ABSTRACT
In the early 1960s, the folklorist and historian of religions Hilda Ellis Davidson put forward a definition of human spiritual aspirations that has seldom been bettered. “A mythology,” she wrote, “is the comment of … one particular age or civilisation on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories … their perception of the inner realities” (Ellis Davidson 1964:9). Whether we follow her in calling it mythology, or choose other terms such as religion or belief, this surely provides one of the keys to what the discipline of archaeology should ultimately address, for it is in such “inner realities” that we see the worldview and mentality of past peoples. In this sense it includes not just their deliberate constructions of reality but perhaps also their subconscious reflections and concerns. Religion and its analogues thus lie at the heart of any meaningful exploration of prehistoric cognition, and of the ancient mind.
