Cult and Culture in Neolithic Southern Italy

This paper seeks to identify and analyse a type of cult that has received relatively little attention from prehistorians. It is characterised by underground secret cult sites which include rock-cut tombs and hypogea as well as natural caves and rock-shelters. This type of cult site is dominant in peninsular Italy and Sicily throughout the Neolithic and Copper Age and is also found, alongside cult sites of other types, in adjacent parts of the central Mediterranean, including Sardinia and Malta.

Three major religious themes are identified: the secrecy theme, the hunting cult and the cult of ‘unnatural’ water. The meaning of these themes is approached through a structuralist analysis. It is possible to identify a structured contrast between the secular sphere, characterised by light, domesticated animals and plants and water in ‘natural’ forms. It is argued that the prime function of ritual is the definition and redefinition of cultural categories through symbolic action. Secondly, it is argued that particular attention will be paid to the boundaries between categories, and especially to the all-important boundary between culture and nature, secular and sacred. Thus we can explain ritual attention to darkness, unnatural water and wild plants and animals (in the sacred world) as a concern with their opposites in the everyday world: light (sun), natural water (rain) and domesticated animals and plants. These are natural concerns of simple farming societies and it is argued that we are dealing here with a fertility cult concerned with the health and fertility of crops, stock and presumably also of people.

The social role of the cult is also examined briefly and it is suggested that control of the fertility cult provided a source of power in Neolithic society. It could have been used to reinforce the control of men over women and to a lesser extent the control of older men over younger ones.