Archaeology of Intangible Heritage (review)

In this densely argued book, Francisco Vaz da Silva invites us to uncover the root meanings of the metaphors commonly used in our cultures and, in so doing, recover the lost connections to our "intangible heritage." Although the book's title appears to be paradoxical, since archaeology should deal with "tangible" artifacts, the author competently applies archaeological methodology to investigate the "intangible," conceptual dimension of familiar metaphors and imagery that we regularly use without acknowledging their cosmic connotations. In so doing, Vaz da Silva asks questions that might sound relatively childlike, such as "why should horns and cuckoos be the attributes of the unhappy husband?" (7). Yet his answers to such questions are sophisticatedly formed through careful analysis and examination of key literary works, documents, popular religious texts, and ritual practices from the classical period to contemporary folk beliefs, in Europe as well as in Melanesia. This highly impressive assortment of primary sources, along with Vaz da Silva's archaeological approach to the concepts, helps restore back from oblivion the mythical meanings of otherwise apparently trivial metaphors.

This book is divided into three parts. The first part, "Physiology," begins by investigating the notion of the transmissible sexual horns and thereby introduces the reader to the world of esoteric folklores and folk practices. Vaz da Silva focuses in particular on the human body, sexuality, and gender relations in all their grotesque details. The chapters abound with tales of bodily fluids and secretions, drawn widely from sources across time and space. Through such an archaeological project, the reader is brought face to face with a folk theory of anatomy and the gender hierarchy inherent in such a theory. Vaz da Silva convincingly takes the reader on a trip from specific cultural beliefs and practices to a universal folk frame of reference that struggles to explain human existence and connect various observable phenomena under a single, coherent worldview. Semen, milk, and menstruation become linked to the wider world of seasons, plants, and animals. This interconnected worldview is precisely what we have lost as metaphors seep into general usage and are reduced to words without meaning.

The second part, aptly named "Metaphysics," moves on from the physicality of the first part to the realm beyond the physical. Vaz da Silva takes off from the folk worldview at the end of part one to explore female dominance of the cycle of life and men's struggles to define their existence and superiority within this cycle. The cycle of life then becomes another step in Vaz da Silva's argument to propose that the key characteristic of folk worldview is the cyclical cosmos. The folkloric world that Vaz da Silva describes has no beginning and end. Instead the cycle turns relentlessly, and there is neither birth without death nor death without birth. The second part ends with a discussion of the blurred boundaries between the linear Christian worldview and the cyclical folk worldview as different beliefs and practices meet and merge.

The third part, "Transpositions," excavates the remains of such "intangible heritage" in the idioms of Christianity. Vaz da Silva locates imagery from the cyclical worldview in premodern Christian sources, such as an illumination in a late thirteenth-century manuscript of the Gospel of Nicodemus, and argues that it is only in the modern era that cyclical cosmology disappears, leaving only traces without meaning. In the epilogue, Vaz da Silva laments the repeated failure to understand the outlook of traditional cultures from a presentist viewpoint, which imposes our contemporary linear worldview on texts and images that are so enmeshed in the cyclical worldview. Vaz da Silva calls for a restoration of our "intangible heritage" and ends by noting that with moon phases, daily cycles, and seasonal revolutions, all humans live under cyclical conditions. Thus, making sense of the world through cyclicality should not come as a surprise.

Overall, Vaz da Silva's book provides an astonishingly fresh perspective in a book that is clearly and concisely written. While scholars have long...