ABSTRACT
The history of Christian architecture is indicative of shifts in ritual process. Tamboer considers the difference between creating reconstructions for educational use as opposed to for purposes of experimental archaeological research. Archaeologists are able to benefit from ethnographic insights to envisage how buildings are used, while anthropologists are able to benefit from the archaeologists’ diachronic perspective and awareness of the material form of the places where people gather. The deposition of manure, even for a short period of time, leaves an archaeologically recoverable chemical signature in the soil. The inspection of ancient sacrificial sites for traces of manure deposits could yield suggestive evidence for the handling of sacrificial waste in antiquity. The most obvious approach to recovering ephemeral sensory elements of ancient sacrifices is to consider related evidence in archaeological and literary sources.
