This Special Issue is the third and final volume in a trilogy of collective peer-reviewed works of the Unlocking Sacred Landscapes research network. It encompasses various approaches both to ritual space and to artefacts relating to ritual practice and cults involving islandscapes (including landscapes and seascapes). The terms ritual and cult are used broadly to include sanctuaries, temples, and churches, as well as the domestic and funerary spheres of life. Although the main focus of the Special Issue is the Mediterranean region, studies related to other regions are included to stimulate wider methodological dialogues and comparative approaches. The time span ranges from prehistory to the recent past, and research includes ethnography and cultural heritage studies. The contributions of the issue deal with historical and culturally driven perspectives that recognise the complexities of island religious systems as well as the active role of the islanders in constructing their own religious identities, irrespective of emulation and acculturation. The authors consider inter-island and island/mainland relations, maritime connectivity of things and people, and ideological values in relation to religious change, as well as the relation between island space and environment in the performance and maintenance of spiritual lives.

This substantially expanded edition of Belden C. Lane's Landscapes of the Sacred includes a new introductory chapter that offers three new interpretive models for understanding American sacred space. Lane maintains his approach of interspersing shorter and more personal pieces among full-length essays that explore how Native American, early French and Spanish, Puritan New England, and Catholic Worker traditions has each expressed the connection between spirituality and place. A new section at the end of the book includes three chapters that address methodological issues in the study of spirituality, the symbol-making process of religious experience, and the tension between place and placelessness in Christian spirituality.

Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.

This book aims to 'show us the holy sites of Britain Ireland and mainland Europe through Celtic eyes', which means that it inevitably takes a somewhat spiritual 'mind body and spirit' tone. That said it offers a fascinating introduction to oral traditions of celtic religion and its ties to the landscape.

This study provides a concrete example of how foraging societies enculturate and transform the natural environment and, through the use of material objects, create sacred spaces and sites. Using ethnographic and ethnohistorical information about the Khanty of Siberia, Jordan shows the shortcomings of both interpretive and materialist anthropological theorizing about hunters and gatherers. He focuses on the rich and complex relationship between the symbolism of the Khanty, their material culture, and the bringing of meaning to physical places. His examination looks at the topic in both historical and contemporary contexts, and in scales from the core-periphery model of Russian colonialism to the portrait of a single yurt community. Jordan's work will be of importance to those studying cultural anthropology, archaeology, and comparative religion.