Rituals: Art and Ritual Behaviour Before 1800 CE PDF

Chapter 11 Ritual Carla Benzan and Robert Wallis Content warning This chapter contains descriptions of vomiting as a form of ritual in Section 2, an image of a bloodied Jesus in Plate 11.19, and mentions of human and an...

Chapter 11 Ritual Carla Benzan and Robert Wallis Content warning This chapter contains descriptions of vomiting as a form of ritual in Section 2, an image of a bloodied Jesus in Plate 11.19, and mentions of human and animal sacrifice during a Viking death ritual in Section 3, which you may find distressing. Please refer to the guidance in the Module Introduction if these topics are concerning to you. Introduction The introduction to Book 3 that you just read has established that artworks can make people do things, or put differently, art is affective and has agency. Now you will explore that premise further with a focus on ritual behaviour, which is a particularly important category of human activity across all human cultures. To lay the groundwork we begin this chapter by defining the term ‘ritual’ and examining how it is central to art history before 1800 ce through the example of later prehistoric art and architecture in the British Isles. Subsequent sections examine two aspects of ritual arts in more detail: the agency of art in ritual, and the role played by art in the spectacular nature of many rituals. What is important to keep at the forefront of your mind is that ritual was inseparable from human life before 1800 and, crucially, that artworks played an indispensable role in ritual activity. Ritual is a capacious term, entering into everyday expression to connote a broad sense of actions that are repeated or regularly undertaken. For example, one dictionary definition describes ‘ritual’ (2023) as ‘an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner’. In this view, a ritual is a formal sequence of behaviours performed in a specially sanctioned place. This understanding broadly aligns with how ritual is understood and used by art historians. However, ritual is often more than a simple routine or habit undertaken by a person in their daily life. Anthropological definitions of ritual are instructive here because anthropologists have defined ritual as a human practice that aims to invoke social change (e.g. Turner, 1967; Bell, 1997, pp. 23–60). That is to say, rituals are usually undertaken to invoke or catalyse some measurable or perceived impact on people’s lives; ritual transforms how people relate to one another and the world around them. This is not to say, however, that rituals are always positive, successful or reach a guaranteed outcome. They also involve uncertainty and, to a lesser or greater degree, an element of unpredictability or risk (Taussig, 1989, p. 57), and we return to this point in Section 3.2. All this is important for art historians who seek to understand how artworks were used in particular ritual contexts: if a ritual changes some aspect of human life, artworks have a powerful role to play in effecting that change. (Facing page) Unrecorded Taíno maker, vomitivo (spatula), c.1200–1500, carved wood, 42 × 4 × 4 cm, Dominican Republic. Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris, 70.2008.37.1. Photo: © Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn/Michel Urtado/Thierry Ollivier (detail from Plate 11.10b). 7 Art in Action As one encyclopaedia entry notes, ritual is ‘a catchall term for a diverse set of cultural forms or practices, such as worship, baptism, parades, coronations, and festivals’ (Stephenson, 2022). Many of these examples of ritual have already been discussed in the first two parts of Art and life before 1800, and you will encounter others throughout the last two parts of the module. Applying this term to familiar examples in the activity below will help bring core aspects of ritual to life. Activity 11.1 Allow around 45 minutes to complete this activity. A wide variety of human behaviours have been referenced in Books 1 and 2; some of these behaviours could be considered rituals and others not. For this activity, look at the four examples below and decide if you think ritual behaviour was important to the ways people interacted with the artworks discussed in each case. As you consider each example, it will be helpful to return to your notes and the module books. Summarise your thoughts in two to three sentences for each example in whatever notetaking system you are using for the module. Try to provide a specific in-text citation for each example (formatting this as you would in an OU assessment, including the page number). ‘Swimming Reindeer’: Book 1, Chapter 1 Thames frost fairs: Book 1, Chapter 4 Terracotta sepulchres: Book 2, Chapter 7 Sinan mosque: Book 2, Chapter 10. Discussion Archaeologists speculate that the ‘Swimming Reindeer’ could have been used in rituals associated with hunting (Benzan and Wallis, 2024, p. 39). The object has no obvious utilitarian purpose; it is too fragile to be used as a spear thrower, for example. It is plausible that for the animist Ice Age hunters who depended heavily on reindeer-persons for their daily needs, such as food, furs and tools, the carved reindeer sculpture offered a tangible means by which to negotiate respectful relationships with the prey animal. Perhaps ritual specialists such as shamans used the object in their ceremonies to honour the spirits of reindeer that had been hunted, or to propitiate the spirits of reindeer yet to be hunted. The frost fairs were not places of ritual because people’s behaviours were not regularised or choreographed at these festivals. When the Thames froze over it became a liminal space very different from its use as a key royal ceremonial route when unfrozen (Murray and Taylor, 2024, p. 134). Artworks like prints, paintings and commemorative objects were purchased by attendees and it does not seem likely that they would have been used ritually. It is hard to determine precisely how the sculptural sepulchres were used from the information presented in the case study. For example, the primary source account of a Bohemian pilgrim did not describe his devotional practices in detail (Benzan and Newall, 2024, pp. 79–80). One would need to look for more information in some of the sources listed in the references or through additional independent research into confraternal devotion. The congregational mosque is primarily designed to facilitate ritual acts that are part of Islam, including the weekly sermon that is delivered on Fridays. Other buildings within the mosque complex relate to other behaviours; they include libraries, soup kitchens and educational facilities (Kynan-Wilson and West, 2024, pp. 179, 181).  8  Chapter 11 Ritual As this activity suggests, an immense breadth of activities and artworks were involved in ritual behaviour before 1800. Visual, material and spatial cultures responded to ritual practices, and shaped ritual landscapes in turn. To illuminate the importance of ritual and its key features, the first section of this chapter focuses on specific artworks that were closely intertwined with ritual: the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Newgrange. 1 Later prehistoric art, architecture and ritual in the British Isles Many of the later prehistoric stone monuments erected in the British Isles from around the turn of the fourth millennium bce, some of which were in use for over 1500 years, are best understood in terms of ritual human behaviour. To draw directly on the earlier definition of ‘ritual’, the visual, material and spatial qualities of Stonehenge, for example, directly facilitated ritual as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘repeated actions or patterns of behaviour having significance within a particular social group’ (‘ritual’, 2024). This dynamic between monument, people, ritual and place may be hard to imagine today, when visitors to Stonehenge seldom have the chance to physically interact with the monument (as with the summer solstice celebrants in Plate 11.2); during most of the year, visitors are kept out of the inner circle by cordons, signs and security guards. As a result, tourists typically experience Stonehenge as an isolated monument in a landscape largely devoid of human presence. This perception is also reinforced through photographs that are reproduced for promotion, as is seen, for example in Plate 11.1. But as you will see, by drawing on archaeological evidence and interpretations, art historians can begin to understand how the art and architecture of Stonehenge may have structured people’s engagement with the site and its landscape. These relationships with the site also had transformative effects on how people related to one another and the world around them. Archaeologists agree that the formal qualities of Stonehenge, and its placement in a landscape of pre-existing monuments, indicate that the monument was a ritual place during the Neolithic to Bronze Age (c.3000–1900 bce), during a period spanning the spread of farming into the British Isles and the first use of metal tools (accessible recent texts on the archaeology of Stonehenge include Pryor, 2016 and Parker Pearson, 2023). Funerals are just one example of the early ritual behaviour that took place at Stonehenge itself, as evinced by the deposition of cremated human remains in a circular arrangement of pits around 3000 bce. Around 500 years later, a circle of massive sarsen stones was erected, a remarkable architectural achievement, yes, but also notable in ritual terms for how the trilithons frame the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset as well as how one looks out into the landscape or back into the stone circle. The sarsen circle and other architectural features, including a circle of smaller bluestones, also influence how people move around the site, in particular facilitating circular movement. It is likely that only certain people were permitted to access the interior of the monument on certain ritual occasions, such as auspicious times of the year or during rites of passage (rituals surrounding key moments in human lives such as birth, puberty, marriage and death). The architecture of the monuments in the Stonehenge landscape and the places where they are situated indicate that the way people moved around and within as well as across the landscape was not random but partially structured, facilitating ritual performances. For instance, the way in which the earthen bank and ditch of the Stonehenge Avenue provided a ritual processionary route between Stonehenge and the River Avon shows how movement around the landscape was ritually structured. This ritualisation of landscape recalls the example of the Nazca Lines in present-day Peru that you learned about in Book 1, Chapter 1, where smashed pottery and panpipes suggest that ritual processions along the monumental geoglyphs involved celebratory feasting and music. Deposits of intentionally smashed pottery and the remains of animals such as cattle and pigs in the Stonehenge landscape are also suggestive of ritualised 9 Art in Action Plate 11.1 An aerial view of Stonehenge at sunset, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire. Photo: Karl Hendon/Getty Images. Plate 11.2 Revellers touch the stones as they celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain. Photo: DANIEL LEAL/AFP/ Getty Images. 10  Chapter 11 Ritual feasting (Parker Pearson, 2023, p. 48). While they take diverse forms, rituals are a common feature across cultures, and art and architecture are often at the core of their practice. The Stonehenge landscape is particularly rich in prehistoric archaeology, but virtually all parts of the British Isles contain important prehistoric ritual landscapes. The next section explores the example of Newgrange, in Ireland, to consider how art and ritual are integral to another prehistoric monument. Newgrange offers a salient example of how, in the extensive period from prehistory to 1800, ritual was one of the main human activities which shaped people’s interactions with the environment, the making of artworks and how those artworks may have been used. Perhaps of all rituals, those which mark death are the most profound. Newgrange is a highly decorated passage tomb located in the Boyne Valley in the east of Ireland and dates to c.3200 bce, so around two centuries before construction started at Stonehenge. Passage tombs are a type of prehistoric funerary monument consisting of a passageway leading to a cruciform (or cross-shaped) chamber with three smaller recesses adjoined to it, covered by an earthen mound. The span of the mound, at an impressively large scale, some 85 metres in diameter, is seen in Plate 11.3. Cremated and disarticulated human remains, along with certain objects, were deposited in the chambers. Archaeologists broadly agree that, as Newgrange is a funerary monument, the art found there must at least in part relate to rituals concerning the dead and their transformation into ancestors. This in turn would have had transformative effects on the living (Bradley, 1989; Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1993; Dronfield, 1996; Wallis, 2014). So how did people interact with this monument through rituals, and particularly through rituals associated with burial? While we cannot know precisely how funerary rituals were conducted at Newgrange, the location of the monument in the landscape, the structure of the megalithic architecture, and the character and siting of the artworks all provide evidence to shed light on how people might have experienced the monument. Returning to our earlier definition of ritual, the spatial, material and visual properties of Newgrange give a sense of how funerary and other rituals held there were structured as ‘an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner’ (Ritual, 2023). Plate 11.3 Newgrange, County Meath, Ireland, c.3200 bce, early Neolithic passage tomb. Photo: Tjp finn. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence, https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/4.0/deed.en. 11 Art in Action Plate 11.4 Newgrange, County Meath, Ireland, c.3200 bce, view of the entrance with highly decorated entrance kerbstone (K1). Photo: Dave Keeshan via Flickr. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 Generic Licence, https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/2.0/. For one thing, Newgrange is located on a prominent rise in the land, overlooking the River Boyne, as you can see in Plate 11.5. Archaeologists have proposed that the early farmers who built the monument identified this location in the landscape as a special place to commemorate their dead (Cooney, 1990; Shee Twohig, 2000; Stout and Stout, 2008). Two other passage tombs, Knowth and Dowth, are found near Newgrange, suggesting that this particular bend in the Boyne River became an important cemetery. The building of the monuments happened in dialogue with the immediate environment which was thereby physically transformed into a ritual landscape. You have already seen how, at Stonehenge, people seem to have moved from one ritual monument to another, often on prescribed routes. One processionary route, for example, was from Stonehenge along the Avenue to the River Avon. Similarly, at the bend in the Boyne movement around the monuments and in relation to the river seems to have taken a ritualised form prescribed by the character of the environment and its architectural framing and setting. It is not difficult to imagine that the spherical layout of the Newgrange mound, like the stone circles at Stonehenge, would have encouraged ritualised circular walking around its exterior, perhaps involving engaging with the artwork on the highly decorated kerbstones, similar to those shown in Plate 11.6. But unlike at Stonehenge, where it is possible to weave around some of the stones and walk directly into the centre of the trilithon circle, the only access point at Newgrange is a single entrance. Access to the interior may have been highly regulated, perhaps by a high-status priesthood, or only possible during rites of passage. 12  Chapter 11 Ritual 0 0.5 1km N Major passage tomb atto ck Other archaeological er M monument Riv e oyn r B ve Ri Dowth Knowth Newgrange Plate 11.5 Map showing the passage tombs of River Boyne Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in proximity to the Dublin River Boyne, County Meath, Ireland. Photo: Adapted from Nash, G. (2018), ‘Palace of the Boyne (Brú na Bóinne)’, Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer, Cham. The entrance to Newgrange is partially blocked by a highly decorated stone, shown in Plate 11.4. The chambers and 19-metre-long passage in the interior, as well as the entrance and kerbstones arranged around the circumference of the exterior are all highly decorated, as shown, for example, in Plate 11.6. The style of engraving, usually called passage tomb art, consists of spirals, lozenges and other enigmatic geometric motifs. It has been speculated Plate 11.6 Newgrange, County Meath, Ireland, c.3200 bce, view of Kerbstone 52 decorated with passage tomb art. Photo: Johnbod. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported Licence, https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0/deed.en. 13 Art in Action Plate 11.7 Newgrange, County Meath, Ireland, c.3200 bce, view down the passage from the main chamber at winter solstice sunrise, the shaft of sunlight reaching up the passage to illuminate the antechamber with its triple spiral motif. Photo: © Photographic Archive, National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland. 14  Chapter 11 Ritual that these patterns relate to astronomical observations, or to the markings of a tribal group or that they are simply decorative, but none of this adequately explains the full range of motifs, varied architectural locations of these enigmatic artworks, or their role in ritual. Visitors today pass behind the entrance boulder to enter the monument, but in prehistory those accessing the passage would have had to clamber over this stone and as such, physically interact with its rich decoration. The ways in which the tomb as a whole dictated how people could interact with it and especially access it, then, offer an insight into how engagement with this monument and its art are highly ritualised. Accessing Newgrange to perform funerary rites and interact with the remains of the dead demanded a highly tactile engagement with the materials that the monument is made from and the complex art with which it is decorated. Entering the mound, a low, tight passageway makes one stoop and brush against the stones, once again ensuring that people engaged directly, physically, with the megaliths and their art. The main chamber, inside which one can comfortably stand upright, only holds around 20 people at a time, reiterating the idea that only a select few were permitted this opportunity. Only those granted full access would have seen the striking sight of a shaft of light from the winter solstice sunrise creeping up the passage, to illuminate the antechamber with its elaborate triple spiral motif, as shown in Plate 11.7. This incorporation of the annual sun cycle into the architecture of the monument, reiterated at Stonehenge two centuries later as well as in other monuments of the period, suggests that natural phenomena, the world of living people and the realm of the dead were brought into active relationship during ritual observances (Wallis, 2013; 2014). The artworks in the passage tomb of Newgrange, like those found at Stonehenge or the Nazca Lines, illustrate how ritual behaviour brings art to life. In the definition of ritual presented above, you learned that it often catalysed change and this would be particularly so in rites of passage. Perhaps ritual access to Newgrange, encountering its art and architecture, and engaging with the remains of the dead, facilitated a sort of rebirth, furnishing the participants with ancestral knowledge. The climax of ritual has been described by the anthropologist Victor Turner as a moment of transformation when participants are both their old and new selves, before re-emerging on the other side as new social beings (an idea discussed further in Chapter 15) (Turner, 1973; 1974). At Newgrange, the ritual acts of the living brought the art, architecture and landscape to life, and in so doing the dead were, perhaps, woven into the land to become memorialised as ancestors. As this section has shown, the rituals enacted at many prehistoric monuments embody key characteristics of such behaviour, including the regularised movements of people in prescribed spaces to engender change. The importance of art has been emphasised here too, from the monumental spaces themselves to the inscribed surfaces of the megaliths. Additionally, this particular example of prehistoric burial rituals demonstrates that sacred and secular life were closely connected before 1800, and that ritual is a process that can blur the boundaries between people and the places and things that surround them, in a way that might be difficult to comprehend today. Yet this dynamism applies broadly across art made before 1800 and will be developed in the examples explored in the next two sections. These will shed light on two very important aspects of how art is used in ritual: art’s agency to invoke change and its vital role in creating highly emotive spectacles. 2 Ritual and the agency of art Before 1800, artworks could be understood to be transformed and transformative when used in ritual. In this section you will explore how, through ritual, art was frequently understood to play an agentive, participatory role in human life. Art’s agency – that is, its perceived power in people’s lives, as defined in the Appendix of the Module Introduction in Book 1 – is one of the most fundamental and most difficult things for a modern person to grasp. 15 Art in Action This section explores the agency of art in two very different examples. The first takes a closer look at how specific artworks play active roles in Indigenous societies, focusing on Taíno art from what is now called the Caribbean. In these artworks, people, things and ritual are interwoven, with highly transformative effects on the participants. This helps shed light on Turner’s (1973) definition of ritual as a process of personal and communal performances that actively change both performer and audience in some way, spanning physical and spiritual transformation (Csordas, 1996). The second example is about how agency was attributed to polychromed life-size sculptures in confraternal processions undertaken in the Iberian peninsula in the seventeenth century. As you will soon discover, both examples shed light on the human aspects of ritual behaviour: as a Taíno shaman (behique, bohíte or buhuittihu) sat on a carefully crafted seat, for example, or when the members of a confraternity carried a sculpture through their local streets. But, even more importantly, both of these examples demonstrate that artworks used in ritual were powerful mediators, facilitators or agents with the capacity to directly impact and transform people’s lives. 2.1 Taíno art in the Caribbean Art objects in ritual performances often seem, from a modern perspective, to be relatively passive. In many Indigenous societies, however, the things Europeans have labelled as inanimate art ‘objects’ are recognised as subjects. This means that they are understood as having their own agency and personhood and are able to act and cause change independently from humans (Henare, Holbraad and Wastell, 2007; Santos-Granero, 2009). This might seem a rather alien concept for us today precisely because we tend to distinguish rigidly between objects and subjects. But arguably not all of the time: consider how some of us value the perceived presence of loved ones in heirlooms or talk to and blame our cars when they break down, as if they are persons. In many Indigenous communities, this sort of animist-like thinking is more pronounced, extensive and understood as very normal. Remember how in Book 2, Chapter 8, you saw that San rock artists in Southern Africa recognised the rock surface not as ‘a neutral tabula rasa [blank slate]’ (Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1990, p. 15) but as ‘alive and animate in some way’ (Lymberopoulou and Wallis, 2024, p. 99). The agentive, transformative potential of art ‘things’ is illustrated especially well by their use in Indigenous shamanic rituals, such as those of the San peoples. In the following section we introduce four striking objects from the Caribbean made by the Indigenous Taíno peoples of those islands, especially in the present-day Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Each of these four artworks gained agency through shamanic rituals that interceded between human and spiritual affairs, for example to ensure the fertility of people and crops, and to heal sickness as well as broken relationships. The Taíno peoples were agriculturalists (growing, among other things, maize, tubers, beans, squash and tobacco) and hunters who lived in timber buildings with thatched roofs in groups of up to several thousand people. Their society was led by male chiefs (caciques) whose authority was inherited through the matrilineal (or their mother’s) line of descent. Women were active at all levels of social life, within the full hierarchy of sub-chiefs, nobles, commoners and slaves. Sadly, these Taíno communities were devastated by colonisation from the fifteenth century ce onwards, with the majority of the population either wiped out by diseases introduced by Europeans or subjected by them into forced labour in gold and silver mines. As you have seen in other chapters, for example in relation to Wayna Pikchu in Book 1, Chapter 3, all textual records of Indigenous practices are therefore subject to European bias. Given this, any interpretation of Taíno art is partial although this does not mean we cannot learn a great deal about these objects and their purpose (see discussions in Rouse, 1992; Bercht et al., 1997; Stevens-Arroyo, 2006). As you have learned in previous chapters when considering, for example, the Nazca Lines in Book 1, Chapter 1 and Southern African rock art in Book 2, Chapter 8, artworks and other forms of material culture itself combined with surviving historical sources offer rich resources for interpretation. 16  Chapter 11 Ritual Plate 11.8 Unrecorded sculptor, ‘Three-pointer’ Plate 11.9 Unrecorded sculptor, ‘Three-pointer’ cemi or zemi with engraving cemi or zemi with engraving depicting a snake depicting a snake (side view), unknown date, stone, height 15 cm, length 17 cm. (front view), unknown date, stone, height 15 cm, Museo Arqueológico Regional Altos de Chavón, La Romana. Photo: © Dirk Bakker/ length 17 cm. Museo Arqueológico Regional Altos Bridgeman Images. de Chavón, La Romana. Photo: © Dirk Bakker/ Bridgeman Images. The first Taíno object explored here is a small, portable stone sculpture reproduced in Plates 11.8 and 11.9 and known somewhat unimaginatively as a ‘three-pointer’ because of its shape (McGinnis, 1997, p. 92). This example has a ‘wrapped snake’ motif with a skull-like reptilian face at one end and a dog-like face at the other which morphs into a pair of human legs straddling the sculpture (McGinnis, 1997, p. 101). The three-pointer is part of a group of objects known in the extinct Taíno language, which hybridised with Spanish, as zemis or cemis – the material containers of life force or spirit associated with ancestors, spirits of the land and deities, all of which seem to fuse together in the form of this three-pointer. Displayed today as art objects in museums, this and other zemis originally would have been understood as a subject or person, able to act and have effects, with some of the rituals surrounding them concerned with controlling fertility, childbirth and weather. This signals the varied role of agency in a ritual context, with objects recognised as subjects, as animate persons, in ways that can be compared to certain Yorùbá artworks from West Africa, as discussed in Chapter 14. Snakes, with their ability to shed skin and move between land and water, are regarded across Indigenous cultures of Central and South America as powerful creatures; this was the case of the Mexica rattlesnake you encountered in Book 2, Chapter 6. Snakes were allied to shamans who could, with the assistance of their snake helpers, negotiate between the worlds of humans and other-than-human beings including plants, animals and ancestors. To do so required shamans to ritually purify themselves, and the Taíno made finely carved vomiting spatulas, vomitivos, for this purpose. Vomiting is valued differently across cultures, so while it might seem an unpleasant experience today, the enduring view across many Indigenous communities of the Americas is that vomiting, as an integral part of ritual practice, offers an ideal way to rid the body of impurities and gain a fresh perspective (Harvey and Wallis, 2016, pp. 256–257). Vomitivos like the ones shown in Plates 11.10a and 11.11 are now prized museum pieces, albeit passive and objectified in collection displays, but in Taíno shamanic rituals they were originally highly active artworks. 17 Art in Action Plate 11.10a Unrecorded Taíno maker, vomitivo (spatula), Plate 11.10b Unrecorded Taíno maker, detail of vomitivo (spatula), c.1200–1500, carved wood, 42 × 4 × 4 cm, Dominican Republic. c.1200–1500, carved wood, 42 × 4 × 4 cm, Dominican Republic. Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris, 70.2008.37.1. Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris, 70.2008.37.1. Photo: © Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Dist. Photo: © Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn/Michel Urtado/Thierry Ollivier. GrandPalaisRmn/Michel Urtado/Thierry Ollivier. A shaman would have slid the smooth wooden or bone spatula down his throat to induce vomiting, in a striking example of the highly visceral dynamic between artworks and human bodies in many Indigenous communities and their rituals. In one example, the wooden spatula bears a carving of a zemi putting his own hand into his mouth to induce vomiting, mimicking the very same shamanic ritual purification that the object enables (Plates 11.10a and 11.10b). In Plate 11.11, the wood is carved into the head of a lizard, a 18  Chapter 11 Ritual Plate 11.11 Unrecorded Taíno maker, vomitivo (spatula), c.1200–1400, carved bone, 3 × 3 × 16 cm, Dominican Republic. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1982.48.4. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/Purchase, Mary R. Morgan, Mary O’Boyle II and Mr. and Mrs. Frederick E. Landmann Gifts; The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller and Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, by exchange, and Gift of Nathan Cummings, by exchange, 1982. reptile which, like a snake, sheds its skin, emphasising the importance of transformation in the purification ceremony. As these artworks are small, perhaps only the shamans themselves and their assistants or apprentices would have been able to appreciate the intricacy and significance of the carvings close up. What could be seen (e.g. the carved head of a zemi emerging from within the mouth of the shaman) and what was hidden (the carved lizard held in a closed fist) may have been important to the power and meaning of the ritual. These issues of clarity and obfuscation recall the way that the art and architecture of Stonehenge and Newgrange affected who and what is in or out of sight. As the anthropologist Victor Turner argues, a successful ritual transforms the participants in it (Turner, 1967). The vomitivo offers a compelling example of the transformative agency of objects in ritual, with the power not only to physically make someone sick but also for the zemi represented to thereby actively change the state of the shaman from impure to cleansed. Following purification, the shaman’s journey into the spirit world was enhanced by ingesting cohoba, a narcotic snuff inhaled from spoon- or tray-like receptacles, like the one shown in Plate 11.12. These items of ritual paraphernalia were often highly decorated too, with imagery likely to have been understood as playing an active role in assisting the shaman’s journey. In their drug-induced trances, Taíno shamans would rest upon a duho, a ritual seat. One example takes the form of a male figure crouching on all fours, adorned with various geometric motifs, as shown in Plate 11.13. The eyes and mouth are inlaid with gold and the face bears a stylistic similarity to those on the three-pointer and vomitivo discussed earlier. This formal similarity between the duho, three-pointer zemi and vomitivo recalls the appearance of shamans in their cohoba-induced trances, depicted in ceramic sculptures known as effigy vessels. 19 Art in Action Plate 11.12 Unrecorded Taíno maker, stand with Plate 11.13 Unrecorded Taíno maker, duho ritual seat, c.1292–1399, wood, cohoba tray, c.1028–1156, wood, 39 × 17 cm, 22 × 17 × 44 cm, Dominican Republic. British Museum, London, Am1949,22.118. Jamaica. British Museum, London, Am1977,Q.1. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. The example of an effigy vessel in Plate 11.14 shows a shaman seated on a duho with his eyes wide open, staring across the human and spirit worlds, his teeth clenched under the effects of the narcotic while he rests his crossed arms on his knees to support the weight of his weary upper body. At its peak, Taíno shamanic ritual was clearly transformative, in Turner’s sense, and this was especially so for those at its focus, whose altered states were facilitated by various agentive things, including cohoba and the artworks themselves. Conventional art-historical methodologies such as visual analysis and the ascription of ‘style’ can only offer a surface interpretation of these artworks, failing to get to grips with their agency and animacy. The agency of art objects in Taíno ritual therefore challenges European concepts of object and subject, as discussed in relation to other Indigenous contexts in previous chapters. That is, many Indigenous ways of knowing afford agency and personhood to a wide variety of ‘persons’ (human and other-than-human). 20  Chapter 11 Ritual Plate 11.14 Unrecorded Taíno maker, effigy vessel depicting emaciated shaman Plate 11.15 Unrecorded Taíno maker, effigy vessel figure, unknown date, ceramic and wood, height 17 cm, width 12 cm, depth depicting emaciated shaman figure (back view), 15 cm, Dominican Republic. Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Santo Domingo, unknown date, ceramic and wood, height 17 cm, A000679.48C. Photo: © Dirk Bakker/Bridgeman Images. width 12 cm, depth 15 cm, Dominican Republic. Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Santo Domingo, A000679.48C. Photo: © Dirk Bakker/Bridgeman Images. Besides all this, the imagery of skeletal or emaciated bodies and body parts in many Taíno artworks – such as the three-pointer zemi, vomitivo, duho and effigy vessel discussed here – disrupts another binary. In Taíno and other animist Indigenous cultures of Central and South America, life and death were not binary oppositions but interwoven (a point you will return to in relation to Inuit cosmology in Chapter 15). The iconography of emaciation displayed in Plates 11.14 relates to a shaman’s ability to move between worlds, transformed by cohoba and other things, including agentive art objects made from stone, bone, wood and ceramic, so as to commune with deities, ancestors and other beings. The example of Taíno art, then, demonstrates quite strikingly how ritual as a formal sequence of behaviours enables the transformation of the participants, with agentive art objects helping shamans to mediate between human and spirit worlds for the benefit of their communities. 21 Art in Action Activity 11.2 Allow around 20 minutes to complete this activity. Plates 11.16 and 11.17 show photographs of the front and rear of a wooden Taíno sculpture in the collection of the British Museum. The online catalogue information includes the following details on the object: Object type: figure Description: Male figure (now known as the ‘Anthropomorph’), possibly representing Boinayel the Rain Giver, carved in wood Production date: 1256–1300 ce Findspot: Vere (Jamaica) Height: 104 cm Width: 52 cm Depth: 15 cm Weight: 45 kg Materials: wood. While the language in the online catalogue entry is useful for conveying factual and technical information, this artwork was made for action rather than museum display. It does not satisfactorily convey the original understanding of the artwork as a subject rather than an object, as an animate being, and its role as a powerful agent of transformation in Taíno shamanic rituals. So, look closely at the sculpture, consider the catalogue information extract above and, with your newly gained knowledge of Taíno art and terminology, complete the following two tasks: 1. Identify at least one feature of the object which indicates its shamanistic qualities. 2. Consider how this feature of the sculpture would make it animate in the perception of the original artists and users. Discussion There are several features of the sculpture which are indicative of shamanism. With its rigid posture, clenched teeth and streaming eyes, the figure may depict an entranced shaman (behique) under the effects of the narcotic cohoba. The exposed skeletal vertebrae on the rear of the figure reinforce its shamanistic association with the spirit world of the dead, which shamans engaged with while in their altered states. The animate qualities of the sculpture are indicated by its role as a zemi, a material container of life force or spirit. The artwork would have acted as a conduit for shamans to engage with the world of spirits. In this case the zemi is labelled by the British Museum as possibly associated with the deity of rain, Boinayel. So shamanic rituals involving this zemi may have involved negotiation with Boinayel in order to ensure fertility and the successful growth of crops.  22  Chapter 11 Ritual Plate 11.16 Unrecorded Taíno maker, cemi male figure (front Plate 11.17 Unrecorded Taíno maker, cemi male figure (reverse view), c.1256–1300, wood, 104 × 52 cm, Jamaica. British Museum, view), c.1256–1300, wood, 104 × 52 cm, Jamaica. British Museum, London, Am1977,Q.3. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. London, Am1977,Q.3. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Taíno shamanic rituals offer one example in which three-dimensional artworks were transformed into powerful mediating agents, enabling shamans to communicate between divine and earthly spheres (and this interaction is something you will learn much more about in Chapter 14). In the following section we introduce a different, but related, example of agentive artworks, artworks that perform in a specific type of ritual, that of religious processions. 2.2 Animating sculpture in Holy Week processions In the seventeenth century, processions undertaken with life-size sculptures were incredibly popular devotional acts in the region of Andalusia in what is now southern Spain and indeed across the Iberian Peninsula. These Roman Catholic processions often took place during the central Christian festival of Easter and the next section is about such rituals. ‘Procession’ here refers to ‘the ritualised escort of someone or something from one place to another by some 23 Art in Action group before some audience’ and can also be called ‘ritualised walking’ (Latham, 2020). You have considered a diverse range of processions already, in the Nasca processions along the Nazca Lines in Book 1, Chapter 1, urban processions of Northern Europe in Book 2, Chapter 6, and Ottoman imperial processions in Book 2, Chapter 6. Clearly processions were an immensely important part of human life before 1800 and artworks were crucial to their significance. The processions addressed here involved the carrying of one or more life-size sculptures by members of the laity on elaborate floats before audiences along a set processional route. You can see this in a twenty-first century iteration of these popular Roman Catholic processions in Andalusia in Plate 11.18, where people in the city of Linares watch the ritual from balconies, their attention focused on the sculpture of Christ. As you will see, through this ritual act the sculptures became living embodiments of the divine, with the power to change people’s lives at crucial points in the Christian calendar. But first you need to know a bit more about these Andalusian processions. They were made for members (called cofradías) of local lay confraternities who commissioned, funded and then cared for their specific sculpture or set of sculptures during the year, for example by having them repaired or by commissioning new paintwork or clothing. During the assigned day of the procession the cofradías would escort the sculpture out of the church or chapel where it was normally housed. They would then carry it on a special structure called a paso; the sculpture would be transported around the city streets in this way on the shoulders of a strict and hierarchically organised sequence of people. This began with important ecclesiastical and political figures, followed by members of the confraternity itself. The group would move through the streets in a prescribed fashion witnessed by local people in different areas of the city. The route was punctuated, for example, with visits to the cathedral – the place of ecclesiastic power – and the residences of those with political power. Finally, the procession returned to the church or chapel of the confraternity, where the sculpture was kept throughout the rest of the year. Plate 11.18 Penitential procession with sculpture representing Christ’s capture performed on Maundy Thursday (Jueves Santo) in Linares, Andalusia, 2014. Photo: felipe caparros cruz/Alamy. Undated sculpture by unrecorded maker; this particular processional route was established in 1927. 24  Chapter 11 Ritual In Andalusia during the seventeenth century, these processions were usually performed during Holy Week, so the week leading up to Easter Sunday. It marked (and still marks) the various phases of Christ’s Passion, referring to his suffering and death. The first day of Holy Week is Palm Sunday, which recalls Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, where he was eventually captured and killed. Later in the week, Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper (the formal institution of the Eucharist) and Christ’s capture while Good Friday focuses on his mocking, suffering, crucifixion and death. Holy Saturday commemorates his dead body and tomb, while Easter Sunday and Monday celebrate his resurrection. Every year during Holy Week the faithful relive these both painful and joyous events and meditate on Christ’s sacrifice for their sins during his Passion. As a whole, then, Holy Week marks the culminating moment of Christ’s sacrifice for the sins of humankind and is a time for Roman Catholic Christians to reflect on the health of their own souls. In particular, they should reflect on their sins and consider how they could do penance for any sins accrued in the previous year. The processions of Holy Week in Andalusia that we consider here were therefore crucial local rituals that helped the faithful remember and reiterate the core Christian duty of penitence. They were closely related to other similar devotional practices in Roman Catholic Europe at this time, but the grand format and highly elaborate artworks of the Andalusian processions were rarely seen elsewhere. A particular characteristic was the use of remarkably visceral polychromed life-size sculptures. You have encountered the heightened verisimilitude of Andalusian polychromed wooden sculpture in a private devotional context already. Plate 11.19 shows a half-length sculpture made by the father of Andrea de Mena y Bitoria, whom you encountered in Book 2, Chapter 6. Like the two examples from that chapter (Plate 6.11), Pedro de Mena y Medrano’s Ecce Homo was probably used as the focus of private devotion, perhaps in an elite patron’s private chapel (Bray, 2009, p. 129). It is now worth pausing to consider the behaviours and activities that constituted human interactions with full-length processional sculpture in contrast to half-length devotional sculpture. Plate 11.19 Pedro de Mena y Medrano, Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), c.1674–85, partial-gilt polychrome wood, 63 × 45 × 47 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014.275.1. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, Mary Trumbull Adams Fund, and Gift of Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler, Theresa Sackler and Family, 2014. Sometimes identified as ‘Christ as the Man of Sorrows’. 25 Art in Action Activity 11.3 Allow around 10 minutes to complete this activity. Study Plate 11.18 and 11.19 and consider what kinds of human behaviours they might have solicited. 1. Begin by looking carefully at each artwork. What kinds of activity come to mind when you imagine their use in the seventeenth century? 2. Once you have considered the question, make two separate lists of verbs you would associate with each image, in whatever notetaking system you are using for the module. 3. When you have completed these lists, compare the two groups of terms and reflect on why your responses may (or may not) have differed. Discussion Each person’s list will differ, but in our lists for Plate 11.18 we noted verbs that were more physically active such as carrying, walking, standing, watching, moving, lifting, sweating and swaying. The second artwork invoked more interior states of reflection for us, including words like looking, thinking, feeling, kneeling and contemplating. On reflection, these differences in kinds of actions is not surprising given the different contexts of the sculptures’ display and function: one physically moved through space, the other was presumably mainly stationary. However, our responses could have been shaped by the reproductions of these artworks. Plate 11.18 shows an actual procession so it was easier to imagine the physicality of the action. Plate 11.19 was decontextualised from any space or use by people and it likely made it harder to imagine the bodily responses and interactions that the half-length sculpture would have invited, for example touch.  In sculptures such as those seen in Plate 11.18, artists made considerable efforts to represent the biblical figures with remarkable verisimilitude. However, these sculptures were not made to be admired primarily as artistic achievements; rather, they must be understood in the context of ritual acts that activated the agency, or power, of these artworks to expunge sin, and to serve particular social and political groups. As Susan Verdi Webster influentially argued, the polychromed sculptures characteristic of Andalusian Holy Week processions were considered to be animate during these performances (Verdi Webster, 1992; 1998, p. 58 and pp. 183–184). Throughout such acts of ritualised walking, the sculptures became the focus of intense veneration, entirely transformed from their habitual status as stationary, devotional artworks during the rest of the year into living and moving embodiments of the divine. People witnessing the procession in the city streets remained fairly stationary, standing at the sides of the procession rather than moving with it. Unlike the confraternity members who carried the sculpture or walked alongside it, the viewers’ penitence was facilitated through prayers they said when the animated sculpture arrived before them. The interaction between animate sculpture and audience solicited highly physical and emotional 26  Chapter 11 Ritual responses during the ritual including crying, wailing and prostrating oneself (Verdi Webster, 1998, p. 182). In effect, the animated sculpture mediated communication between the devout and God. It was a crucial part of the ritual because it enabled their prayers to be more effectively heard, resulting in a more efficacious penitential act (Verdi Webster, 1998, pp. 182–184). Artistic skill and verisimilitude substantially augmented the animate status of the sculptures during the Holy Week processions. Sculptors often underwent ritual purification and spiritual preparation before they began making these sacred sculptures, similar to the Byzantine icon painters discussed in Book 2, Chapter 8. The transformation of wood into the sacred image was closely connected to the broader European tradition of the Deus Artifex (God the Creator) discussed in relation to terracotta sculptors in Book 2, Chapter 7. In Book 1, Chapter 2, you learned about Shinto understandings of animacy in felled wood and that European understandings of wood could also imbue it with sacred presence. According to the art historian Christina Neilson, for example, this quality of the medium of wood was amplified when it was worked by pious artists (2014, p. 231). In fact, one Andalusian sculptor, Juan Martínez Montañés (1568–1549), was even called El Dios de la Madera (the God of Wood). But the sculptural attention to physiognomic accuracy and the life-size scale was taken further by means of paint. Colour was applied to the sculptures separately, in many cases by specially trained painters. Paint was used to conjure delicate translucent flesh, marred with bruises, threaded with veins and sometimes dripping rivulets of blood, to give the appearance of a living body. Significantly, the process of painting or polychroming these sculptures was referred to as incarnation (encarnacion in Spanish) (Bray, 2009, p. 19). By this logic, the painters brought the wood to life through the application of colour in a similar way to the Christian God the Father, who created Christ’s physical (or ‘incarnate’) form. Although the sculptors and painters achieved a high degree of verisimilitude, what really mattered was the ritual. This is clear from the fact that a notable sculptor was said to have run after his sculpture when he saw it in a procession, exclaiming that it was entirely transformed (Verdi Webster, 1998, pp. 3–4). By witnessing the ritual re-enactment of Christ’s Passion in Holy Week, audience members could begin to expunge their sins by witnessing his sacrifice and death in the flesh, so to speak. This process, of enfolding the present into the biblical past, can be sensed in Plates 11.20 and 11.21, which show two processional sculptures of Christ carrying the cross on the way to his crucifixion. Crucially, this biblical episode was itself a procession in which Roman soldiers, other convicted criminals, curious onlookers, and followers of Christ accompanied him to his death. Activity 11.4 Allow around 10 minutes to complete this activity. Look carefully at Plates 11.20 and 11.21. Consider the significance of the subject matter of the sculpture and its ritual use in urban procession. Then answer the question below in around 100 words. How might the particular narrative, of Christ carrying the cross, have resonated differently with the members of the confraternity carrying the float and of the audience watching the procession? 27 Art in Action Plate 11.20 Juan de Mesa y Velasco, Christ Carrying the Cross (popularly known as Jesús del Gran Poder), 1620, polychromed wood and other materials, 1.8 metres. Basílica de Jesús del Gran Poder, Seville, Spain. Photo: © Felipe Rodríguez. Plate 11.21 Procession of Juan de Mesa y Velasco’s Jesús del Gran Poder between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday in 2014, showing the sculpture being carried back from its procession to Seville Cathedral at dawn. Photo: Album/Alamy. 28  Chapter 11 Ritual Discussion The subject matter of the sculpture representing a group of people following Christ would have heightened the transformative impact of the procession, both for the members of the confraternity who carried the artwork and for those who prayed as it passed by them. Members of the confraternity could have identified closely with Christ’s heavy burden as they struggled with the weight of the paso (float). Spectators might have been aware of themselves as participants in the tragic event, perhaps reminding themselves to avoid passive looking and to align themselves with the followers rather than persecutors of Christ.  The importance of such sculptures during the procession was not limited to religion; the power of these animated artworks during the Holy Week processions also solidified and validated the social and political status of the confraternity members and the artists whom they commissioned. To understand this better it is useful to turn to the ideas of a French historian and philosopher, Louis Marin. Marin sought to identify ways that meanings can be conveyed in different rituals. In his taxonomy of the kinds of procession, the Holy Week rituals discussed here are ‘closed-circuit’ processions, in that they begin and end at the same place and, in so doing, tend to be used to stabilise a political system (Marin, 2001, p. 44). This suggests that in addition to their devotional functions, Holy Week processions worked as mechanisms for asserting social and political cohesion and consensus. What different meanings might the closed-circuit route have had for those involved in these rituals? The status of the confraternity and its members would be reaffirmed each year because of their privileged role in the event, together with the fact that the route begins and ends at their chapel or church. This works in tandem with the religious message as well: they are closest to Christ, facilitating the animation of the sculpture and enabling the expiation of sins that it promises the community. The authority of the Roman Catholic clergy and of the secular authorities would also be asserted through their position at the beginning of the procession and through the planned stops at the cathedral and palaces along the route. The deference and distinction between the lay confraternity and the official Church was important in this context because, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, papal decrees were issued that attempted, with varying degrees of success, to curtail and control confraternities (de Ceballos, 2001, p. 47). Finally, the Andalusian Holy Week procession would forge (or attempt to forge) a stable social fabric. In addition to expiating the sins of the devout witnesses, the procession would also attempt to establish social cohesion between members of the community and those in power and between those processing and those who witnessed the transformation of the sculptures as they were carried. Essentially, the salvation of one’s soul through the expiation of sins was only one of many changes ensuing from this ritual act, and through the powerful presence of the agentive sculptures. The Holy Week processions smoothed over wider tensions and anxieties, including concerns about the role of confraternities and of sacred images at a moment in time when Roman Catholicism had to defend its status as the true successor of the Latin or medieval Church, in the century immediately after the European Reformations. 3 Ritual, performance and spectacle In the previous section you learned about two religious rituals that involved art objects in active, participatory ways. While both of these examples were deeply embedded in religious life, broader social and political identities were also implicated. In this section you will continue to explore the agency of art in ritual, shifting to more secular examples. Specifically, this section expands on the agency of art in ritual by looking at how public spectacle and performance augment its transformative effects. 29 Art in Action In what follows, the term ‘performance’ is used to describe choreographed actions undertaken in the presence of spectators or audiences. ‘Spectacle’ is used to describe a large-scale, multi-media and multi-sensory event that must be witnessed by spectators for the ritual to be complete (in this sense, the Andalusian Holy Week processions were and still are spectacles). As we use it, the word performance refers not only to the doing of something with intent and the structured way in which it is done, but also to the resultant transformations of all those involved (Schieffelin, 1998, p. 199). The key point is that considering ritual as choreographed spectacle focuses attention on all those participating (actors, audience and material things), their active contributions to the ‘social drama’ and the varied possible outcomes of ritual action (Vitebsky, 2001, p. 122). This brings us again to questions of social status, hierarchy, identity and political power, and these key issues are clearly raised by the examples addressed in the next sections, which explore Viking Age art used in funerary rituals as well as the spectacle of elite feasts in sixteenth-century Europe. 3.1 The visual spectacle of Viking funerary ritual In the year 834 ce a Norse community living in southeast Norway conducted the funeral of two high-ranking women in ‘the richest Viking Age [c.750–1050 ce] grave ever excavated’ (Price, 2020, p. 198). As you can see in the visual recreation in Plate 11.22, a wooden ship 21.5 metres long and 5 metres wide was buried beneath an earthen mound overlooking the mouth of Oslofjord after an elaborate funerary spectacle. (The ‘before-and-after’ illustration shows half the ship during the funeral and half with it covered by the burial mound.) The highly choreographed performance included the careful depositing of rich grave goods with elaborate decoration. It also involved practices which would be abhorrent to many people Plate 11.22 Anders Kvåle Rue, The Burial of the Oseberg Viking Ship, illustration. Photo: Anders Kvåle Rue. The Oseberg ship burial as it may have looked during the funerary rite, 834 ce, Oslofjord, southeast Norway. 30  Chapter 11 Ritual Plate 11.23 Unrecorded artists, the prow of the Viking ship with Plate 11.24 Unrecorded artists, the prow of the Viking ship ‘Oseberg’ decoration, unknown date, found at Oseberg, Oslofjord, with ‘Oseberg’ decoration, unknown date, found at Oseberg, Norway. Photo: Karamell. This file is licensed under the Creative Oslofjord, Norway. Photo: Photo 12/Alamy. Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic Licence, https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en. today, including animal and possibly human sacrifices. It is gruesome to consider these acts from our contemporary perspective and personally I find it difficult to write about them. However, as art historians, we often have to check our own reactions to difficult subject matter in order to remain as objective as possible, so we can avoid imposing our own values onto the past. If we want to try to understand the Viking funeral, the evidence must be considered carefully in its original social context rather than judged from the present. From this perspective, careful examination of this remarkable example of Viking Age art and archaeology offers a compelling insight into how art, life and death were woven together through a complex public ritual performance. Many of the artefacts in the ship are highly decorated with a repertoire of motifs known as ‘Oseberg’ (after the modern farm where the find was discovered in 1904), as shown in Plate 11.23, and date to the first three quarters of the ninth century (you will revisit the topic of death and grave goods in Chapter 15). The decorations on the artworks have been described as similar to ‘a carpet-pattern with play of light and shade through the squat animal motifs rendered in relief on many planes’ (Fuglesang, 1986, quoted in Graham- Campbell, 2021, p. 51). Carvings on the ship itself include a coiled snake’s head on the prow, making the ship a ‘sea-serpent’, with friezes of animals including gripping beasts on its leading edge, as shown in Plate 11.24 (Graham-Campbell, 2021, p. 53). Richly decorated wooden objects inside the vessel include a four-wheel wooden cart with carved cat faces, 31 Art in Action Plate 11.25 Unrecorded artists, four of the bed posts with intricate ‘Oseberg’ carving and ‘fierce animal heads’, unknown date, found in the Oseberg ship. Kulturhistorisk Museum, Oslo. Photo: Adapted from © Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway/Kirsten Helgeland. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en. which may relate to the Norse goddess of magic, Freyja; four sleighs, one of which has ‘fierce animal heads “guarding” its four corners’; and bed posts with animal heads and gripping beasts in low-relief ‘that writhe and interlace together’ (Graham-Campbell, 2021, p. 55) (Plate 11.25). The elaborate decoration on various material surfaces, comprising interwoven, writhing animal forms relating to deities, mythological themes and a wider-than-human natural world, must have provided a striking visual, cognitive and religious context for the burial ritual. Other artworks indicate the wide artistic frames of reference within which the well-travelled Vikings worked by the 830s. These include the brass human figure seen in Plate 11.26 sitting in a meditative, cross-legged posture, where the patterned cloisonné enamel torso recalls patterns used in ‘insular art’ in the British Isles in the preceding seventh and eighth centuries (see Book 1, Chapter 5). There were also textiles, like the fragment shown in Plate 11.27, such as expensive imported silk lining the burial chamber, a neat stack of pillows with ‘a single seed of cannabis placed puzzlingly between each of them’ and embroidered narrative scenes which perhaps hung from the chamber roof (Price, 2020, p. 251). The fragment in Plate 11.27 may show a religious procession of people holding spears and swords, some wearing costumes such as horned helmets and animal masks, all heading towards a giant tree from which corpses hang. As we shall see, there are strong visual connections between this imagery and the character of the Oseberg ship burial rite. The wonderful craftsmanship, striking visual expression and incredible preservation of the artworks warrant sustained analysis of their materials, making and formal qualities. But it is equally important to consider the ensemble as part of a visually spectacular public funerary performance. One of the women buried with these rich offerings was in her eighties, the other in her fifties and there is some evidence that the latter was of West Asian descent (Price, 2020, p. 199). The older woman was accompanied by a metre-long birch wood staff and other equipment associated with seeresses. Considered alongside the wagon carved with cats associated with the goddess Freyja, and tapestries depicting imagery such as the sacred world tree of human sacrifices associated with Oðinn (the Old Norse name that has since been anglicised as Odin), also a god of magic and death, the older, high-status woman was probably a seeress (Price, 2019, p. 161). Both women died around the same time but the idea 32  Chapter 11 Ritual Plate 11.26 Unrecorded maker, brass human figure, c.834 ce, patterned cloisonné enamel torso on a yew wood bucket, unknown dimensions. Kulturhistorisk Museum, Oslo, C55000/156. Photo: © Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway/Eirik Irgens Johnsen. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by- sa/4.0/deed.en. Plate 11.27 Unrecorded artists, reconstruction of textile fragment 4, found in the bed chamber of the Oseberg ship. Photo: Stig Saxegaard, Storm Studios, 2018. that the youngest was sacrificed to accompany her mistress to the otherworld is unproven (e.g. Ostberg, 2023). Human sacrifices are evidenced archaeologically, though, in a textual account of a Viking funeral dating to a century later (922 ce) by the Arab soldier–diplomat A!mad Ibn Fa"#$n. At Oseberg, the animal sacrifices included around 20 decapitated horses, an ox and three dogs (Price, 2020, p. 251). To reiterate our earlier point, while the sacrifice of living beings may be shocking today, it is important to adopt a critically engaged mindset in our attempt to understand the original context of what was going on, and why. 33 Art in Action Key to this is the Norse blót ceremony, an act of killing and use of blood intended as a gift and sacrifice to the gods and other significant beings. Archaeological sources show that the means of killing involved blows to the neck ‘calculated to produce a great arc of arterial blood – a graphically violent demonstration of commitment, something to be witnessed’ (Price, 2020, p. 216). The blood was poured into bowls, twigs were dipped into the liquid and ‘a red spray shaken over onlookers’ (Price, 2020, p. 216). In the case of the Oseberg sacrifices, ‘think of the noise and the blood, the ground turning red around the ship’ (Price, 2020, pp. 251–252). The violence, blood and death at the core of the funerary rite are difficult to contemplate without repugnance, but the Norse approach to life and death, and the value placed on them, was radically different to our own. Some of the later Norse literary sources, for example the main record of Norse mythology, the Poetic Edda, advise that a violent death enables access to Valhöll, also known as Valhalla, the otherworldly hall of heroic warriors killed in battle. While written down some 400 years after the Oseberg burial, the themes of these poems do seem to resonate with the earlier archaeological material. Activity 11.5 Allow around 10 minutes to complete this activity. Imagine that you are observing the Oseberg funerary rite. The illustration in Plate 11.22 at the start of this section gives a sense of how it may have looked if it was conducted at night. 1. Now imagine yourself standing at the prow of the ship gazing at the decoration on it. Consider how the qualities of the available light sources would have brought these images to life (for example, seeming to move) during the ritual. 2. Write your thoughts down in two to three sentences in whatever notetaking system you are using for the module. 3. Then turn your attention to one of the other Oseberg artworks you have explored in this section. Use a further two to three sentences to consider this artwork as an active part of the funerary spectacle. Discussion The artworks would have looked very different when the funerary ritual was going on, from how they look in the photos shown here, or how they look on display in the Museum of the Viking Age in Oslo, which enables close scrutiny of the details. On a clear night, the artworks would be illuminated only by the moon and flaming torches held by some of the participants. The atmospheric moonlight and flickering fire light would have made the writhing beasts on the prow of the ship appear to move, as living rather than carved beings. Perhaps the ritual drama and intensified mood of the participants enhanced their imaginative abilities, contributing to the artworks’ animate qualities. It is not difficult to imagine how the ‘fierce animal heads’ atop the four bed posts would look especially lifelike in the half-light, their gaping mouths and prominent teeth threatening, gnashing even, all the while accompanied by, as Price puts it, ‘the noise and the blood’ of the ritual sacrifices.  What we can conclude from this close attention to the performance of the Oseberg funerary rite is that every element of it – each person, each object, each act – seems to have been carefully choreographed to present a highly charged visual, or perhaps more accurately, visceral spectacle. This example demonstrates that human actors, living and dead, and other non-human agents, from art objects to animals to deities, are active contributors and interwoven in ritual performances, with diverse transformative outcomes for all participants. 34  Chapter 11 Ritual In some respects, Viking funerary rituals could be compared to the representation of the violently bloodied sculptures in the Holy Week processions from seventeenth-century Andalusia discussed in the previous section. Both involved and defined the identities of key actors in the ritual for the benefit of witnesses, immersing the senses and activating responses to emotionally involving, sometimes violent, acts. In both, artworks were moved and used in active ways to fulfil a social and spiritual purpose; visual, material and spatial considerations are all essential to understanding this significance. In the next section, we present another example of spectacular ritual: the behaviours associated with feasts and communal banqueting at European princely courts during the sixteenth century. These spectacular feasts comprised choreographed spectacles which both asserted and displayed political power and, at least on this level, they were akin to Viking funerary rituals for high-status persons. 3.2 Spectacular feasts in European courts The painting in Plate 11.28 depicts the spectacular multi-sensory experience of eating at a princely court in Europe during the sixteenth century. Outdoor Banquet by the German Plate 11.28 Hans Mielich, Outdoor Banquet, 1548, oil on panel, 59 × 70 cm. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1949.199. Photo: Allen Phillips/Wadsworth Atheneum. 35 Art in Action artist Hans Mielich (1516–1573) offers up a miniature spectacle to the viewer and it also represents the immersive and sensual experience of ritual feasting. At left, an imposing villa signals that this is the estate of a prestigious host. Music is played in the foreground and by musicians high above the table, atop either side of the arbour. The painting also suggests that the music was complemented by the natural harmonies of songbirds occupying the large aviary at the left. On the right, fish are being caught, presumably for the feast, while nearby trees partly conceal a waterway and a small boat. This may have been the point of arrival for the guests who cluster around the table. Altogether these details in Plate 11.28 suggest a scene of natural bounty that is owned, controlled and refashioned by human hands for the sole purpose of elite consumption and enjoyment. Crucially, emphasis is placed on the table at the centre of the composition. The eye is drawn to the table along the perspectival lines of the path, the pond fence and the aviary. The table surface also punctuates the colourful and verdant scene through the contrast with the pristine bleached tablecloth. This expanse of fabric allows us, the viewers, to peruse an assortment of dishes. Human figures gather near the table, including a server or carver dressed in black who draws the cloth back for the next course (Krohn, 2023, p. 149). In this painting, fine dining is quite literally the centre of attention. As this suggests, eating in the company of others – a behaviour called commensality – is arguably one of the most important activities that brings people together. Moreover, commensality matters in virtually all human societies and you will go on to consider it in even more detail in Book 4, Chapter 17. Here, however, the focus is squarely on how artworks were made to be used, moved and interacted with as part of spectacular rituals of commensality. In sixteenth-century Europe, eating together was frequently structured by feasting rituals. These, in turn, solidified social and political bonds but also asserted the wealth and power of the host. European princely banquets were elaborate and complex affairs, so in this last example of ritual behaviour, we focus mainly on three aspects: seating, tableware and hand-washing. To do so, this section explores the social roles of the princely banquet using visual representations of real and fictive feasts and examples of dishes used in ritual ways. The table was, as the title of a recent exhibition evocatively suggests, a ‘stage’ (Krohn, 2023) with performers and opulent, spectacular effects that transformed social relationships. In Europe before 1800, feasts were hosted by people to celebrate a wide range of occasions, from key dates in the religious calendar to dynastic events that included weddings and royal inaugurations. Depending on the occasion and the status of the host, banquets were often one part of a longer series of events that included gift-giving, theatrical entertainment, firework displays and processions – and these could span many days (Sanudo et al., 1999). Although the focus here is on princely feasts, they were not only held by the high nobility. The powerful guilds you learned about in Book 2, Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 also hosted elaborate banquets (Crombie, 2011; Rosser, 1994, pp. 445–446) as did members of the ‘middling classes’ (Hohti Erichsen, 2020, pp. 291–292). Despite the appearance of conviviality and pleasure in paintings like the one in Plate 11.28, sharing food did not seamlessly and harmoniously bind people together (Rosser, 1994, pp. 431–432). Commensality reinscribed social distinctions and differences between people who were not seen as equals in these complex courtly settings. Lower-class men and women, and non-Europeans including enslaved people, were generally relegated to labouring roles. All these people in turn served as symbols of the host’s wealth, by asserting the size of his or her household. At the same time, these workers were themselves witnesses to the ostentation of the feast. 36  Chapter 11 Ritual As one historian writes: Thus a prince was sending a message not only to his elite guests and foreign dignitaries but to his courtly staff, and even to the general public when they were invited to gawk. Everything was an elaborate performance in cooking, serving, and eating … In ritualistic form the unequal status of diners was enacted in the seating arrangements, and especially in who was invited to serve whom. (Albala, 2007, pp. 6–7) A key point here, and it is a crucial one, is that commensality was not a straightforwardly pleasant and benevolent act. In fact, sharing food could be lethal. Acrimonious and competitive relationships within and between princely courts meant that poisoning remained a real threat. Drinking cups frequently came with lids, as shown in Plate 11.29, for that reason. Likewise, failure to follow accepted behavioural codes could lower one’s social standing as quickly as appropriate behaviour could affirm it. These anxieties signal something that is vital to all ritual behaviour, which is that the outcomes of rituals are never guaranteed. They always involve an element of risk, as already alluded to in Section 1. Plate 11.29 Reinier van Jaersvelt, goblet with lid, crowned by a wild boar, c.1546–47, glass, silver and pearl, height 27 cm, diameter 12 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, BK- KOG-2465. Photo: Rijksmuseum. 37 Art in Action Plate 11.30 Pieter Claesz, Still Life with Peacock Pie, 1627, oil on panel, 78 × 129 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2013.141.1. Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington/The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund. What was involved in a sixteenth-century feast at a European princely court? Unsurprisingly they included carefully crafted foodstuffs like the pie topped with a feathered peacock, as shown in Plate 11.30. Dishes like this would be appreciated as ingenious gastronomic and visual accomplishments. In general, the visual effects of princely tables ranged from carefully crafted and decorated pies and similar foodstuffs to sugar statuary and intricately folded starched linens. (Kociszewska, 2020; Krohn, 2023). (You have already encountered sugar sculptures made for princely feasts in Book 2, Chapter 6.) Unlike the scene in the still-life painting, which does not represent people, in this section we focus squarely on how humans put artworks into action during spectacular ritual feasts. The quality of food was of course important, but it was augmented by the quality of the host’s tableware and its appropriate handling by those who were in his or her service, as well as by the guests. During the banquet, hot and cold dishes would be served in a strict and specific order and number, and in particular arrangements and groupings (Albala, 2007, p. 23). Although the specific number of courses and the types of food varied across different contexts, what is central here is that feasting was highly ritualised, involving set and choreographed behaviours, to be completed in certain orders that were understood and recognised by all those present (Albala, 2007, pp. 1–8; Taylor, 2005, p. 263). Wedding feasts like the one depicted in Plate 11.31 help to show how ritualised commensality was a performance that forged social cohesion and distinction in equal measure. As well as the religious marriage ceremony, European dynastic weddings involved many days of ritual festivities that could cement political allegiances, assuage fractious parties, bolster social networks and demonstrate economic wealth and status. For example, during banqueting prescribed seating arrangements ensured that social hierarchies were maintained. The most important people were seated at the prima tavola, or ‘first table’ (not wholly different to some wedding traditions today) and guests’ distance from this ‘first table’ signalled that they were less important in relation to the most powerful persons in attendance. In Plate 11.31 the table raised on a platform above the ground would have the hosts and their most important guests arranged in a carefully choreographed performance 38  Chapter 11 Ritual Plate 11.31 Frans Floris, Banquet at the Brussels Town Hall on 4 December 1565, in the Album Brukselki, c.1565, pen, iron-gall ink, brush, wash, watercolour, gouache, tempera, and deerskin parchment primed with chalk and gum arabic, unknown dimensions. Biblioteka Uniwersytecka W Warszawie, Warsaw, Inw.zb.d. 10258. Photo: The University of Warsaw Library, the Print Room, Inw.zb.d. 10258. of their status. Primary sources indicate that this was the case for the middling classes as well. For example, an artisan in Florence wrote that the first table was occupied by guests ‘according to our rank’ at his sister’s wedding (Hohti Erichsen, 2020, p. 296). Tableware played a vital role in the spectacular nature of feasting because it was made to be seen and to augment key social and political messages. For example, the elaborately ornamented enamel platter, shown in Plates 11.32 and 11.33, is decorated on both its upper and lower sides for specific reasons. As seen in Plate 11.31 platters and other dishes were carried aloft by servants to the table, precisely so that guests could appreciate whatever was on the underside: ‘the plate was meant to be seen “in action”’ (Avery and Calaresu, 2019, p. 133). For this reason, tableware often came with allusions to the literature of Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as rich ornamentation and the coat of arms of the hosting family. Once set on the table, the scene on the top side of the platter would be revealed as guests ate. As you can see in the dish depicted in Plate 11.32, the scene of eating that was brought to light as guests ate contained a clear literary allusion to the marriage feast of Cupid and Psyche. This well-known story at the time is recounted in The Golden Ass (also known as the Metamorphoses, a text written in the second century ce) by the Numidian-Roman author and orator Lucius Apuleius. In sixteenth-century Europe, this story was well known through vernacular translations. 39 Art in Action Plate 11.32 Pierre Reymond, The Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche, plate, 1558, Plate 11.33 Pierre Reymond, The Wedding painted enamel on copper, partly gilt, 50 × 39 × 4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum Feast of Cupid and Psyche, plate (bottom), 1558, of Art, New York, 1984.195. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/ painted enamel on copper, partly gilt, Purchase, Rogers Fund; Gifts of Irwin Untermyer, George Blumenthal, and Ogden 50 × 39 × 4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum Mills, by exchange; Bequest of Fannie F. Einstein, in memory of Emanuel Einstein, of Art, New York, 1984.195. Photo: The by exchange; and Edward Ablat, the Shubert Foundation, Inc., and Irving M. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/ Gruber Gifts, 1984. Purchase, Rogers Fund; Gifts of Irwin Untermyer,