ABSTRACT
The field of pilgrimage studies is complicatedly cross-disciplinary with significant literatures in many fields–not least history, theology, art history, anthropology, sociology and archaeology. These disciplines do not always talk to each other and are often at cross-purposes, in part because of different axiomatic starting points, different disciplinary protocols or different methodological practices. In a significant sense, in the seminal anthropological contribution of Victor and Edith Turner to the theoretical understanding of pilgrimage, and in the range of responses to this, pilgrimage has been treated as a subset or special case of ritual. The larger theme of ritual was itself not only a major topic of anthropological study for many decades but has become a crucial concept for archaeologists exploring material culture in religious contexts. The embodiment issue is fundamental. Pilgrimage is both the embodiment of an abstract or universal injunction in a specific and personal act of travel, and the embodiment of the narratives around such travel in texts.
