Ritual, Play and Belief, in Evolution and Early Human Societies

The origins of religion and ritual in humans have been the focus of centuries of thought in archaeology, anthropology, theology, evolutionary psychology and more. Play and ritual have many aspects in common, and ritual is a key component of the early cult practices that underlie the religious systems of the first complex societies in all parts of the world. This book examines the formative cults and the roots of religious practice from the earliest times until the development of early religion in the Near East, in China, in Peru, in Mesoamerica and beyond. Here, leading prehistorians and other specialists bring a fresh approach to the early practices that underlie the faiths and religions of the world. They demonstrate the profound role of play ritual and belief systems and offer powerful new insights into the emergence of early civilization.

1. Introducing ritual, play and belief: in evolution and early human societies Iain Morley; 2. Introduction: play as the precursor of ritual in early human societies Colin Renfrew; Part I. Play and Ritual: Forms, Foundations and Evolution in Animals and Humans: 3. The origins, evolution, and interconnections of play and ritual: setting the stage Gordon Burghardt; 4. Play and creativity Patrick Bateson; 5. Pretend and sociodramatic play in evolutionary and developmental perspective Peter K. Smith; 6. Pretend play, cognition and life-history in human evolution Iain Morley; 7. From play and ritualisation to ritual and its arts: sources of Upper Pleistocene ritual practices in Lower Middle Pleistocene ritualised and play behaviours in ancestral hominins Ellen Dissanayake; Part II. Playing with Belief and Performance in Ancient Societies: 8. Maya sacred play: the view from El Perú-Waka' David Friedel and Michelle Rich; 9. Communal performance and ritual practice in the Ancestral Puebloan era of the American Southwest Claire Halley; 10. Architecture and imagery in the early Neolithic of Southwest Asia: framing rituals, stabilizing meanings Trevor Watkins; 11. Dancing with masks in the Protohistoric Near East Yosef Garfinkel; 12. Ritual, mimesis and the animal world in early China Roel Sterckx; 13. Manipulating the bones: Eating and augury in the Maltese temples Caroline Malone; Part III. The Ritual in the Game, The Game in the Ritual: 14. Play, ritual and transformation: Sports, animals and manhood in Egyptian and Aegean art Lyvia Morgan; 15. Bull games in Minoan Crete: social and symbolic dimensions Nanno Marinatos; 16. Epic Games Nigel Spivey; 17. The ball game, boxing and ritual bloodsport in ancient Mesoamerica Karl Taube; 18. Rituals, games and learning Vanghelis Kyriakidis; Part IV. From Play to Faith? Discussion: 19. Play and ritual: some thoughts from a material-culture perspective Lambros Malafouris; 20. Believing in play and ritual Robin Osborne; 21. The pentagram of performance: ritual, play and social transformation Iain Morley.

Colin Renfrew was formerly Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Jesus College Cambridge from 1986 to 1997. He is the author of many publications, including Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind (2008). He is Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and was the recipient of the Balzan Prize in 2004.
Iain Morley is Academic Coordinator of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. He has been Lecturer in Palaeoanthropology and Director of the degree in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, and was formerly a Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. He has produced numerous articles and books, including Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material (Cambridge, 2008), Spiritual Culture and Image and Imagination: A Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation (2007), and The Prehistory of Music: Human Evolution, Archaeology and the Origins of Musicality (2013).
Michael Boyd is a Senior Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He is Assistant Director of the Keros Island Survey, and co-editor of the Keros publications series. He has published a book on Mycenaean funerary practices, and has co-edited two volumes on funerary archaeology: one with a worldwide perspective, Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World: Death shall have no dominion (Cambridge, 2016), and the other concerned with the Staging Death: Funerary Performance, Architecture and Landscape in the Aegean (2016).