“Religion, cults and rituals in the medieval rural environment”
Clervaux, G-D of Luxembourg, 7th-13th Sept. 2015
RURALIA XI will take place at Clervaux, a small town in the very north of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg.
The theme will be: “Religious places, cults and rituals in the medieval rural environment”.
The conference is jointly organized by the Centre National de Recherche Archéologique and the University of Luxembourg.
Applicants who wish to present a paper (25 minutes) or a poster can send their application to their National Representatives, the Luxemburgish Representative, Christiane Bis-Worch (Christiane.Bis@cnra.etat.lu) and/or the president, Haio Zimmermann.
The submitted papers should follow the guidelines below:
Guidelines for Papers
1a. Buildings and sites within rural settlements
- Rural population and the religious use of buildings (roman buildings, churches in rural cemeteries… ) in rural environment
- The location of buildings in rural settlement, respectively the relationship between the settlement and the building (distances)
- The reuse of ancient re-used material (spoil and picture slaps) in churches
- Special facilities: for example monastic places, leprosaria, hospitals, poor houses
- Non-Christian religious buildings and sites (pagan, Slavonic, Jewish, Muslim…)
1b. Buildings and sites without rural settlements
- Special places like springs, caves, quarries and other special stones (menhirs,…) places in forests, ruins
- Pagan tradition, popular belief, superstition, Christian
- Hermitages
- Causes for the formation and decline of such places.
2a. objects of popular belief
- Amulets, devotional, votive offerings, relics
- Objects to protect buildings (horse’s heads, drinking vessels…)
- Cult figures
2b. special practices in burial rituals in rural environment
- Revenant, vampirism
- Burial of afterbirths in buildings
- Burials of children under cullies
- Corpse (bodies) at places of execution and of witches