Finding Ritual: Calibrating the Evidence

This paper draws attention to the challenges archaeologists face in the study of ritual evidence. Issues include the similarity of individual rituals within a system, the common use of one space for the performance of multiple rituals, the disjunction between ritual practice and belief, the inseparability of the ritual and the mundane spheres, and the finding of ritual items in secondary contexts. An awareness of the potential complications in the archaeological record, and of the need to calibrate the evidence, should facilitate secure attributions of ritual activity in archaeology.