bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Spread of Agro-Pastoral Economies across Mediterranean Europe
Authors: Zilhao Joao
Published: March 2015

The transition to food production in Portugal begins with the arrival of cardial pottery and domesticates, an event that can be date to the time period between 6800 and 6200 BP. These items are found in sites located in the northern part of Estremadura. Contemporaneous hunter-gatherer adaptions are known to have continued their development up to c. 6000 BP in areas located further south, centered in the inner part of the estuaries of the rivers Tejo, Sado and Mira. This pattern is interpreted as indicating that the onset of agro-pastoral economies is linked to the arrival of small groups of settlers that, through interaction with local hunters, are at the origins of the subsequent expansion (completed about one thousand years later) of these economies to the rest of Portuguese territory. The archaeological evidence from Southern Spain and Southern France commonly invoked by proponents of models of the transition to food production as the result of the domestication of local resources or of the acquisition of novel resources by local hunters through long-distance exchange systems is shown to be flawed. Severe disturbances at the Mesolithic/Neolithic interface at the stratigraphic sequences upon which models are based - sometimes not recognized by the excavators, but documented either by subsequent work or by critical evaluation of the site reports - can be shown to have occurred. Such disturbances would account well for the radiocarbon dates between 8000 and 7000 BP obtained at some of those sites, as well as for the presence of sheep bones in their pre-Neolithic strata.
Burial and Social Reproduction in the Peninsular Italian Neolithic
Authors: Robb John E.
Published: March 2015

This essay analyzes Neolithic burial sites from Southern and Central Italy. Aside from a poorly defined Abruzzese/Latial regional tradition, most sites fall into a well-defined developmental sequence. The Early and Middle Neolithic are characterized by unelaborated single primary burials in villages, without grave goods or formal tomb architecture. Sporadic local experiments with goods, tombs, formal cemetery areas and secondary burial are known in the Middle-Late Neolithic, associated with varied trichrome ware cultures, and in the Late-Final Neolithic Diana-Bellavista culture aspects of these are combined in a widespread standard package of cist tombs with single or multiple burials, skull curation, goods and formal cemetery areas. Variation in burial position was associated both with sex and with the presence of burial goods and architecture. Throughout the Neolithic burial was not used to symbolize notable status differences between individuals. Burial changes in the Late- Final Neolithic probably relate to a shift from co-residence in bounded villages, defined by perimeter ditches and individual compound ditches, to a stress on genealogy as a means of group identification. The new cemeteries preserved the segmentary structure of the group, but symbolized relations among people by mapping them onto the dead instead of the living. The result allowed genealogy to be used more flexibly as a strategic idiom for mobilizing production. and creating strategic alliances in the trade-oriented atmosphere of the Final Neolithic. Diana-Bellavista culture burials on some Late Neolithic village sites may mark legitimation of the transitional generations.
Community, Polity, and Temple in a Middle Bronze Age Levantine Village
Authors: Magness-Gardiner Bonnie , Falconer Steven E.
Published: March 2015

The social and economic implications of rural ritual behavior during the development of early urbanized society are inferred from material evidence from households and temple compounds at Tell el-Hayyat, Jordan. Textual sources, primarily from the second millennium BC Syria, show that some temples were dependent upon institutional support (e.g. from palaces), while others were firmly embedded in the domestic economy of their surrounding community. Spatial and temporal patterning of animal bones, plant fragments, ceramics and symbolic objects during Middle Bronze Age IIA and B (ca. 2000-1650 BC) at Tell el-Hayyat reflect some specific ritual prescriptions (e.g. in ovicaprid and fig consumption, and deposition of metal objects). However, a variety of congruences between domestic and temple assemblages (e.g. in sheep:goat management, cattle consumption, cooking pot and storage jar manufacture and use) suggest that Hayyat's temple economy generally reflects immediate community support, rather than the intervention of external institutional authority.
Comments on 'Oxhide Ingots, Recycling and the Mediterranean Metals Trade'
Authors: Sayre Edward V. , Yener K. Aslihan , Joel Emile C.
Published: March 2015

We can comment most efficiently on the analysis of the stable lead isotope ratios in Late Bronze Age oxhide ingots presented by Budd et al. by presenting first our own analysis of pertinent parts of these data. A preliminary observation on the data is that they divide into a number of distinctively different groups. It is true that a sizeable fraction of the ingots, from various find sites, have isotope ratios close to, or overlapping, those of Cyprus copper ores but, as Gale and Stos~Gale have pointed out, none of the oxhide ingots found on Crete has isotope ratios at all consistent with Cypriot ores.
Crisis or Catharsis in Lead Isotope Analysis?
Authors: Pernicka Ernst
Published: March 2015

Since the nineteenth century, views on the possibility of determining the provenance of metal artefacts seems to have gone through periodic cycles like those of the economy. The introduction of a new analytical method is usually greeted with enthusiasm and high hopes. In the initial phase, new insights are provided and the solution of many problems seems to be near; some researchers and many observers begin to rely so heavily on one single technique and to neglect other lines of evidence - and sometimes even simple logic - that they have no hesitation in believing in odd conclusions.
Architecture, Energy and Social Evolution at Isthmia, Greece
Authors: Kardulias P. Nick
Published: March 2015

Energy expended in the construction of monumental public architecture manifests important social decisions based on the efficient use of resources. The decisions taken about architectural construction depend on cultural and historical dimensions and may thus be regarded as aspects of social evolution. This paper reviews elements of evolutionary theory, the culture concept, and especially the role of monumental public architecture as an indicator of social complexity and suggests the applicability of a theoretical model of energy expenditure on architecture to the Late Antique-Early Byzantine transformation at one site in Greece. Evidence from the site of Isthmia in the northeastern Peloponnesos is presented as an example of regional variation during this transitional period. An evolutionary model, with a set of explicitly stated assumptions based on cultural evolutionism, is proposed to explain events at Isthmia and, at a general level, the development of Byzantine society out of its classical roots in this part of the Aegean.
The Eco-Genesis of Ethics and Religion
Authors: Mathews Freya
Published: March 2015

In face of environmental crisis we urgently need global agreement on the moral significance of the biosphere. Environmental philosophers have tried to reason their way toward such moral accord by devising arguments for environmental ethics. But moral ‘truth’ does not ultimately emanate from reason; rather it is hatched inside stories, the kind of primal stories that have been the province of myth and religion. Historically, such stories have been inescapably culturally specific and relative. Is it possible in the modern world to imagine a common story, one that could emanate in a global moral commitment to our increasingly stricken natural world? Science may constitute a universal form of knowledge but it does not afford a story because stories are inherently normative, and science is normatively neutral. Yet a universal story, one that can be seen to subtend religion and ethics and meaning itself, is indeed currently coming into view.
A Trans-Species Definition of Religion
Authors: Harrod James B.
Published: March 2015

To advance knowledge of the evolution and prehistory of religions over the past two million years of human evolution, it would be useful to know whether other species, including great apes and extinct species of Australopithecines and Homo prior to Homo sapiens sapiens, exhibit behaviors that might be categorized as ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’. To determine this we need a precise and robust de?nition of religious behavior suitable for cross-species comparison. I develop a non-anthropocentric and non-anthropomorphic prototype de?nition of human religious behavior and then deconstruct it into a trans-species de?nition, which can be used to predict and identify religious behavior in other species.
The Evolution of Green Christianity
Authors: Northcott Michael S.
Published: March 2015

Review article: Celia Deane-Drummond, Christ and Evolution: Wonder and Wisdom, Fortress Press, 2009, pp. xx and 300, Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution and the Problem of Evil, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, pp. xii and 196, Mark I. Wallace, Green Christianity: Five Ways to a Sustainable Future, Fortress Press, 2010, pp. xvii and 181, Norman C. Habel and Peter Drudinger (eds.) Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, Society of Biblical Literature, 2008, pp. xiv and 183.
Editor's Introduction
Authors: Taylor Bron
Published: March 2015

Bron Taylor introduces the latest issue of JSRNC.
Arborphilia and Sacred Rebellion
Authors: Taylor Bron
Published: March 2015

While human perceptions of trees are variable, arborphilia—friendly or loving feelings toward trees—is common.1 Sometimes such fellow feeling precipitates rebellion.
Tending our Patch of Creation
Authors: Seifert Jenny Marie , Shaw Bret R.
Published: March 2015

Based on existing research about the relationship between belief systems and message framing, as well as between ‘sense of place’ and conservation behavior, we evaluated a conservation outreach program targeted at a religious audience, which employs sense of place as a message frame. We interviewed clergy and laypeople from four Lutheran churches about their experience of participating in the program. We investigated how they understood their churches as place and what salient place meanings emerged therefrom, as well as what effects the sense-of-place frame had on participants’ perspectives and behavior regarding environmental stewardship. Participants’ place experiences included physical, social, and personal components. While less than half adopted new conservation behaviors, a strong majority experienced an expanded awareness of place and several felt more empowered to care for the Earth. Findings suggest that employing the sense-of-place framework may be useful in outreach efforts aimed at motivating Christians to adopt and maintain conservation behavior.
‘Behind the Church Door Stands the Devil’
Authors: Jefferson Ben Thomas
Published: March 2015

Steadfastly aware of a complex history of colonization and indoctrination, Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott had an uneasy relationship with the majority Catholic Church in Saint Lucia for much of his life and was especially wary of any moves to delineate between the sacred site of the church and the ‘profane’ realm of the Caribbean natural world. A turning point in this was the creation of a fresco at the Holy Family RC Church in Jacmel, Saint Lucia, which, through its depiction of the natural world, helped Walcott to reconcile and heal some of his differences with Europeanized Catholic ideologies through the removal of the church’s monopoly over sacred space. Finally in Omeros (1990), Walcott continued his discourse on the tensions between churches and their surrounding landscapes and, without fully resolving these tensions, reaf?rmed the natural world as the most appropriate sacred space in the Caribbean.
Imagery and Narrative in an Ancient Horoscope
Authors: Beck Roger
Published: March 2015

In a Greek papyrus horoscope from the first century CE, highly elaborate descriptions of planetary journeyings have replaced the usual matter-of-fact listing of celestial longitudes. An analysis of the horoscope’s language and narrative form demonstrates how ancient astrologers understood the stars and planets as agents that communicate by their appearances, configurations, and motions.
Review Essay
Authors: Anderson E. N. , Abrutyn Seth
Published: March 2015

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Review of Cave
Authors: Kehoe Alice B
Published: March 2015

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Review of Blowers
Authors: Wirzba Norman
Published: March 2015

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Indigenous Ways of Creating Environmental Awareness
Authors: Awuah-Nyamekye Samuel
Published: March 2015

The people of Berekum Traditional Area, Brong Ahafo region, Ghana, use their religio-cultural practices to instil and impart traditional ecologi-cal knowledge to their youth. Qualitative methodology research identi?ed the main means by which indigenous ecological knowledge is transmitted to students: proverbs, myths, folktales, and rituals. There is evidence that indigenous methods of imparting ecological knowledge and thereby dealing with environmental problems are facing some chal-lenges that appear to have interfered with their effectiveness. These challenges may be attributed to a change in the people’s worldview resulting from cultural contact and modernity. The ?ndings indicate that indigenous ecological knowledge is a potential resource that can complement scienti?c means of dealing with the region’s environmental problems.
Editor's Introduction
Authors: Taylor Bron
Published: March 2015

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Online Confessions of Eco-Guilt
Authors: Fredericks Sarah E
Published: March 2015

People whose environmental concern is dominated by the impact of everyday activities such as buying and consuming food, transportation, and using water, those I name ‘everyday environmentalists’, discuss these activities online in blogs, discussion boards, and the comments sections of major news articles. In these forums, everyday environmentalists often describe their failure to live up to their own environmental standards for personal behavior using terms such as ‘guilt’ or ‘eco-sin’. This terminology, their focus on their moral and existential crises regarding their perceived sin, and the emerging patterns of responses to such confessions indicate that the framework of ‘nature religion’ can aid our understanding of this phenomenon. Such analysis suggests that a new online religious-like ritual regarding eco-confession is emerging among everyday environmentalists. Analyzing the actions of everyday environmentalists through the lens of nature religions does, however, stretch the concept of nature religion and raise questions about the online practices of everyday environmentalists.
The Case for Chimpanzee Religion
Authors: Harrod James B
Published: March 2015

Do chimpanzees engage in religious behaviors? To date this question remains unanswered. I use methods from religious studies and anthropology of religion that demonstrate an answer in the af?rmative. A comprehensive review of primatology reports reveals that chimpanzees do perform ritualized patterns of behavior in response to birth, death, consortship, and elemental natural phenomena. A structuralist analysis of these patterns shows that chimpanzees deploy similar formulaic action schemas involving recombination of syntagmatic and paradigmatic behaviors across all four of these life-situations. In the course of these performances, chimpanzees decontextualize and convert everyday communicative signals to express non-ordinary emotions of wonder and awe. The patterning of chimpanzee ritual behaviors evidences all the components of a prototypical trans-species de?nition of religion. These ?ndings support hypotheses that propose religious behaviors for other species, including hominins prior to Homo sapiens sapiens.
American Religious Empiricism and the Possibility of an Ecstatic Naturalist Process Metaphysics
Authors: Wheeler Demian
Published: March 2015

The most forceful critiques Robert Corrington mounts against Whiteheadianism target several problematic tendencies in the system of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and other leading Whiteheadian theologians rather than raze the entire legacy of process philosophy and theology. Actually, there is an alternate school of process philosophy and theology—the empiricist school—that embraces the broad contours of a processive and relational worldview while making many of the very same criticisms of Whitehead and his more rationalistic followers. But I argue an even bolder thesis: process empiricism shares enough in common with Corrington’s perspective to be ‘emancipatorily reenacted’ as an iteration of ecstatic naturalism, albeit a unique iteration. Collectively, the five American religious empiricists featured in this essay—Henry Nelson Wieman, Bernard Loomer, William Dean, Nancy Frankenberry, and Donald Crosby—open up a conceptual space within the Whiteheadian tradition for developing a kind of ecstatically inflected, ordinally chastened, and unequivocally naturalistic process metaphysics.
Naturalism and the Aesthetic Character of Religion
Authors: Yalcin Martin O.
Published: March 2015

I offer an aesthetic religious metaphysics from the perspective of naturalism as the most effective antidote to abjection within religion. I understand abjection within religious experience as the simultaneous desire to demonize nature and to idolize one’s conception of the sacred. My chief argument is that abjection occurs when the sacred is understood as being absolute. I trace the absolute character of the sacred to a metaphysics that insists on the utter incommensurability of the sacred with respect to nature. In contrast I defend a metaphysics that points to the radical inde?niteness and radical fecundity of nature as the reason why the sacred must be one of innumerable orders of nature. Once the sacred is leveled to the plane of nature, demonization and idolization are virtually foreclosed within religion because the sacred is now related and relative to other orders of nature.
Speculative Naturalism: A Bleak Theology in Light of the Tragic
Authors: Niemoczynski Leon
Published: March 2015

Theological perspective upon the relationship between deity and creature may not be as radically open to a full range of possible value as has once been thought. If one is seeking a capacious view of deity, creatures, and nature, I contend that not only should one account for continuity, wholeness, healing, salvation, warmth, benevolence, and joy in one’s religious metaphysics, but also for discontinuity, difference, diremption, rupture, trauma, tragedy, melancholy, coldness, and the more somber tones of the divine life. My exploration of this darker side of religious naturalism, a ‘bleak theology’ or ‘speculative naturalism’, as I am calling it, begins by articulating its opposite in the axiologically positive evaluation of nature and deity found within the mainstream of American religious naturalism. I then offer some speculative theses from the bleak or speculative naturalist perspective and argue why this darker side of religious naturalism ought to be accounted for.
Understanding a 'Broken World'
Authors: Bell Dianna
Published: March 2015

In the early twenty-first century, an increasing number of Muslims in the West African state of Mali turned to religious rituals in an effort to stop the desertification of the Sahel and return to the temperate climate of the past. In order to better understand the relationship between Islam and climate change, I draw from ethnographic research to account for the perspectives and religious interpretations that civilians in southwestern Mali had for West Africa’s drying climate. In what follows, I show that Muslims in Mali commonly accounted for climate change in terms of social and political conflicts. My research, moreover, documents the ritual practices that Muslims used in their everyday lives to peacefully manage the negative consequences of their increasingly arid environment.
An Ecology of Religiosity
Authors: Tan Gillian G.
Published: March 2015

A growing anthropological literature on how various groups of people relate with nonhuman Others has questioned the universality of the conceptual binary between Nature and Culture and, particularly, the usefulness of the concept of ‘Nature’ to an understanding of human–nonhuman relationships. In light of this, what then becomes of ecology? In particular, can we retain the crucial ecological notions of system and form while bypassing ‘Nature’? Drawing on Gregory Bateson’s ecology of mind, I suggest that this is possible as long as we focus on processes and relationships. Moreover, the kinds of processes and relationships that more clearly highlight this endeavor are those that are informed by religious thoughts and actions. I offer the term ‘an ecology of religiosity’ to outline how an overall focus on relationships may dissolve a priori distinctions between Nature and Culture while foregrounding the context in which relationships reshape themselves through religious forms.
Transcendence and The Tree of Life
Authors: Brereton Pat , Furze Robert
Published: March 2015

Debates over the ways in which film communicates to its audience have historically revolved around investigations into the meanings of what is seen and heard. Certain films are able to reach beyond the constraints of language so that the experience of viewing becomes a process of communication with a spiritual other. We consider such a concept of transcendence through the writings of two theorists: Emmanuel Levinas, whose philosophy of ethics concentrated on the inability of human knowledge to conceive of the divine truth that is accessed through the encounter with the face of another person, and Roland Barthes, whose reflections on the photograph focused on how some images are able to resist interpretation. Both writers are used to analyze Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and argue that it promotes a transcendent experience, even an experience of the sublime or Holy, that exceeds aesthetic or intellectual analysis.
Sentience of the Earth
Authors: Smyer Yü Dan
Published: March 2015

I present a case study of Tibetan Buddhism as a lived religion embodied in the greater environment of a village in eastern Amdo, Tibet. Speci?cally, I explore the interconnectedness of place-based Buddhist practices that, I argue, present an example of care for sacred landscapes in Tibetan Buddhism. Based on my ethnographic work, I make a threefold argument. First, Buddhism in Tibet can be viewed as ‘an emplaced religion’ signifying the antecedent role of place in forging the complex intertwinement of the Earth and humans. Second, the sacredness in the local landscape entails a shared, hierarchical entwinement of place, humans, and gods. Third, the way the villagers, especially the lay tantric yogis, consecrate their environment expresses their connection and care for the landscape.
Editor's Introduction
Authors: Taylor Bron
Published: March 2015

Bron Taylor introduces this special issue of the journal on Religion and Nature in Asia and the Himalayas Studies, guest edited by Georgina Drew with Ashok Gurung.
Review Essay
Authors: Adamson Joni
Published: March 2015

Adrian Ivakhiv, Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2013), 418 pp, $38.99 (pbk), ISBN: 978-1-55458-905-0. Bron Taylor (ed.), ‘Avatar’ and Nature Spirituality (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2013), 367 pp, $38.99 (pbk), ISBN: 978-1-55458-843-5.
Falu Bakrania. 2013. Bhangra and Asian Underground: South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain
Authors: Yellum Iris
Published: March 2015

Falu Bakrania. 2013. Bhangra and Asian Underground: South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 245pp. ISBN 978-0-8223-5317-1 (pbk)
Ian Peddie, ed. 2011. Popular Music and Human Rights Volume II: World Music
Authors: Barney Katelyn
Published: March 2015

Ian Peddie, ed. 2011. Popular Music and Human Rights Volume II: World Music. Burlington: Ashgate. 218pp. ISBN 978-1-4094-6405-1 (hbk)
Robert Faulkner. 2013. Icelandic Men and Me: Sagas of Singing, Self and Everyday Life
Authors: Mitchell Tony
Published: March 2015

Robert Faulkner. 2013. Icelandic Men and Me: Sagas of Singing, Self and Everyday Life. Farnham: Ashgate. 252pp. Contains audio CD. ISBN 978-1-4094-4976-8 (hbk)
Timothy Rice. 2014. Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction
Authors: Stock Jonathan
Published: March 2015

Timothy Rice. 2014. Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. 168pp. ISBN 9780199794379 (pbk)
Simon Broughton, ed., Songlines
Authors: Wagner Thomas
Published: March 2015

Simon Broughton, ed., Songlines. Publisher: Songlines Publishing Limited. 8 issues a year. 1999–
Lee Marshall, ed. 2013. The International Recording Industries
Authors: Stahl Matt
Published: March 2015

Lee Marshall, ed. 2013. The International Recording Industries. New York and London: Routledge. 222pp. ISBN 978-0-415-60345-4 (hbk)
Through a glass darkly
Authors: McDonald Edward
Published: March 2015

If music is treated as a kind of ‘language’, then it makes sense for musicology to borrow from linguistics in order to define exactly what sort of a ‘language’ music is. However, not only does this avoid the challenge of defining music on its own terms, it also brings across a whole lot of unnecessary historical baggage. Through a close analysis of selected texts, the current article critiques some recent work in musicology, showing how it is based on a far too narrow understanding of what constitutes linguistics, i.e. basically formal linguistics. It points out some of the dangers of interdisciplinary work such as Brown’s (2001) ‘musilanguage’ model, and shows how a less than careful borrowing of linguistic concepts can vitiate the usefulness of such system building. It then traces the source of much of this borrowing in Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s (1983) highly influential work drawing on generative linguistics, and shows how a framework that privileges structure over meaning, system over text, and the cognitive over the social, is unable to provide a broader understanding of music beyond pattern recognition. It calls for a greater methodological scepticism among musicologists towards linguistics, and a greater self consciousness about borrowings across disciplines.
Cognitive/emotional dissonance as growth points in learning to teach
Authors: Johnson Karen E. , Worden Dorothy
Published: March 2015

While teaching has long been considered an emotional practice with teachers’ daily practices recognized as being permeated with emotional meanings and influences, as teacher educators we are often perplexed by how best to respond to novice teachers’ expressions of emotion. In this study, we document the practices that characterize our work as teacher educators in assisting novice teachers in the processes of learning-to-teach. Specifically, we explore how instances of cognitive/ emotional dissonance that often emerge in these practices signal growth points in novice teacher development. The empirical data come from a teacher education practice designed to create multiple opportunities for novice teachers to participate in a range of authentic activities associated with the teaching of English as a second language (ESL). The findings bring to the surface the inherent challenges of both recognizing and capitalizing on instances of cognitive/emotional dissonance as growth points in novice teacher development.
Jesus and the streets
Authors: Mocombe Paul Camy , Tomlin Carol , Showunmi Victoria
Published: March 2015

In this article, against John Ogbu’s oppositional culture theory and Claude Steele’s disidentification hypothesis, this work offers a more appropriate neo-Marxian hermeneutical framework for contextualizing, conceptualizing, and evaluating the locus of causality for the black male/female intra-racial gender academic achievement gap in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Positing that in general the origins of the black/white academic achievement gap is grounded in what Paul C. Mocombe refers to as a “mismatch of linguistic structure and social class function.” Within Mocombe’s neo-Marxist theoretical framework the intra-racial gender academic achievement gap between black boys and girls is a result of the social class functions associated with the urban street life where the majority of urban black males achieve their status, social mobility, and economic gain, and the black church where black females are overwhelmingly more likely to achieve their status, social mobility, and drive for economic gain via education and professionalization.
Sense and subjectivity
Authors: Yáñez-Prieto María-del-Carmen
Published: March 2015

The mainstream American undergraduate foreign language curriculum has received major criticism over the last few decades for its conventional separation between language and literature instruction. This unnatural schism is often underpinned by other curricular and theoretical divides such as the separation of language from knowledge and culture. In this view, language is more often than not taught as a repository of rules of thumb mostly concerned with sentence-level grammar. On the other hand, conventional literature instruction often capitalizes on encyclopedic knowledge as a prerequisite for proper interpretation of texts. The present article describes an alternative pedagogy of literature grounded in Sociocultural Theory and other research frameworks, which was implemented in an intermediate Spanish language course at an American university. Data pertaining to aspect and notions of language and texts will be discussed.
Notes from the Underground
Authors: Editors The
Published: March 2015

The growth of contemporary Pagan religions has been matched with a surge of serious writing about Paganism (if you prefer, “Paganisms”). Increasing numbers of articles and books are coming out from selfidentified Pagan scholars and from a greater

variety of others who have moved past the original simplistic characterizations of Paganism as a bizarre and deviant subculture.
The Folklore of The Wicker Man
Authors: Jones Leslie Ellen
Published: March 2015

The emergence of Neopaganism in the second half of the 20th century seems to be leading to a shift in the emotional associations of the Wicker Man image, inspired, I believe, by the cult popularity of The Wicker Man.
Weather Magic and Global Warming
Authors: Rhone Christine
Published: March 2015

Of all the phenomena that mediate between sky-heaven and the earth, weather is the natural paradigm. It mediates in the world of nature as it unfolds in time. The connection between time and the weather is so close that the words for them are identical in French.
If Witches No Longer Fly: Today’s Pagans and the Solanaceous Plants
Authors: Clifton Chas S
Published: March 2015

Flying ointments represent a significant, verifiable link to an

ancient European shamanic practice—perhaps the nearest thing

to Margaret Murray’s "Old Religion".
Weaving a Tangled Web? Pagan ethics and issues of history, ‘race’ and ethnicity in Pagan identity
Authors: Gallagher Anne-Marie
Published: March 2015

A survey of popular Pagan texts …turned up an arrestingly unproblematic relationship with ethnic, historical, national, social and political boundaries
Mirra Alfassa: A Western Occultist in Inda
Authors: Rhone Christine
Published: March 2015

"Pathotisme", which Theon said meant magnetism in antiquity, is a practice where two persons, one psychically sensitive or a medium, and the other a protector and guide, work together to obtain occult knowledge.
Embarrassed by Our Origins: Denial and Self-Definition in Modern Witchcraft
Authors: Chapin-Bishop Cat , Bishop Peter E.
Published: March 2015

The concept of polarity proceeds from the Golden Dawn's way of working with the masculine and feminine pillars of the Kabalistic Tree of Life, and the magicians absolute need for a balance between those influences in performing the Great Work.
Who Was Aradia? The History and Develpment of a Legend
Authors: Magliocco Sabina
Published: March 2015

Legends are extraordinarily responsive to social change; in fact, they are one of the most sensitive indices of transformations in cultural values and worldview.
Notes from the Underground
Authors: Editors The
Published: March 2015

Even before The Pomegranate began publishing, we were receiving requests for articles which addressed the wider interests of the broader Neopagan community. We are pleased to present two such offerings in this issue.
JOURNEYING THE POLITICS OF ECSTASY: Anthropological Perspectives on Neoshamanism
Authors: Wallis Robert J
Published: March 2015

In anthropology, archaeology and popular culture, ‘Shamanism’ may be one of the most used, abused and misunderstood terms to date. Researchers are increasingly recognising the socio-political roles of altered states of consciousness and shamanism in past and present societies, yet the rise of ‘Neoshamanism’ and its implications for academics and their subjects of study is

consistently neglected.
SEIDHR AND SEIDHRWORKERS: Recovering shamanic practice in contemporary Heathenism
Authors: Blain Jenny
Published: March 2015

The Saga of Eirik the Red describes the visit of a spákona, a seeress, to a Greenland farm, one thousand years ago. Her clothing and shoes, her staff and cloak, are detailed. She is asked to predict the progress of the community; she eats a meal of the hearts of the farm animals, and the next day a “high seat” is made ready for her, where she will sit to foretell. She engages in ritual practices known as seidhr, which requires a special song to be sung to “the powers” in order that she may gain their knowledge, in trance.
WHOSE ‘NATURE’? Reflections on the Transcendental Signified of an Emerging Field
Authors: Ivakhi Adrian
Published: March 2015

Environmental thought and scholarship have recently been grappling with a series of questions opened up by poststructuralist, feminist, and postcolonial forms of scholarship; by the emergence of Third World environmentalism and ‘environmental justice’ movements; and by recent developments in ecological science, developments which have questioned earlier concepts of ‘nature’ as

balanced and harmonious in favour of a new view that sees nature as dynamic and unpredictable.
Nature & Supernature— Harmony & Mastery: Irony and Evolution in Contemporary Nature Religion
Authors: Taylor Bron
Published: March 2015

Nature religion devotees … seek harmony with nature through preservation of the natural world, but they simultaneously attempt to bend nature to their will, whether through physical, mental, or magical technique. Albanese shows how the mastery impulse

supports repressive ideologies, spotlighting how notions of “natural law” and “rights” deployed nature as a religious symbol serving racist nationalism and ... manifest destiny.
On Meeting Amatera-Su (and Oya, too): The Warrior Path for the Non-Practitioner
Authors: Zussman Mira
Published: March 2015

… even the guy who cuts my hair got into the act. He’s from Brazil. Candomblé practitioner. Told me that according to Ife tradition, the goddess who watches over me is Oya, the Yoruba warrior goddess. He said he could tell by the condition of my hair that I was preparing for battle. Haircut divination
Inside the Sieve: Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, James R. Lewis (editor), State University of New York Press, 1996
Authors: Slater Kate
Published: March 2015

Do you remember the cartoon of island natives spotting a boat and yelling, "Here come the anthropologists, quick, hide the television set!". Well, this is one of those books. It's an edited collection of essays about Neopaganism and Wicca, and it's not without its problems.
Introduction to the Special Issue
Authors: Laing David
Published: March 2015

An introduction by the Guest Editor of this special issue of Popular Music Historyoutlining how the contents make a contribution to the understanding of music journalism’s own history and its role in the broader history of popular music itself.
Resource notes
Authors: Laing Dave
Published: March 2015

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'I want you to support local metal'
Authors: Wallach Jeremy , Levine Alexandra
Published: March 2015

Much existing literature in metal studies contains an implicit theory of scene formation; the following article aims to articulate an explicit one. This theory is based primarily on ethnographic research on metal scenes in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Toledo, USA. These two field sites are quite dissimilar culturally, demographically, and geographically, yet their respective metal scenes share similar sets of concerns and values and even have contact with one another. Through the positing of four core functions of and six generalizations about metal scenes, the following essay considers artifactual circulation, institutional support, musical amateurism, boundary maintenance, generational succession, and specific stages of maturation as their essential features, whether they emerge in bustling, rapidly-industrializing Asian megalopolises; deindustrialized, depopulated cities in the Midwestern United States; or anywhere else on the planet. We end with a few provocative claims concerning metal’s uniqueness and an exhortation to a new generation of ethnographers to discover if these claims have empirical foundation.
Dworkin’s nightmare
Authors: Barron Lee
Published: March 2015

This article examines the relationship between extreme metal and gender, specifically the sexual representation of women in a relatively obscure ‘underground’ metal subgenre that developed in the 1990s dubbed porngrind. This is a subgenre of metal that fuses the lyrical content and sound of death metal with a sustained focus on sexual explicitness, sexual violence and misogyny, and it is best represented by underground American and European bands such as: Soldered Poon, Anal Penetration, Anal Whore, Waco Jesus, Lividity, and Meatshits. The article explores the relationship between porngrind and feminist positions on pornography, most significantly the anti-pornography approach of Andrea Dworkin. The article argues that porngrind centrally reflects the salient perceptions Dworkin levels at pornography within her seminal text, Pornography: Men Possessing Women: that it expresses patriarchal oppression and sexual violence against women. However, the article contends that the subject-matter of porngrind actually identifies a degree of proximity between it and Dworkin in that they both perceive pornography to be reducible to, and representative of, sex as an act of domination, brutality and the aggressive possession of female bodies.
Trading in Souls
Authors: Bach Alice
Published: March 2015

In the years since 9/11, a group of prominent Evangelical Christian ministers has sought to capture the Islamic faithful and convert them to Christianity. Incendiary comments about Islam from religious leaders like Franklyn Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Vines have drawn rebukes from Muslims and Christian groups alike, but many in the grass roots of Evangelical Christianity have absorbed their leaders’ antipathy for Islam. In Evangelical churches and seminaries across country, lectures, and books criticizing Islam and promoting strategies for Muslim conversions are gaining currency. Many of these groups view the US military and its wars in the Muslim world as the perfect vehicles for missionary work in the difficult ‘10/40 Window’, Evangelical speak for the portion of the Middle East that is oil-rich and waiting for conversion to Christianity. The same Evangelical political groups have dedicated themselves to financial support of ultra-orthodox Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories while advocating US government support of imperialist Israel. Chosen–ness is being crafted as a political term, smacking of imperialism, while the chosen people are the ones on our side.
'Gospel Thrillers'
Authors: Jacobs Andrew S.
Published: March 2015

Decades before the publishing phenomenon The Da Vinci Code turned millions of readers on to the excitement and glamour of early Christian history and biblical studies, a steady stream of novels—some obscure, some bestsellers were teaching the popular reading public about the thrills and chills of the academic study of Scriptures. These ‘gospel thrillers’ share a common plot: a recently discovered gospel (often a first-person account of Jesus’ ministry by one of his disciples) threatens to turn our understanding of Christianity on its head. In a race against time (and the occasional Vatican assassin) the hero must find out if the new, shocking gospel is real. Of particular interest for the post-Da Vinci Code scholar is the portrayal of academics and academic work in these early ‘gospel thrillers’: from bronzed heroes to bumbling misanthropes to sinister tools of global conspiracies, the scholars of the ‘gospel thrillers’ instructed readers on what to love, and what to mistrust, about the academic project of biblical studies.
Other Ways of Reading the Qur'an and the Bible in Africa
Authors: West Gerald O. , Sitoto Tahir Fuzile
Published: March 2015

This article explores how religion possesses and is possessed by Africans. It does this by recognising both the power of religion to configure and of Africans as agents who reconfigure what they encounter in their African contexts. The central question of this article is how placing African agency and context in the forefront reconfigures talk of Islam and Christianity in Africa. The question is taken up through an analysis of two African religious leaders, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba from West Africa and Isaiah Shembe from South Africa.
The Iconic Book
Authors: Parmenter Dorina Miller
Published: March 2015

To elucidate some of the origins of what Martin Marty has called “America’s Iconic Book,” this article analyzes early Christian rituals in which the Bible functions as an icon, that is, as a material object that invokes the presence of the divine. After an introductory discussion of icons, it shows that early Christian communal rituals of Gospel procession and display as well as popular and private ritual uses of scripture as a miracle-working object parallel the uses and functions of Orthodox portrait icons while circumventing issues of idolatry. Examples come from a survey of early Christian liturgies, conciliar and legal records, the physical appearance of Bibles and Gospel books, the representations of books in art, and written arguments from the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries.
Canon Law and the Canon of Scripture
Authors: Heyman George
Published: March 2015

Meerten B. ter Borg argued that canons function as a means of social control. The success of a canon follows not from the assent or agreement of the populace, but rather from the embedded quasi-personal relationship that produces a sense of belonging and identity. The objectified canon takes over this quasi-personal feature, which guarantees a canon’s sanctity. Calling scripture or law “canonical” thus transcendentalizes a text and allows it to retain a sacred quality that in turn effects social control through a shared sense of belonging. This thesis is confirmed and elaborated through a review of the conceptions of canon operative in the Catholic Church during the thirteenth, the sixteenth, and the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In all these periods, the Catholic Church modified its conception of the canonical nature of both its scriptures and its laws in order to strengthen corporate identity and to establish order and control within and without its perimeter.
The Bible in British Folklore
Authors: Malley Brian
Published: March 2015

This article surveys magical and mantic uses of the Bible as attested in British folklore reports, with an eye to developing a model of the Biblicist tradition as that tradition was received by the British laity. The evidence shows that (1) in contrast to the church’s emphasis on the Bible’s meaning, the laity exploited the Bible’s textual and artifactual properties as supernatural means to practical ends; (2) charmers made use of particular biblical (or taken-for-biblical) texts, whereas the Bible generally was used in exorcisms, which seem to have remained the purview of clergy; (3) lay traditions about the Bible seem to have been focused on specific issues, though a general uncertainty about what powers Bibles might have is also indicated.
After the Body
Authors: Tabishat Mohammed
Published: March 2015

Transplantation of body parts has long provoked debates in Egypt among various community leaders who most notably represent the institutions of medical care, the law, religion and politics. The debates include diverse issues stretching most significantly from the practical benefits of these advanced surgeries, to their contribution of preserving the overall integrity of society as a whole as they provide solutions to purely medical problems while simultaneously solving larger moral, social and ethical challenges. I consider these debates to be representations constituted by a discourse of power over the body, which I suggest to should be viewed not only as a skin-bound physical entity but more significantly as a space incarnating the moral, ethical and spiritual aspects of society at large. Furthermore, I suggest that this conceptualization, in which religion, the law and ethics play the most significant roles, throws doubt over materialist perspectives of embodiment and calls for further attention to the notion of ensoulment.
Border Crossing with the Uninvited in Matthew’s Wedding Feast Parable and Jacques Tourneur’s 'I Walked with a Zombie'
Authors: DeGiglio-Bellemare Mario
Published: March 2015

This article is a theological (re)reading of Matthew’s wedding feast parable (22:1–14) through one of the parable’s specific disruptions: the man without a wedding garment. It argues that the plight of this enigmatic figure critiques Matthew’s dualistic anti-imperial reversal on its own terms and unveils the theology of empire embedded within its narrative. The man without a wedding garment is a border crosser whose presence unleashes a violent reaction from the anti-imperial king of the parable: the king has the man thrown into the “outer darkness.” The second half of the paper crosses into the world of B-horror, where the zombies in the Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton collaboration, I Walked with a Zombie (RKO: 1943), are border crossers who not only disrupt colonial space, but also achieve a narrative and spatial takeover. Tourneur’s zombie film is offered as a way out of Matthew’s “outer darkness” and into a space of subversive hope. This article argues that border crossing is a subaltern strategy of resistance for the uprooted, dislocated, and excluded of the world.
Unchrist
Authors: Aichele George
Published: March 2015

This essay reads the stories of John the Baptist and Jesus from the gospels intertextually with China Miéville’s contemporary “young adult” fantasy novel, Un Lun Dun, as supplemented by Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. In this reading, John becomes the “chosen one” and Jesus remains the unchosen, who chooses to carry on John’s work after he fails as messiah. Just as Miéville’s story challenges “messianic” thinking and locates this-worldly salvation in the collective actions of ordinary people, so in the “ungospel” of the failed messiah, John the Baptist, Jesus saves people not by dying but by “giving his life” to them. The ungospel is manifest as an unsaid, a lurking, disturbing thought that even though little is said about John the Baptist, he still makes a better messiah than Jesus does.