Feeling cut off

TheCatWoman said:

maybe I should have some ubshebti's made so as they can put it all back together again?

Good thinking!

I have a few replica Neolithic & Bronze Age figurines. I’ll ask them to assist.

I suspect I will end up in the afterlife with a pile of bits of all the tech I've broken, maybe I should have some ubshebti's made so as they can put it all back together again?

 TheCatWoman has a unique relationship with her tech and with its afterlife, though I suspect her computer will end up on a higher sphere than that of my beloved iMac LOL.

You have reminded me of my favourite phone of all time - a Panasonic flip phone. It nestled perfectly in the hand, practically holding itself in place, not like my iPhone which has a nasty habit of falling through my fingers.

Mine was a 95 turbo, petrol, wow when that turbo kicked in it was like being in a rocket! I loved the build quality of the Saab, little things like the way the flip down windscreen shades had another section that flipped sideways, so as you could see when driving in low northern light in winter and weren't blinded.

The 99 turbo was an awesome car with some really cool features - like locking it in reverse when taking the keys out to stop people trying to move it or jump start it.

I did an engine replacement for a friend when I was a young man which was surprisingly straightforward for a car like this - I was impressed by the build quality.

Just don't talk to me about the windscreen wiper motors - you needed a gynocologists hands to be able to access them to do any repair / replacement.

Go and do something witty and amusingly rude Iain, something that would upset the censors!

I would be happy to find my old Saab as my afterlife transport, I loved that car and I'm not usually someone who gets attached to things like that. A garage murdered it instead of fixing it. Driving it made me feel like a viking, that car was made by vikings for vikings, I could fluff up my tail lay back my ears and put my foot down and sail past all the numpties in thier beemers and souped up corsas with ease

ArchaeC said:

The killing of inanimate objects to allow it to travel to the afterlife is a fascinatinatimg hypothesis .

Can you imagine arriving in the afterlife and finding your old Windows 95 computer, Nokia flip phone and modem being the only things you remembered to properly send ahead?

Spending all eternity with these as your form of interaction with others in the afterlife.

I guess you could always ask TheCatWoman for some of her tech - it seems to be sent to other side of the veil with amazing rapidity LOL.

I think that there's no definition of shamanism, because shamanism isn't a set of beliefs in the same way that a religion is. With a religion you have a standard set of beliefs, with some variations and maybe a common ancestry, like with Abrahamic religions, with Shamanism it's much more difuse, and evidence for practices is much harder to find, a shaman will cross to the otherworld for a purpose, such as obtaining a cure for sickness, to commune with the ancestors or gods on behalf of the community, these things leave little evidence, you might find masks or ttraces of halucinogens, possible mirrors or bags of bits and pieces, but they're few and far between and tells us noting of the how something was practiced or the reasons for doing so. We can get idea from societies that currently practice shamanism, such as Saami, Siberians, Africans and some First Nation peoples in the Americas and Australsia. Shamanism and indeed any polythethist practice takes a profound readjustment of thinking for those of us brought up either as secular or Abrahamic faiths. We have to ditch the ideas of the so called enlightenment and start thinking of an animate universe, a universe where everything is connected, everything has soul and purpose and is active. It is also a different world view to something like Buddhism, in many ways its the opposite of eastern religious and spiritual practices where this world is something unreal and to be discarded and suffering is somehow of spiritual benefit.

I could go on somemore, but just sit with those thoughts for a while and next time you go for a walk see how many living entities you share your world with! I promise it will be both surprising, time consuming and an eye opener.

If you want a quick glimpse into shamanic practice as it may have been in Anglo Saxons times, then try reading, The Way of Wyrd, but Brian Bates.

The killing of inanimate objects to allow it to travel to the afterlife is a fascinatinatimg hypothesis . Interestingly, some archaeologists have attempted to come up with a definition of  ‘shamanism’ in archaeological burials and deposits.  There has been some progress, but I don’t think, although I stand to be corrected, that there has yet been a universally agreed framework for burials in Britain or Europe. That is not to say it didn't exist, it is just not possible to say what distinguishes shamanism from other potential magic/religious rituals of the period, even if we don’t know exactly what they are.

Dr Rachel Pope, an archaeologist who specialises in Iron Age Britain, has criticised the claim in news releases that the hoard dispels the myth of Northern impoverishment. She says Yorkshire was the centre of Iron Age Culture and the hoards value lies in what it can tell us about the decline of late Hallstatt Celtic Culture at Gaul. 

TheCatWoman said:

We live with this dissonance in our beliefs and thinking, but those thoughts have never really gone away

I think you are exactly right, as humans, those things haven’t changed. 

I was going to send you a few links, but thought not.

Shopping used to be a social activity, even if you didn't buy anything, you'd meet your mates and trawl round the shops, make plans for later, chose an outfit to wear, try on make up. Now we're supposed to sit and get tutorials from influencers, but the clothes that we can't try on first, or as seems to be getting mroe common, buy the same piece of clothing in 3 different sizes in the hope that one fits and return the others, wheres the fun and socialising in that?

I thought that many items that are deliberately broken before deposition were being "killed", suggesting that what we think of as inanimate objects, have a life and maybe even some kind of soul. Maybe the physical object needs to be killed in this life so as it can travel to the afterlife?

This is quite a shmanic way of thinking and far removed from out materialist view of animate and inanimate, living and not living. We live with this dissonance in our beliefs and thinking, but those thoughts have never really gone away, we still throw coins into fountains and make a wish, just as our ancestors would have deposited valuable objects as offerings to gods and/or ancestors. We treasure objects that have been handed down from grandparents etc, they have a sort of life, everytime we use "the gravy boat" for example, at xmas because its part of our personal sacred memories of a beloved ancestor, ad connects us both to that person but to past celebrations and social rituals.

I'm like you........but I am accustomed to those feelings.  Numb, and "otherly"......I don't like it.....but there we are! 

I think archaeologists too are trying are trying to work out the culture.

There were some areas of Natufian culture spotted about the Levant prior to the Neolithic, but the period I am interested in 8300 - 4500BCE, generally hasn’t been defined by or named after one particular culture, it is only later that periods were defined by history in that part of the world, ie, Babylonian. The few earliest Neolithic farming settlements and villages share some similarities, but there are enough differences to make each unique. 

The chronology of the Near East doesn’t exactly match that of Northern Europe, so the Iron Age is about 1200 - 586BCE, just before the Babylonian and Persian periods, followed by the Greek and Roman periods. The Sumerian domination of Mesopotamia would have ended roughly around the end of the Iron Age.

Trying to think what cultures this could cover off? Not at all familiar with Neolithic era in the Levantt, I guess it was very tribal? Was the Iron Age before Romans, Greek? 

I am particularly interested in the material culture of Neolithic and Iron Age II Levant. Yes, I know I’ve left out large chunks of time between the two. The Neolithic was a time of early farming settlements in that part of the world and I am interested in how connections may have influenced things like the meaning and function of portable clay anthropomorphic figurines. Sites such as Catalhoyuk in Turkey, pose more questions around the theme of first settler communities than answers, and there are likely sites similar to it elsewhere. The Iron Age period of the Levant was beset by upheaval and changing influences from the expansion of the Assyrians, but clay figurines appeared to be relatively common in the domestic home. 

Thank you! I recognised that webpage as soon as it landed after clicking! I used to browse  all the university webpages on material culture, and I still do from time to time. It seems that material culture as a specialism of archaeology is becoming much more widespread in its own right, probably thanks to the advancement of scientific analysis. 

Do you have a particular interest in archaeology or in a specific area of archaeology? 

I think you could be right, and hindering the journey to the afterlife is a universal theme over many time periods. 

Maybe "battle won", plus the final insult of: "your high status metal wheels will not help convey you beyond this mortal life"?

It’s an interesting possibility, and certainly ritual damage in the form of burning and breaking has been seen across Europe and Asia. Your hypothesis about ritual bending could suggest that the chariot’s wheels were deliberately misshapen because the wheel is high status and wheels have the power to convey a person and some goods across land quickly and efficiently. They are symbolic of power in a similar way to the swords in Germany. Do you suggest that the burial was a celebration of a battle won? Now that would be quite a thing! 

Maybe I’m learning a little through listening to the book but not sure what’s made up and what might be real? 
what kind of civilisations does that cover? Are you talking the Sumerians or later like the Persians? Maybe Assyrians or Hittites?