In studying ancient religion, archaeologists have appropriated many of their foundational understandings from nineteenth - and early twentieth-century anthropology, religious studies, and sociology. In the process, archaeologists have been forced to identify the material implications of what are, for the most part, more intangible theoretical perspectives. In Chapter 1, I discussed the recent revival of interest in the archaeological study of religion. Here, in conjunction with discussions of specific theories of religion, I begin to discuss how religion can be investigated in an archaeological context—a context in which material remains are the primary source of evidence. The following is not intended to be an exhaustive account of all of the methods I will employ in my investigations of Indian Buddhism. For the most part, I will introduce interpretive methods at the first instance I employ them. Here I will only discuss the most ubiquitous and fundamental methods that I employ throughout the analysis. Prior to this, however, one critical assumption underlying the archaeological study of religion must be addressed—religion is something that people do, not just something that people think about. Archaeological remains, of any kind, are the product of human actions. While these actions may be guided by religious beliefs, human action initially puts an artifact in one place rather than another, erects a temple in one form rather than another. While not all human actions leave material traces, many do. After more than a century of developing and refining approaches to studying that limited subset of human actions that leave material traces, archaeologists have become very good at using fragmentary material evidence to flesh out the lives of past people.
The goal of the archaeological study of religion, then, is the identification of specific material indicators of religious actions in the past. As discussed more extensively below, often these actions are ritual in nature. Once established, ritual and other religiously motivated actions can be interpreted through the use of more general theoretical understandings of religion. The trick is to determine methodological approaches that concord with varying theoretical approaches—that illuminate human actions consistent with varying theoretical understandings. Rather than discuss all of this in the abstract, it is best to illustrate this in reference to specific theories of religion. As most of these understandings are ultimately derived from the work of Karl Marx, I begin there.
World History
