After the 'Big-Bang'- What?

Abstract

p. 19-20: "...we can see the breakup of political and economic estructures; this breakup is equally apparent in the religous dimension, and this article examines it on two levels, a disintegration of shrine relationshios, and a significant reformulation of one of the Key simbolic belief elements of Minoan religion- the iconography of the Minoan Goddess...My own contribution to this has been the observation of changes in the peak sanctuary cult ober the Proto- and Neopalatial periods..." p.21: Crete is primarily a land of mountains. Its traditional economy is based on the Mediterranean staples of olive, vine, and pastoralism. These are the typical resources of a marginal landscape. any culture that evolves in such a landscape is going to have an appropiate ritual response to it, and for the Minoans that response was the cult of the peak sanctuaries. A peak sanctuary is a sanctuary set on a mountain peak, but though this may seem an unnecessarily obvious definition, the twenty-five peak sanctuaries so far known on Crete all share features of topography and of finds so similar that we may identify a Minoan pan-Cretan peak sanctuary cult. The characteristic finds are terracota figurines of three main types...A sigificantlyrestricted group of nine...peak sanctuaries also have more varied finds. e.g. Bronzes, stone vases and libation tables...and very rarely seals and jewellry. p. 22: "...only Jouktas, the peak sanctuary linked with the palace of Knossos, has anything approaching monumental architecture, with three huge terrace constructions, and a multi-roomed shrine building...On the basis of the finds and the architecture (or lack of it) we can make some inferences as to the religous belief and practice associated with the peak sanctuaries. The finds are almost all votive offerings, very rarely are they cult symbols or equipment for use in ceremonies. In terms of practice, worship seems to have been primarily, perhaps exclusively, communal. Even on peak sanctuaries with buildings, the main focus of activity was an open space suitable for the gathering of groups of people. p. 23: "...I have discussed the topographic charactistics of peak sanctuaries elsewhere. In summary form these characteristics are as follow: 1) promi [nence?] and visibility of the peak from the area from which the worshippers came; 2) good view down onto the same area; 3) can 'see' and 'be seen' from other peak sanctuaries; 4) accesible; 5) proximity to areas of human habitation and exploitation." p. 23: "The general point which underlies all these features is that peak sanctuaries are very much part of the 'human' landscape. Their geographical position is determined in relation to human factors, there interaction with the population who worshipped on them. This is not to deny the possibility that the Minoans regarded higher, more remote mountains as sacred...we should not assume that to the Minoans the peak santuary site was the only save part of a given mounatin, the specific 'abode of the gods'; rather it may have been the most suitable location for a sanctuary from which those 'gods' could be worshipped." p. 23-24: "This element of choice, to maximize the factors of human interaction, does make the Minoan peak sanctuaries an interesting variation of the general religous phenomenos of mountain worship. In most other cultures the sacred mounatin is a remote, almost supernatual place...I have referres to peaksanctuaries as 'community shrines' not places of remote and arduous pilgrimage." p. 25: "the wider spatial implications of peak sanctuaries are territorial. In the latest Prepalatial and Protopalatial phases any peak sanctuary is the spiritual focus of an expanded territory with multiple settlements- the spiritual focus, embodied in the landscape, for its community identity. On a regional level the intervisibility of peak sanctuaries provides an opportunity for the expression of ritual unity that may have transceded political boundaries (Ill. 2.2) This is most graphically represented by the intervisibility of Jouktas and Kophinas, the main peak sanctuaries of north central and south central Crete respectively, and, of course, the regions dominated by the great power blocks of the minoan worls, Knossos and Phaistos." p. 25-26: "The Neopalatial centralization of the peak sanctuaries is expressive of political centralization. There is some correlation of the Neopalatial peak sanctuaries (moted above) with the palatial polities as suggested by Cherry. This is again territorial but it is with this centralization that the symbolic spatial dimension of peak sanctuary interaction with palatial urban cult is most profiund. As has been already stated, however, that symbolic interaction in not exclusive to peak sanctuaries. it is a rural dimension which also includes caves and what Wright terms 'sanctuaries in a rural location' p. 35: "In other words, the Goddess- with upraised-arm santuaries were a religous component to Postpalatial [after the Minoan Palaces] political and economic territorial definition. The second point is also a fragmentation, but of more conceptual kind, a popular, spiritual alienation againts the centralizing religous impulses of the preceding political order."