ABSTRACTMagic and divination were dismissed by the Victorian elite as the ignorant beliefs of a socially backward underclass. But a more nuanced approach would ask how magical thought worked in practice. Superstitions were not simply mistaken beliefs, but indicated an alternative universe of interpretation, one in which working-class people took refuge under the strain of misfortunes which would have been too bleak to contemplate in rationally objective terms. The less control that people had over their lives, the more they believed in fate; young women, especially servants, internalised the warnings of official doctrine, not by disbelieving in divinatory magic, but practising it in a state of excited fear. Professional magicians, by contrast, could use supernatural claims to gain power over their neighbours and an almost respectable income.

ABSTRACTThroughout history, empires have deployed a vast array of strategies to promote their worldview and to control the colonized. Amongst non-violent ones, hosting public ceremonies to show off an empire’s capabilities and to enact and reinforce new desired relations and identities, seemed to be especially effective. This article presents new data and interpretations on how the Inkas employed ritual architecture to manipulate the somatic experiences of the colonized. Specifically, we analyze the public space of an Inka settlement located in the North Calchaquí Valley (Argentina) in order to show how the Inkas used architecture and spatial design to impose certain sensorial modalities and to manage their sequential stimulus and intensity. In an attempt to overcome a reigning visual paradigm among this line of inquiry, we present an analysis that combines visual and acoustical data collected on site, with three-dimensional modeling of terrain, architecture, and sound propagation. Results indicate that through a careful layout design that involved the management of visual and acoustic permeability, the Inkas not only organized groups and practices, but also created different experiences for different people.

"A geography of offerings: deposits of valuables in the landscapes of ancient Europe, by Richard Bradley, Oxford, Oxbow, 2016, 160 pp., £15.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-78570-477-2 ." Time and Mind, 10(4), pp. 382–383

In Northwest Europe, the monumental creations of the early medieval period are often overlooked in favour of their counterparts from older and later eras. While stone circles and Norman castles may...

"Brian J. McVeigh, How Religion Evolved: Explaining the Living Dead, Talking Idols, and Mesmerizing Monuments." Time and Mind, 10(3), pp. 325–326

Kalle Sognnes is not widely known in the UK, but a glance at the bibliography at the back of this book will show his forty-year commitment to rock art research. The 13 papers in this volume are a f...

ABSTRACTOn the fringe of the city centre of Oulu, Finland, stands a peculiar memorial commemorating the last death sentence by hanging in Finland. Here people remembered the ill-fate of Taavetti Lukkarinen, a young man in his early 30s, who was hanged for high treason by Russian officers in 1916. In 2014, archaeological excavation at the hanging tree memorial revealed an interesting group of finds consisting of a deliberately fractured proximal end of a calf tibia with two shards of clear glass and an iron wire inserted into its marrow channel, in addition to a rubber shoe heel pad. These finds can be interpreted as a deposit hidden in the base of the memorial to tie the presumably restless soul to the monument. Examples of this kind of magical thinking with connections to, for example, concealed shoes, are known from different parts of the world. The memorial of Taavetti Lukkarinen may therefore be regarded as an example of a place where both individual people and the society tried to deal with a dark and shameful part of their past.

The academic literature on pilgrimage is rarely experiential, so a PhD thesis derived from walking along local medieval pilgrimage routes in Britain is rather novel. The popular literature is often...

The eastern North American woodlands cover a vast area, stretching from Newfoundland to the Gulf Coast and from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Plains; Cheryl Claassen’s book provides a much-needed...