« Le fait religieux » : de quoi parle-t-on ?

Abstract

Can what is religious ever be ‘a fact’ for archaeology? Nothing could be less certain. For archeology, facts are concrete, material traces or artefacts. In this context, the very French and post-modern notion ‘le fait religieux’ loses any relevance that it may have elsewhere. What on earth is a religious site, object or set-up? Two questions come together here, one theoretical, the definition of religion and the other methodological, how to qualify the archaeological remains. This article is mainly about the former, with two lines of thought, the first of which has significance for the methodology: the definition of religion by the sacred and its ritual dimension.

Keywords

• religion
• religious
• the sacred
• ritual.
• religious fact
• burial