inner ______. At the northeast is a monolith known as the _____ Stone. Along the rampart were 56 ritual pits known as ______holes. Excavations reveal that these were used for ______. Stonehenge II was initiated about _____ BCE and consists of a double circle of 82 bluestones. Stonhenge III was initiated about _____ BCE and consists of a circle of upright ______stones covered with ______that formed a continuous circle. The entire structure ended up being concentric circles, at the center of which were five ______each consisting of two uprights topped by a stone slab.
Sensationalistic accounts have viewed Stonehenge as a temple of the ______religion characterized by rituals of ______. There is no direct evidence for human sacrifice at Stonehenge, but there have been found the remains of a murdered child at the nearby sanctuary of ______.
The people who built Stonehenge II may have been members of a different culture who were oriented toward sky worship. The opening of the circle of stones faced northeast and was close to the point of sunrise at the ______.
The bluestones at Stonehenge came from ______miles away, and are smaller than the later sarsen stones, which came from about _____ miles away.
There were many other megaliths built in northern Europe, but they differed in function from Stonehenge. Stonehenge was primarily a ______, whereas the other megaliths functioned principally as ______.
There were two types of Paleolithic and Neolithic burials in Europe: those in which bones were ______and those in which the body was ______. The former seemed to indicate a belief that ______, whereas the latter seemed to indicate belief in a ______.
The sculpture traditions of the Paleolithic “Venus figurines” disappeared for millennia. In the Neolithic sculpture reappeared. The most common object is a female figure commonly known as ______. Like the Venus figurines the limbs and face are ignored, and emphasis is placed on ______. Because of this emphasis it is believed that they were religious items focusing on ______. In ______, these figurines became completely “stylized”, no longer recognizable as females except for breasts. They were called ______. One argument for their use as fertility symbols derives from what they were NOT used for. These figurines are rarely found in ______.
The book briefly mentions New World burials and lists four cultures. You should know the names, the location, the approximate final date of the culture, and the characteristic burial practice.