Ancestral, spiritual, and magical?

Ancient monuments were just one element of a wider numinous natural world. The supernatural opportunities of the grave, the barrow, and ancient monuments existed as components in a landscape within which all things could be potent to greater and lesser extents. This chapter moves beyond mortuary practices and examines the variety of other pre-Christian activities that exploited prehistoric monuments as a setting. The use of the prehistoric by early Anglo-Saxon communities is argued as a component within the large and complex network of ideas, rhetoric, and rituals, which the communities of the fifth and sixth centuries used to define and situate themselves. The aim here is to show just how ‘creative a medium’ the ancient was for shaping and signalling identity, belief, ideology, and politics at the most local of levels, perhaps leading to its special role in later elite narratives

Art · Magical thinking · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Medicine · Psychology