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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ A COGNITIVE-INFORMED APPROACH TO ‘SACRIFICE’ IN ANCIENT GREECE Crabtree, Charles Rawcliffe Airey Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 A COGNITIVE-INFORMED APPROACH TO ‘SACRIFICE’ IN ANCIENT GREECE Charles Rawcliffe Airey Crabtree Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classics) 1 Abstract My thesis presents a significant new understanding of ‘sacrifice’ and demonstrates the applicability of a cognitive-informed approach. I begin by outlining my methodology and then discuss how 'sacrifice' has been approached by scholars up until the present day. I demonstrate the emergence of the term ‘sacrifice’ in a particular cultural milieu that is not reflective of ancient experience. I then address the issue of 'sacrifice' through the lens of the 'other', focusing specifically on Herodotus and the range of issues he does, or does not, show interest in when discussing 'barbarian' practices. I then continue to deconstruct the modern category of 'sacrifice' in my next two chapters, where I analyse the evidence for the main range of practices involving the ritual killing of animals as well as so-called 'bloodless offerings'. I demonstrate, for example, the way 'sacrifice' can be broken down into smaller elements, how difficult it is to draw simple lines between different kinds of ritual activity and how the same or similar elements are used in different contexts. I then dedicate a chapter in turn to my two main approaches: an approach based on sensory analysis and an approach based on cognitive ritual theories. These correspond to emic (insider) and etic (outsider/modern scholar) perspectives and are used to supplement each other's conclusions and mitigate each other's weaknesses. The emic perspective emphasises the largely conscious, culture-specific, sensory and purposeful whereas the etic approach highlights the mainly unconscious, cross-cultural and automatic. In both instances, however, the emphasis is on the experiential nature of 'sacrifice'. I show that ‘sacrifice' is far more complicated than has been generally understood and multiple interpretations are necessary, both traditional and cognitive. Although an appreciation of cognitive experience, emotion and sensory perception is necessary to explain ‘sacrifice’, these aspects have been largely neglected by modern scholars. 2 Table of contents Table of figures 4 Chapter I: Methodology and preliminary observations 5 Chapter II: ‘Animal sacrifice’ in ancient Greece 40 Chapter III: Looking through the lens of the ‘other’ 62 Chapter IV: Deconstructing ‘sacrifice’ I: Killing and eating animals 81 Chapter V: Deconstructing ‘sacrifice’ II: Bloodless practices 109 Chapter VI: New approaches I: Sensory analysis 137 Chapter VII: New approaches II: Cognitive ritual theories 171 Chapter VIII: Conclusion 257 Appendix 1 262 Appendix 2 265 Appendix 3 266 Bibliography 272 3 Table of figures 1. The ritual form hypothesis shown three-dimensionally 20 2. Attic black figure votive krater from the Acropolis (neck fragment) 60 3. Bell-krater in Agrigento of about 425 BC 84 4. Attic red figure stamnos dated 450/425 BC 85 5. Attic red figure oinochoe of the late 5th century BC 92 6 Attic red figure amphora (500/475 BC) 95 7. Attic red figure kylix of the first quarter of the 5th century BC 97 8. Red figure Attic stamnos (450-440 BC) now in the British Museum 117 9. A relief from the Athenian Asklepieion (4th century BC) 124 10. Vase painting by the Triptolemos Painter dated to around 470 BC 201 4 Chapter I Methodology and preliminary observations This thesis argues that experience has been overlooked in approaches to ‘sacrifice’ in ancient Greece in general. It offers a new focus on cognitive experience, emotion and sensory perception in unlocking the importance of such activity in classical Athens. It thus deprivileges an emphasis on any alleged underlying meaning, and draws on two key branches of cognitive scholarship concerned with ritual form and transmission on the one hand and perceived sensory experience on the other. In essence, I will argue that ‘sacrifice’ is an experiential based phenomena (perceived sensory, emotional and unconscious) determined by different contexts. These contexts generate intuitions, pleasures, excitements and anxieties along with experiential-based motivations and understandings. There are also different modalities and sensory channels involved in different situations and in different aspects of these situations and there is no single ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ for such behaviour. There is also no uniform or essential type or form of ‘sacrifice’, while a concern with origins is misguided. ‘Sacrifice’ can, in fact, only be said to denote a number of loosely related different rituals that can be used singly, or in various different combinations, in a number of divergent ways. I will build on existing scholarship and present a new cognitive-informed perspective on ‘sacrifice’ that brings together both ancient and modern scientific insights. Definition of key terms It is necessary at this point to outline the meaning of key terms utilised in this thesis. All of these terms are contentious and problematic and thus it is necessary to be clear from the outset as to how they are specifically used in this analysis. My definition of ‘meaning’ will change according to whether a sensory or cognitive ritual theory-based approach is being emphasised. These are the new perspectives that I apply to the evidence in Chapters VI and VII while the general methodology used is outlined in this chapter below. In both cases, however, the emphasis is on ‘meaning’ in experiential terms, although what this denotes differs significantly. In the case of the former, ‘meaning’ will apply to the full sensory (or inter-sensorial) experience and perception of that experience in terms of both cross- cultural and culturally specific significances and impact. In the latter case, it will refer to 5 the largely unconscious and universal factors motivating actions (for example the hazard- precaution system, bioregulatory mechanisms, etc discussed below) and making them pleasurable, exciting, appropriate, satisfying and so on. I argue that there is no need to abandon the term ‘sacrifice’, despite a recent call for this in modern scholarship.1 Bell notes, crucially, that many attempts to re-define a phenomena like ritual and produce a paradigm shift ‘end up simply repackaging older problems in new jargon’ and also undermines consideration of ‘how and why the term has become problematic’.2 Indeed, this will be explored in the case of ‘sacrifice’ in the next chapter where consideration will be given to the emergence of the term and its popularity as a subject of analysis in the context of a specific cultural milieu seeking the origins of religion from a Christianising perspective. As already noted, ‘sacrifice’ will not be regarded in this thesis as a distinct and uniform category. I minimally define ‘animal sacrifice’ as encompassing a range of inter-related activities focused on eating and/or killing (or destruction) and associated with the gods or the divine on some level (the ways this can happen will be shown to be diverse and meaningful ). The term ‘sacrifice’ on the other hand can incorporate a broader range of activities (including libation and the use of incense) as I will show. It is, in fact, impossible to draw simple lines between different kinds of ritual activity and the same elements can also be seen to be used in different contexts. ‘Belief’ is another complex and controversial term. Bell points to the ‘ambiguous, unstable and inconsistent nature of belief systems’, while Humphrey and Laidlaw have explored how practitioners of the Jain rite of worship in India exhibit inconsistent, inaccurate, or even entirely absent, explanations of their own complex ritual activity.3 However, while the connection between a ritual and an alleged ‘purpose’ or ‘meaning’ is often unclear, ritual acts still take place and are often performed with great enthusiasm and commitment. They thus make cognitive sense (whether unconscious, bioregulatory, emotional, sensorial etc) with or without a clear or consistent conscious explanation or, indeed, any explanation at all. I use the term ‘belief’ here, in the first instance, to refer to this feeling of rightness and appropriateness which activities like ‘sacrifice’ engender in those who perform them, rather than a more specific aim or intention that might be offered by the participant or implied by the context. At the same time, I in no way deny the importance of context in 1 Frankfurter 2011: 87. 2 Bell 1992: 7. 3 Bell 1992: 186; Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994: 264. 6 understanding the nature of the activity performed. In fact, this is of key significance to my approach as I have already outlined.