Open AccessThe Material Culture of Initiation Rites

29 October 2024

Photo: Royal Collection Trust

Francis J.C. Cooper, Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation Pen 1953. Ivory, gold, enamel, gemstones with a tooled leather case lined in silk, 23 cm long, The Royal Collection, RCIN 39431.

Initiation rites have shaped societies for thousands of years. Many of them involve written artefacts that are necessary to perform the ritual acts. The recently published volume on ‘Written Artefacts in Rites of Passage’ explores the material culture of initiation rites.

The coronation of new British kings and queens is peppered with centuries-old rituals. One of them is the signing of the Scottish Oath. Since the unification of England and Scotland in 1707, this oath commits future monarchs to the preservation of the Church of Scotland. The first monarch to sign it was George I in 1714; the last one thus far was King Charles III on 12 September 2022.

Many cultures around the world have had and still have certain initiation rites to mark the transition of a person from one phase of life to the next or from one stage to another. As different as these may be depending on the culture and purpose, there are some patterns and similarities that characterise these ritual acts. One of these similarities is that in numerous such practices, written artefacts play an important, sometimes even a key role. For example, during some ceremonies in which written artefacts are recited, the exact reproduction of the written words is constitutive for the ritual’s validity. In other cases, the content of the written artefact has only an indirect semantic relationship to the action performed. In yet other initiation rituals, the ritual act consists precisely in the production of a written artefact.

In January 2023, participants at the conference ‘Inscribing Initiation: Written Artefacts in Rites of Passage’ at the CSMC intensively discussed the range of functions that written artefacts can play during initiation rites and the similarities and differences that arise from a comparative, cross-cultural perspective. The accompanying volume, edited by conference organiser Jochen Vennebusch together with Karin Becker, has now been published by Franz Steiner Verlag. In ten chapters, the authors do not primarily deal with the social, cultural, or religious dimension of the use of written artefacts in initiation rites, but with the material dimension. In line with the CSMC’s research focus, they explore the question of who interacts with what kind of written artefacts in these acts, and to what extent the performance of the ritual hinges on the material properties of the manuscripts or inscriptions used.

Written Artefacts in Rites of Passage: On the Material Culture of Initiation is available on the publisher’s website as an e-book in open access format.