Holly A. Raymond and Dr. David Johnson, Anthropology
Often archaeologists fail to recognize objects of veneration and cult worship in religious contexts. These objects may at first glance be difficult to identify as votive offerings. Consequently, they are often overlooked because of their seemingly ordinary appearance and functional purpose. Robin Osborne says of votive offerings “… it may be an object made for everyday use and ‘converted’ into an item that might be employed in an exchange with supernatural powers, as a cup or piece of jewelry may be” (Osborne 2004: 2). This type of votive offering may have been more widely employed among those of a non-elite status who could not afford impressive offerings made from rare and exotic goods. In contrast to this, many wealthy individuals at this time commissioned artisans and craftsmen to construct beautiful pieces of artwork that served as votive offerings. These were often constructed in bronze, copper, precious stones, hard stones, or other precious goods.
In Nabataean Petra, the suspected votive offerings include such items as fossils, shells, curiously shaped rocks, ceramic sherds, and lithic debitage. Items such as these have been found in religious contexts, such as in tombs, temples, and religious shrines. Equally ignored by archaeologists are the religious practices of the non-elite populous. Adrienne Mayor suggests that “. . . Ordinary folk brought homemade miniature cauldrons with griffin heads, simple woodcarvings, and numerous ‘small oddities, or simple naturalia’ such as rock crystals, pinecones, bits of coral, and stalactites. Anything paradoxical, rare, or intriguing was a fitting gift to the gods and a valuable contribution to a temple’s ‘cabinet of curiosities’… All around the Mediterranean fisherman, farmers, quarry men, shepherds and villagers dedicated beautiful or odd fossilized shells and larger petrified remains to sanctuaries” (Mayor 2000: 181). The purpose of this research is to make a convincing argument from the archaeological evidence and its proper context to establish the practice of using fossils as votive offerings and in doing so to identify possible means of worship by the non-elite populous of the Greco-Roman World.
In May of 2004, the Brigham Young University Wadi Mataha Expedition began the excavation of a rock-cut chamber, Tomb 669A, Site Six. One objective of this expedition was to attempt to establish if any possible non-traditional votive offerings were present at this site. Unfortunately, two of the loculi (loculi are the burial cists cut into the rock in the burial chamber where the bodies are located) located within the tomb chamber were looted previous to excavation. An area located outside of the rock cut chamber, called Site 6B, measuring 2 meters by 2 meters was also excavated. 6B revealed a rock cut floor that reached a depth of 1.4 meters from ground surface with a water channel running east to west directly next to the doorjamb block at the entrance to the tomb. There were a significant number of ceramic sherds, including dark red painted Nabataean fine thin ware indicating a late first century A.D. date for the tomb (Johnson 2004, pp. 1-2).
From the May 2004 excavation of Tomb 660A, six fossils were found from Stratigraphic Unit 1 in Site 6. In addition to these fossils six fossils were found associated with burial goods in the looter’s mound. Attempting to locate the context of the fossils within the looter’s mound prior to looting was a challenging objective. It was assumed that originally the fossils were most likely part of the contents in the loculi. Another problem with context is trying to locate exactly which loculi the fossils and other burial goods came from. Another goal of this research was to construct a map that illustrated various religious Greco-Roman sites containing fossils or other forms of non-traditional votive offerings verses the absence of fossils and other such offerings in Greco-Roman religious sites. However, after extensive research I discovered that it would be very difficult to chronicle all of the religious sites in the whole of the Greco-Roman World, given the large area that it covered. Alternatively, in the future I will opt to limit this map of fossils as votive offerings in religious contexts to the Nabataean civilization specifically.
I was recently accepted into the graduate program in the Anthropology Department at BYU where I will continue my study of non-traditional votive offerings (including fossils) in the Greco-Roman World, specifically with regards to the Nabataeans. The BYU Wadi Mataha Expedition is returning to Petra, Jordan in May 2005 to continue excavation of tomb 669A, Site Six. This season I will be excavating the entrance to the tomb complex, paying close attention to possible forms of votive offerings for the dead and/or for the gods.
There is clearly a presence of fossils and other obscure items in religious contexts of the Greco-Roman and earlier time periods, which indicates that there is an urgent need to take a closer look at the significance of such finds. Most of the authors that were researched for this study expressed hopes that a more systematic study of votive offerings in archaeological sites would be pursued. Osborne (2004) suggests that dedicated votive offerings help archaeologists and historians to have an idea of how the ancients thought. This can seldom be accomplished by archaeology alone. Oftentimes texts are needed to reconcile the deficiencies in archaeology to take a look at the thought patterns of the ancients. Votive offerings provide information as to what was important to the ancients, and how the ancients thought that they could obtain whatever it was that they asked for simply by presenting gifts to the gods.