Violence and the Sacred in the Ancient Near East

Girardian Conversations at Catalhoeyuk

 

This volume brings together two groups engaged with understanding the relationships between religion and violence. The first group consists of scholars of the mimetic theory of Rene Girard, for whom human violence is rooted in the rivalry that stems from imitation. To manage this violence of all against all, humans often turn to violence against one, the scapegoat, thereafter incorporated into ritual. The second group consists of archaeologists working at the Neolithic sites of Catalhoeyuk and Goebekli Tepe in Turkey. At both sites there is evidence of religious practices that center on wild animals, often large and dangerous in form. Is it possible that these wild animals were ritually killed in the ways suggested by Girardian theorists? Were violence and the sacred intimately entwined and were these the processes that made possible and even stimulated the origins of farming in the ancient Near East? In this volume, Ian Hodder and a team of contributors seek to answer these questions by linking theory and data in exciting new ways. 

 

Part I. Introduction: 1. Setting the archaeological scene Ian Hodder; 2. Introduction to the thought of Rene Girard William A. Johnsen; Part II. Violence and the Sacred: 3. Death in Catalhoeyuk Wolfgang Palaver; 4. A Girardian framework for violent injuries at Neolithic Catalhoeyuk in their Western Asian context Christopher J. Knusel, Bonnie Glencross and Marco Milella; 5. Ritual practices and conflict mitigation at Early Neolithic Koertik Tepe and Goebekli Tepe, Upper Mesopotamia: a mimetic theoretical approach Lee Clare, Oliver Dietrich, Julia Gresky, Jens Notroff, Joris Peters and Nadja Poellath; 6. Paired leopards and encircled prey: images of rivalry and sacrifice at Catalhoeyuk Mark Anspach; Part III. The Dialectics of Mimesis: 7. Mimetic theory, the wall paintings, and the domestication, de-domestication, and sacrifice of cattle at Catalhoeyuk William A. Johnsen; 8. The ordeal of the town. Rites and symbols at Catalhoeyuk Benoit Chantre; 9. Stretching Girard's hypothesis: road marks for a long-term perspective James Alison; 10. Girard's anthropology vs. cognitive archaeology Jean-Pierre Dupuy; Part IV. Conclusion: 11. Religion as a factor in the development of settled life Ian Hodder.