Description: The origins of religion and ritual in humans have been the focus of centuries of thought in archaeology, anthropology, theology, evolutionary psychology and more. Play and ritual have many aspects in common, and ritual is a key component of the early cult practices that underlie the religious systems of the first complex societies in all parts of the world. This book examines the formative cults and the roots of religious practice from the earliest times until the development of early religion in the Near East, in China, in Peru, in Mesoamerica and beyond. Here, leading prehistorians and other specialists bring a fresh approach to the early practices that underlie the faiths and religions of the world. They demonstrate the profound role of play ritual and belief systems and offer powerful new insights into the emergence of early civilization.
Brief description: Michael Boyd is a Senior Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He is Assistant Director of the Keros Island Survey, and co-editor of the Keros publications series. He has published a book on Mycenaean funerary practices, and has co-edited two volumes on funerary archaeology: one with a worldwide perspective, Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World: Death shall have no dominion (Cambridge, 2016), and the other concerned with the Staging Death: Funerary Performance, Architecture and Landscape in the Aegean (2016).