Naturalizing the Normative

Cosmology, Ontogenesis and the Emergence of Ritual Communities in Southern Roman Britain

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7700258
AutoresSahal Abdi (0009-0009-0607-0273, University of Cambridge, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen35
Número4
Páginas706-720
Fecha de publicación2025-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCambridge Archaeological Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0959-7743 • E-ISSN: 1474-0540
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0959774325100188
OpenAlexW4413363444
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas73

Rituals are sites of personal and social transformations. However, we still do not have a sophisticated theory for how these rituals were embedded and generated within specific political economies, nor how communities used ritual activities to conceptualize the cosmos. This paper develops a theoretical framework exploring pragmatism and materialism to articulate the relationship between imperial political economies and ritual activities, situating the latter in the former. This framework will then be applied to ritual activities in southern Roman Britain, exploring how ritual activities emerged within the imperial political economy. The emergence of Roman imperialism in Roman Britain materially impacted upon not only the nature and range of ritual activities, but also the cosmologies of local communities. Ritual activities are materializations of cosmological beliefs, and both were determined by the imperial political economy. It is this process by which cosmologies emerged to naturalize socially constructed relations and activities that I call ontogenesis

Astronomy · Cosmology · Epistemology · Ethnology · Normative · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Philosophy