Knowra Prehistoric religion Prehistoric religion Religious beliefs and practices of human societies before written records. Its forms are inferred from archaeological remains, images, burials, and later comparisons with living traditions.
Shamanism : A set of religious practices centered on specialists who enter altered states and mediate with spirits. Animal imagery and unusual burials have sometimes been interpreted as evidence of shamanic practice.
Ritual : A structured sequence of actions performed according to social or religious conventions. Repeated ceremonies are among the practices archaeologists can identify without written accounts.
Prehistory : The span of human history before written records provide direct documentation. The absence of texts defines why prehistoric religion must be reconstructed from material traces.
Archaeological interpretation : The process of drawing conclusions about past human activity from archaeological evidence. Religious explanations compete with social, artistic, and practical accounts of the same remains.
Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines : Small human figurines made in Europe and parts of Asia during the Upper Paleolithic. Their repeated depiction of bodies invites interpretations of fertility, identity, or ritual, none certain.
Ancestor worship : Religious practices that honor or petition deceased forebears believed to affect the living. Burial places and offerings may reflect continuing relationships between communities and their dead.
Archaeology : The study of past human life through the recovery and analysis of material remains. It supplies the principal evidence for religious practices in societies without written records.
Archaeological analogy : The use of comparisons with known societies to interpret archaeological evidence from other contexts. Analogies can suggest possibilities but cannot establish what prehistoric people believed.
Cave paintings : Images made on or inside rock surfaces, including the animal and human figures of prehistoric caves. Some cave images may have had ritual functions, though their makers’ meanings remain unknown.
Animism : The attribution of life, agency, or spirit to animals, plants, objects, or places. It offers one possible framework for interpreting prehistoric representations of animals and landscapes.
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