animism

The option has been a largely secular view of religion, favoring materialist processes of rationalization and “disenchantment.” Like any cross-cultural frame of reference, such terms are only informative when explicitly defined in local contexts using particular case research. Here, we contemplate shamanism and animism in terms of ethnographic and archaeological proof from Mesoamerica. We trace the intellectual history of these concepts and reassess shamanism and animism from a relational or ontological perspective, concluding that these terms are best understood as distinct methods of figuring out the planet and acquiring knowledge. We examine specific archaeological examples of masked spirit impersonations, as...