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Theory within the archaeology of religion borrows heavily from the Anthropology of religion, which encompasses a broad range of perspectives.These include: Émile Durkheim's functionalist understanding of religion as serving to separate the sacred and the profane; [8] Karl Marx's idea of religion as "the opium of the masses" or a false consciousness, [9] Clifford Geertz's loose definition of ...
Often informed by anthropological material culture studies, but characterised by putting traditional archaeological methods and practices to new uses, research in this field generally aims to make an archaeological contribution to broader social scientific studies of the contemporary world, focusing especially upon contributing methods of studying material things (objects, landscapes ...
Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology.
The theory of religious economy sees different religious organizations competing for followers in a religious economy, much like the way businesses compete for consumers in a commercial economy. Theorists assert that a true religious economy is the result of religious pluralism , giving the population a wider variety of choices in religion.
Archaeology therefore inherited the burden of explaining the origin of things, and how they change, both once the exclusive preserve of religion, without recourse to divine intervention. Thus, the scientific approach of archaeology can be traced in the west to the Ancient Greeks and their search for the origin or first principle of causation in ...
"myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice." [13]
In 1998, Jonathan Z. Smith wrote a chapter in Critical Terms for Religious Studies which traced the history of the term religion and argued that the contemporary understanding of world religions is a modern Christian and European term, with its roots in the European colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. [51]
Modern archaeology is the discipline of archaeology which contributes to excavations. [1] [clarification needed] Johann Joachim Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. [2] He was "the prophet and founding hero of modern ...