Site and Ritual: ancient, modern, New Age. This section brings together pieces which focus on the performance of different kinds of ritual at archaeological sites. • Performances at Sites by Ian Hodder

• Presentation and Re-presentation – The Site of Drama or Performance? by Robyn Gillam

Performances at archaeological sites

Ian Hodder

At the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, where I direct the current research project, we have come to notice an increase in requests by various groups to carry out performances of various sorts at the site itself. While musical and other performances inspired by this 9000 year old settlement, with its elaborate art, have taken place in Istanbul and elsewhere, the urge to perform at the site itself has become more clearly stated of late. Some of those that wish to perform are artists of various forms. Others are New Age visitors wishing to perform a ritual at the site. Others still are the archaeologists themselves, some of whom believe that a phenomenological understanding of how the body interacts with the site is part of the overall scientific investigation. I wish to argue here that, although there are clear differences between these different types of performance, there are also subtle similarities. I wish further to argue that all of these performances have the potential danger of appropriating the site and its history for global interests.

It is perhaps difficult to generalise about artistic performances that take place at archaeological sites, since they have a variety of motivation, from Aida performed in the Roman arena at Verona, to the installations of artists such as Adrienne Momi that will be mentioned below. But in some cases, at least, this performance art is allied to New Age spiritual concerns in that it seeks the authentic, the spiritual, a sense of place, ritual and otherness. Archaeological sites around the world, from the prehistoric Maltese temples to Carnac in Brittany often now have traces of modern rituals that take place there, as New Age global travellers search for ways of finding personal meaning in alternative and constructed rituals. Performance at sites has become a central part of some forms of tourism.

In archaeology itself, there have been parallel moves towards an exploration of performance at sites. The whole excavation enterprise can be seen as theatre or performance, and the archaeological processes of recovery and classification can be 'framed' as art. Pearson and Shanks have defined a theatre/archaeology (2001). In British prehistory there have been many attempts to understand the ways in which bodies are framed and moulded in their interactions with monuments and landscapes. This has sometimes involved various types of performances - walks taken along a cursus (a prehistoric alignment of ditches) recall the walks taken by the contemporary artist Richard Long. While these moves in archaeology may be designed better to understand the past or better to involve the past in the present, there are interesting similarities with the other forms performance on archaeological sites.

These performances can be seen as having a neo-colonial aspect. They involve an appropriation of sites through personal or spiritual engagement. But they are none the less alienating than the nation state fencing off the site to forge the national imaginary, the colonial power appropriating the site to legitimate its colonial presence, and world heritage bodies extending protection for the good of all humanity. Rather than all these institutionalized uses of nails and barbed wire, store-rooms and documentation records, the site performance is often personal or spiritual or aesthetic. This is a new form of dispersed colonialism, often at odds with the other forms. It is more shadowy but none-the-less effective in appropriating for non-local interests.

What underlies this personal quest? Of course there is the general shift to the individualized construction of self, and individualized production and consumption patterns. There is the erosion of centralized religions. There is transnationalism, diaspora, and cultural fusion. It is not difficult to argue that there are many forces today which lead to personal quests for identity and stability. There are many reasons that people wish to escape to another world, to find personal fulfilment. It is rather as if people sometimes tour as if they are on a pilgrimage, searching for personal renewal, searching for self in the other-ness of the past.

Ideally, we search for a real wilderness. Somewhere where noone else has been. But of course there are no such places, and as soon as they are claimed they are beamed as destination points to millions on the Internet. There is nowhere really distant to go to anymore. But there is still the imaginary of the distant past, and the materiality of the past to take one there. There are many potential dangers in this type of neo-colonial interaction with sites. Some of the dangers involve the increased flow of people at sites and their more sustained character. There is more potential for physical erosion of the soil and archaeological deposits. There are also dangers when bits of the site are taken for spiritual purposes. At Çatalhöyük there have been concerns expressed by the Turkish government about the New Age use of the site, and conflict with local communities. There are also dangers as global notions of art and science interrupt local senses of place and local patterns of site usage. However much artists, New Agers and archaeologists try to work with and be sensitive to local concerns and issues, the overall process tends to be inexorably in favour of the global interests.

The archaeological perspective

In discussing the relationships between theatre and archaeology, Pearson and Shanks try to fuse the two together to produce a 'blurred genre'. In this blurring 'archaeology and performance are jointly active in mobilizing the past, in making creative use of its various fragments in forging cultural memory out of varied interests and remains' (2001: 131). Indeed, mobilization of the past so that it can play an active role in the present seems to be their main interest. But it is of interest that their focus on site-specific installations parallels some of the New Age aims set out above. For Pearson and Shanks the linking of theatre and archaeology leads to performance work 'which is specific to this place and no other place' (2001: 146), and they particularly talk about such performance on historic or archaeological sites. While of course site-specific art installations are part of a larger movement, the performance of art and ritual on archaeological sites raises the question of possible parallels between the performances by archaeologists and those seeking spiritual renewal. Is the blurring of genres between art and archaeology underlain by a coalescence of interests or perspectives?

The call of artists for a more emotional or more experiential approach to the past is very much in line with the claims of many contemporary archaeologists who have argued for the need to consider emotion in the past when discussing the archaeological record. Many archaeologists have responded to discussions of phenomenology and Heidegger by introducing art on sites, by walking around sites, or considering the movement of bodies around monuments and sites. There has been increased interest recently in spectacle and performance at archaeological sites, stemming from a variety of different sources. But at least some of this work aims to uncover a more experiential and people-centred view of sites. The assumption is that performing the site leads to a fuller understanding of it.

The blurring of genres is possible because both archaeologists and non-archaeologists are sometimes seeking something emotional, experiential, something beyond the boundaries of traditional scientific discourse. Possible similarities between the art and performances conducted at archaeological sites by archaeologists and non-archaeologists might be of interest only for those researching the social construction of scientific knowledge, except for the fact that both types of performance might have similar impact.

Appropriating other people's pasts? 'We'go from western contexts and 'create' a place as we ‘imagine’ it. We perform the site as we would imagine it, and then involve international legal protection to save the place we have performed and imagined. The problem then is one of a colonisation process through performance, in which local interests are either ignored or constructed in ‘our’ imagination. Any notion of ‘descendant community’ is here undermined or constructed in external terms. And this problem extends to the archaeology itself. Through the process of measuring, excavating, preserving, archaeologists transform landscapes into ‘heritage’ sites.

To escape appropriation, Shanks and Pearson suggest that performance is most appropriate in cases where there are contested claims about a site and where the performance can aim at working through these varied claims rather than producing an authentic recreation. Indeed they suggest that performances they are involved in make ‘no claims to authenticity, to speak “on behalf of”’ (2001: 146). They describe how site specific performance rearticulates the conflicts of the past: it holds the visitor and animates the site such that memories of the past are raked up and related to the present (2001:159).

One can argue that Çatalhöyük is no exception to colonial appropriation. Some of the ‘colonising’ of the local is internal to Turkey. For example, on several occasions Whirling Dervish performers and musicians have been brought to the site to create an exotic ‘local’ for foreign visitors. Turks from Istanbul have discussed a variety of concerts and exhibits that could be mounted at the site. Goddess groups from Istanbul, but also from California and Germany have conducted dances and rituals on the site. In all these examples, the site is used in ways that confront local sensibilities and access. The global Goddess community in particular, introduces notions of womanhood that conflict with local traditional and Islamic perceptions. Installation artists such as Adrienne Momi, who in 2001 constructed a spiritual spiral on Çatalhöyük, are sensitive to local concerns and involve local children and artists, yet they create a locality that is constructed in terms of global interests.

The performances at archaeological sites have an appropriative dimension. They confront the local with the global, in the interests of the latter. Many, if not most, artists, New Agers and archaeologists are aware of these problems and do their best to mitigate them. As Appadurai would claim, these global interests help to construct the local. The performances on archaeological sites create a new sense of place, of locality, of past, in contemporary terms. They transform a local component of social action into a ‘there’ or an ‘other’ that is constructed in relation to a ‘here’ in the West.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Ayfer Bartu for discussions and ideas that have contributed to this paper.

References Shanks, Michael and Pearson, Mike (2001) Theatre/Archaeology Routledge: London

Presentation and Re-presentation - The Site of Drama or Performance?

Robyn Gillam

Discussion of the identification and meaning of 'ritual' as opposed to utilitarian routines looms large in current archaeological theory, as does the relationship of such activities to individual and groups and people who made up such groups to each other. Research around this topic tends to focus on either the re-examination of archaeological sites or comparative ethnography. In Theatre/Archaeology, Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks have also drawn attention to the use of site-specific performance in the present as a creative, if problematic approach to these issues.

Another possible strategy is to use ancient texts that describe or give instructions for the performance of ritual activities, preferably where they can be connected with a specific site. Although the absence of textual material from many archaeological contexts considerably restricts the application of this approach, I believe that it has significant applications not only for the immediate focus of a particular inquiry but for cross cultural comparison.

Ancient Egyptian elite culture has left us a considerable body of religious and ritual texts as well as a large number of sacred and mortuary sites explicitly or implicitly related to such activities. The walls of many sacred structures are even covered with texts and images with religious and liturgical subject matter and extensive records in the form of papyrus books and other documents also survive. However, although such records convey a great deal of information, texts that provide actual scripts for the performance of such routines only date from the latest period of the culture (c. 500 B. C. E. to 200 C. E.). This was period of foreign conquest and considerable cultural exchange and during the latter part of this period Egypt was dominated politically and culturally by Greece and Rome. It has been suggested that the production of the 'scripts' under discussion might be a result of Greco-Roman influence, especially of Greek dramatic texts.

The exploration of such intercultural connections was the goal of an undergraduate course taught by me in the Programme in Classical Studies at York University in Toronto, where performances based on these scripts and other classical sources have taken place on various parts of the campus.

Five projects have been undertaken by my students to date. The first was a public performance of The Triumph of Horus, which describes how the god Horus avenges the death of his father Osiris. This is a dramatic text in Egyptian the temple of Horus at Edfu in Southern Egypt dating from the late 2nd century B. C. E.

Second were skits based on stories from Apuleius’ Golden Ass, the picaresque 2nd century C.E. Latin novel which describes how the narrator is saved by the Goddess Isis after being transformed into an ass. Third was the re-enactment of The Mysteries of Osiris in the Month of Khoiak, an Egyptian text laying down how to undertake secret operations re-presenting the resurrection of Osiris, the god of death and resurrection through the manufacture of two symbolic mummies, one made of barley and sand and the other of alchemical ingredients, which is recorded in the roof chapels of the temple of Dendera in Southern Egypt (1st century B. C. E). Fourth was the a recreation of an initiation into the cult of Isis based on Apuleius' description in The Golden Ass, as well as the Mystery of Khoiak text and other materials from Dendera. This year we mummified and entombed a symbolic image of the divine Apis bull of Memphis. Materials for this project include two Egyptian texts, The Mummification Ritual of the Apis Bull, The Standard Embalming Ritual, commemorative stelae and various Greek documents from around the Serapeum, or tomb of the bulls, all dating between the 7th century B. C. E. and the 1st century C. E. The projects have been presented in a number of different formats. The Triumph of Horus was performed in a public space with a walk-through audience, the skits were presented in-class in a conventional theatre The Mysteries of Osiris was enacted in class and laboratory settings over the three week period specified in the textual source, but culminated in a public procession and ceremony The initiation was celebrated in secret but was followed by a public procession and re-presentations of the story of Osiris. The mummification of the Apis was done in private but the funeral procession and burial was a public event.

These performances constituted the main assignment for the students which was documented both in individual final reports and on film and video. While pedagogical issues loomed large in both the intent and execution of these performances, they can also help us understand how “ritual” and everyday routines were combined in such activities and how they related to the space they took place in. The re-enactment of these activities makes clear that issues of social organization and/or personal interaction, time management and acquisition of materials all played a role alongside more obviously “ritual” or “religious” activities. Indeed, as has been recently suggested, attempts to classify activity in these different spheres may be fruitless. While these activities may be related to performances enacted on actual archaeological and other historic sites, their main contribution to this practice lies in the construction of an “allegorical” relationship of locally available spaces to those originally used, as well as that of the time presently available and the social relationships between the participants to those suggested by the ancient texts. Indeed, the rehabilitation of this neglected trope provides a useful model for all our interactions with the past, especially our attempts to reconstruct it, be they in the mind or on the body.