The image selected for the cover of Roberta Gilchrist's book depicts a centrally located set of buildings surrounded by a horizontally layered landscape: rocky formations in the foreground, followed by a fresh green strip of meadows, blue and sparklingly shiny extensive water surface framed by dark rocks with silhouettes of mountains in the background. For a viewer familiar with the European context, the buildings evidently refer to the Christian monastic tradition. They are organized around a church with a tower and an attached square cloister. Meanwhile, the surrounding landscape can easily be associated with the “typically Scottish” scenery of lochs and mountains. The composition of the picture triggers associations about the relationships between buildings and landscape, materiality of religious architecture and its natural surroundings, organization of space and its spiritual meanings, historical objects and their past and present contexts and settings. The contents of the book, Sacred Heritage: Monastic Archaeology, Identities, Beliefs refers to all these issues. The author—a Professor of Archaeology—reflects on them developing new and inspiring intellectual trajectories created through a meeting of archaeology with critical heritage studies.
The field of critical heritage studies has developed extensively over the last three decades as an intellectual response to the growing popularization of the concept of heritage on a global scale (mostly through the highly institutionalized activities of UNESCO), as well as on national, regional, and local levels. This “heritage buzz” (van de Port & Meyer, Reference van de Port, Meyer, Meyer and van de Port2018: 7) involves a variety of actors ranging from global institutions and states to bottom-up movements and individuals referring to and operationalizing the concept of “heritage” for their various policies and identity strategies. Critical heritage research analyses “heritage” not as a stable “thing out there” but rather as a complex cultural, social, and political process (see Waterton & Watson, Reference Waterton, Watson, Waterton and Watson2015: 6). Heritage formation is seen as intertwined with selective attitudes towards the past, its valuation, and ideologization. This process happens at the level of heritage discourses (including the “authorized heritage discourse,” see Smith, Reference Smith2006: 29) as well as through individual and collective experiences. Material, sensual, performative, and emotional turns, which have strongly shaped recent developments in numerous social sciences and humanities (such as anthropology, geography, memory studies), have brought a better understanding of the experiential and “more than discursive” character of heritage formation processes.
Gilchrist skilfully moves around these various interdisciplinary theoretical achievements and enriches them with an archaeological perspective. Coming from a discipline which approaches “the past” through specific material objects and sites, she is sensitive to the affective power and agency of “things”. She also realizes that this power is changeable and strongly depends on specific settings—complex assemblages which happen on physical, but also emotional, experiential as well as intellectual levels. She reveals the dynamics of “heritage” and shows that materiality and experience are usually intertwined with context-specific conceptualizations, ideologies and discourses.
The book consists of six chapters. The first one, ‘Sacred Values: Medieval Archaeology and Spiritual Heritage’, provides a broad theoretical introduction which sets the scene for the archaeological case studies discussed further on. The second chapter, ‘Monastic Archaeology and National Identity: The Scottish Monastic Experience’, reveals relations between the development of monasticism and nation building processes in medieval Scotland. Two following chapters, ‘Spirit, Mind and Body: The Archaeology of Monastic Healing’ (Chapter 3) and ‘The Materiality of Magic: The Ritual Lives of People and Things’ (Chapter 4), are detailed studies on selected aspects connected with medieval monastic life and present the role of healing and magic in medieval imagination and material culture. Chapter 5, ‘Monastic Legacies: Memory and the Biography of Place’, and Chapter 6, ‘Sacred Myths: Archaeology and Authenticity’, theoretically focus on categories of memory and authenticity. These categories are discussed in the context of selected shrines and monasteries. The author relates not only to their archaeological histories but also to the sites’ contemporary uses.
The book proves that the dynamic and contextual, experiential, and discursive nature of “heritage” is particularly visible in studies dedicated to “religious” sites, objects, and practices. Unclear, historically and geographically relative definitions of “religion” (Lambek, Reference Lambek, Boddy and Lambek2013: 6) and the contemporary intermingling of heritagization and sacralization processes in various parts of the world have dominated scholarly discussions of “religious heritage”, “sacred heritage”, or “spiritual heritage” (see e.g. Meyer & de Witte, Reference Meyer and de Witte2013). Gilchrist refers to these debates recalling culturally shaped understanding of the sacred and its relation to materiality. For example, Native American and Australian Aboriginal sacralizations of the landscape (p. 14), or the Buddhist emphasis on spiritual renewal and change which influences treatment of sacred objects (p. 15) do not comply with a dominant conceptualization of heritage and authenticity. These examples challenge universalistic and most commonly adopted European (and Judeo-Christian) approaches towards “religious heritage”, often developed in disciplines like archaeology, museology, or art history and reflected in traditional curating and preservation practices.
The case studies analysed in detail by Gilchrist mostly focus on late medieval Scottish monastic archaeology (with broader comparative Irish and English cases) as well as on the archaeological history of particular Christian shrines and churches in Britain (e.g. the Walsingham Marian shrine in East Anglia or Glastonbury Abbey in the West of England). Nevertheless, meticulous descriptions and careful analysis of these European Christian buildings, objects, and sites, also reveal the context-specific and processual nature of what is seen as “religion” and “heritage”. The biography of place—an interdisciplinary method the author applies, for example, to analyse the archaeological remains and material artefacts of Glastonbury Abbey (Chapters 5–6)—allows her to trace the connections between the spatial design of this religious site and the different meanings used in various epochs by various actors, for changing ideological purposes and identity formation practices. The Abbey's dramatic destruction during the Reformation, the post-Reformation adaptation of the site as a “cradle of English Christianity” and Protestant nationhood, contemporary Christian uses of the Lady Chapel ruins and multiplying spiritual practices (e.g. Celtic, feminist, Pagan, Druidic) performed in the surrounding landscape (p. 203) are analysed in connection with changing myths about the Abbey's origins, stories about King Arthur and the legend of Joseph of Arimathea visiting Glastonbury together with Christ as a young man. Importantly, all these myths are associated with particular material aspects of the site in the past and/or in the present. Experiences of medieval pilgrims can also be traced through excavations and reconstructed plans of the first Glastonbury churches and the hypothetical form of Arthur's grave, while today's pilgrims and spiritual seekers bring their visions of the past and incorporate them through their own bodily practices. Gilchrist moves in between these various perspectives. Her analysis shows the mechanisms of memory and identity building as well as the power of materiality in religious experience, regardless of the epoch.
For me, who was trained in anthropology and has undertaken ethnographic studies of lived and material religion, Chapters 3 and 4—on medieval monastic healing and materiality of magic—were probably the most fascinating. In several places the author seems to achieve an almost ethnographic insight into the medieval monastic communities. Archaeological evidence reveals many details, such as the settings of monastic infirmaries, the botanical composition of the gardens, forms of kitchen vessels and medical utensils used in hospitals, the design of pipe systems and wells, the planning of cemeteries and various types of burials, common diseases and bodily deformations, sacrifices and objects buried with the dead. These details are analysed in terms of the everyday lived experiences of people who used specific spaces and material objects. Gilchrist's descriptions, supported by an extensive knowledge of medieval monasteries derived from historical, theological and folkloristic sources (and to some extent also from her earlier ethnographic experiences in contemporary monastic setting, see p. 8) remind us that “the past is a foreign country” (see Lowenthal, Reference Lowenthal2015). Travelling there, demands extensive and critical work on ways of living, experiencing and conceptualizing, that are usually different from ours.
Although I welcome the methodological interdisciplinary pathway proposed by the author, it is important to ask about its limits. However, this debate is not covered in the book and so it leaves aside an important topic linked to sensory research. What about archaeological objects deprived of any written contextual sources—objects from places and epochs far more distant than the late medieval Scottish monasteries? Another question might concern histories of senses and sensing. Would our contemporary sensual experiences suffice to connect us with past spaces and objects? Do we, for example, hear “the same” echo and vibration of the landscape or interior space, loudness or silence of voices, if our hearing is shaped by commonly amplified sounds as well as sounds completely unknown to the people from “the past”? Also, how can we compare our attitude towards spoken words to the attitudes of people who functioned in low- or non-literate societies? How can we imagine the power of sounds in the pre-recording era, when today recording techniques are omnipresent and taken for granted?
In raising these questions, I do not aim in any way to belittle the analytical and methodological achievements of Gilchrist's book. Rather, I want to emphasize that her interdisciplinary approach encourages further research on various aspects of materiality, senses, knowledge production, and intercultural translations. The book is very dense, eruditely drawing on various sources and scholarly fields. Apart from archaeology and critical heritage studies the author's reflections might inspire debates in numerous disciplines and subdisciplines, such as history, anthropology and ethnography, folklore, religious studies, pilgrimage studies, theology, memory studies, human geography etc.
The volume certainly contributes to the recent problematization of the notion of “religious heritage”. The author's general approach resonates well with what Cyril Isnart and Natalie Cerezales have called the “religious heritage complex”—a term that emphasizes entangled similarities rather than differences in how “religion” and “heritage” work (Isnart & Cerezales, Reference Isnart, Cerezales, Isnart and Cerezales2020). In this respect, examples of medieval practices of applying archaic style and ancient elements to Christian architecture in English and Scottish monastic settings are particularly intriguing (e.g. pp. 151, 161). They suggest that a certain “heritagization” logic was present in Christian designing and decorative practices much earlier than the heritage researchers tend to think, and was employed to enhance religious experience.
The book's final section (Chapter 6) challenges popular myths which depict archaeology as a source of objective knowledge and a guarantor of “authenticity”. Critical heritage studies demonstrate that authenticity should be seen as culturally relative; Gilchrist draws on this perspective to show various religious heritage projects as highly politicized and ideologized. Archaeologists themselves are presented as actors who often actively shape these processes. Decisions on excavation, conservation, curation, preservation and reconstruction or replication are discussed considering contexts of particular times and spaces, as well as the convictions of archaeologists and other individuals involved. The author, for instance, recalls how the Glastonbury excavations, led in the years 1951–64 by Arthur Ralegh Radford, were influenced by his Christian beliefs (pp. 182–84). Even more interesting is the case of George Fielden MacLeod and his Iona Abbey project (pp. 191–94). This Church of Scotland minister, who was a former soldier and a social and ecumenical activist, not only initiated a reconstruction of the medieval Scottish monastic quarters on the island of Iona (conducted between 1938 and 1965) but also created a religious community destined to live there. His concept of “reconstruction” focussed on “spiritual authenticity”, hence he “manipulated historical and archaeological evidence to support his version of Iona's past” (p. 194).
Reading the multi-layered story of Iona Abbey, I realized that this is the building—and its surroundings—which fascinated me when I had a first glimpse of the book's cover. Indeed, the past and present of the Iona project bring together numerous threads discussed in various parts of the book. Gilchrist successfully, and with impressive erudition, brings together archaeological perspective with critical heritage approach and studies on the material and sensual aspects of sacred heritage. This is an important voice that calls for further research in different geographical and historical settings.
