The Veneration of Womb Tombs:

Body-Based Rituals and Politics at the Tomb of Mary and Maqam Abu

al-Hijja1

Nurit Stadler and Nimrod Luz

Last version of this paper was published in Journal of Anthropological

Research, 70 (2), 2014.

The present article examines the social dynamics at sacred ‘womb-tombs’ in an effort

to discern this architectural form’s impact on contemporary religious experiences,

politics and landscapes. With this objective in mind, Christian veneration at Jerusalem’s

Tomb of Mary is compared to Muslim worship at Maqam Abu al-Hijja in the Galilee.

Drawing on our ethnographic findings, we posit that the shrines’ ancient structure

represents the poetry of the human body and symbolizes death and regeneration. More

1 This article is part of a wide-ranging project on sacred sites

in Israel/Palestine. Special thanks to the Israel Science

Foundation (grant no 0321861) and the Shaine Centre for Research

in Social Sciences for their generous support. We also owe a debt

of gratitude to Avi Aronsky for his fine editing and helpful

suggestions throughout the writing phase.1

specifically, we show that in these places Muslim and Christian in Israel/Palestinian fuse

the ancient symbol of the womb/tomb with local minority identities for the purpose of

bolstering their claims to nativeness, lands and resisting the state and hegemonic

group. Accordingly, the symbols of rebirth that inform these venues have both personal

and collective significance, as fertility and wellbeing rituals are also used as metaphors

for the soil and indigenousness. In Israel/Palestine, these activities transpire within the

context of socio-political struggles, not least those between the majority and minorities

over the land.

Key Words: womb tomb, religious revival, politics of sacred

places, religion and the body, tomb veneration, Muslim and

Christian holy sites in Israel/Palestine

Introduction

The present article explores how womb tomb shrines are venerated,

revived and modified by minorities in contemporary

Israel/Palestine. While most pilgrimage scholars focus on either

communitas or the contested nature of sacred places, this paper

investigate these sites from the perspective of womb tomb2

veneration and territorial claims. Drawing on our ethnographic

findings on Christian and Muslim worship , we contend that the

ancient structure of these venues indigenize place and help

minorities stake a claim to the land while creating their own

sense of place. It would seem that since their primal

manifestations (circa 18000 BCE) womb tombs have articulated the

poetry of the human body, imitating the anatomy of reproduction

and symbolizing death, birth and regeneration. As such, these

sites are conducive to body-based forms of rituals that derive

from primordial, indigenous rituals. Moreover, these same acts

are amenable to interpretations that are embedded in local

traditions (Turner 1967:27, 56, 114, 155). As we show, their

ancient components are heavily influenced by present-day local

politics, especially land claiming. Thus, the visits to these

enclosed and dark venues express a group’s inherence to the

site/land/soil. From a political standpoint, the pilgrims view

these intimate bodily experiences through the prism of

territorial and Muslim/Christian minority rights to the place.

Consequently, the attendant rituals evoke a sense of national

rebirth and buoy their attempts to reclaim what they deem to be3

their ancestral lands (Myerhoff 1974; Scarre 2011) 2. Put

differently, land tenure rights that are expressed via womb-tomb

rituals are a means for construing indigenous belonging (Gelder

and Jacobs 1988; Harris, 2002).

Over the next few pages, we will survey our comparative

ethnography on Christian and Muslim worship at Jerusalem’s Tomb

of Mary and Maqam Abu al Hijja3 in the Lower Galilee,

respectively. As it now stands, womb-tomb shrines are in the

midst of a renaissance in Israel/Palestine and, for that matter,

the entire Middle East. In Israel, this trend is particularly

striking in the vicinity of tombs that are regularly visited by

2 This topic comes up in studies on Native North Americans,

Australian aborigines and Latin American Indians, among others;

(e.g., Myerhoff 1974; Ivakhiv 2001).

3 Literally a ‘place’, the Arabic term maqam generally connotes

a venue where rituals (ziyarat) are performed in honour of a saint

(Goldziher 1971).4

Jewish worshippers, such as the following sites4: the tomb of

Ḥoni ha-Ma’agel5 in Galilean Hatzor; the Idra-Raba cave6;

Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem; and the Safad-based tombs of

Yonatan Ben Uziel7 and Isaac Luria (alias ha'Ari)8. There are

also quite a few Christian venues of this sort, like the grave of

4 The Jewish scriptures equate the womb with the tomb. In Hebrew,

the word beten (belly or stomach) often refers to a womb. In this

sense, the earth can also be seen as a womb to which all of

humanity shall return. According to the Psalmist, ‘Intricately I

was wrought in the depths of the earth’ (Psalm 139:15). Likewise,

Job stated that ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I

shall return’ (Job 1:21). In addition, the Mishnaic and Talmudic

literature describes the child-bearing uterus as an ‘opened

grave’. As per a Babylonian incantation, the unborn child ‘is

living in darkness’ and the ‘house of darkness’ will be our

ultimate destination (see Stol and Wiggerman 2000:9).

5 Honi ha-Ma’agel was a pre-Tanaic Jewish scholar (first century

BCE).

6 Portions of the Zohar are said to have been written in the

Idra-Raba, a cave located near the main road between Safad and 5

Elizabeth in the Monastery of St. John in the Wilderness,

southwest of Jerusalem; the Tomb of Lazarus in the West Bank town

of al-Eizariya9; and the cave of the midwife Salome in Beit

Guvrin. Muslims venerate a host of saint tombs as well, such as

the Nabi Salah shrine in Ramla; the shrine of Nabi Rubin, next to

Rishon Le-Zion; and the tomb of Nabi Yusha in Jordan. Despite the

profusion of sanctified womb tomb shrines in Israel/Palestine,

they have yet to merit scholarly attention within the context of

the area’s religious politics and resurgence. In the endeavour of

filling this lacuna, our analysis will revolve around the

following questions: What is the nature and scope of body-based

rituals at womb-tomb shrines? How are these practices translated

Meron.

7 Over the past decade, the grave of Yonatan Ben Uziel, a

prominent student of Hillel the Elder, has become one of Israel’s

most popular Jewish pilgrimage sites.

8 The grave of ha'Ari (a partial acronym for ‘the Holy Lion’) is

located in the old cemetery of Safad.

9 The tomb is the purported site of Jesus’ resurrection of

Lazarus. 6

into acts of personal and minority land ownership? And how do the

attendant customs engender and recreate a sense of place, land

and ethnic belonging?

Womb Tombs and Pilgrimage

For the purposes of this article, based on our observations in

the various sites, we define womb-tomb shrines as closed, dimly-

lit rooms or caves that house the tomb of a reputed saint. As in

Mary’s tomb and Maqam Abu al-Hijja these sites constitute

efficacious platforms for anatomical metaphors, which evocatively

symbolize death and rebirth.

While most pilgrimage scholars focus on either the idea of

communitas or the political nature of sacred places, in this

paper we emphasize the relations between body based rituals and

territorial claims. The first school is represented by Victor

Turner (Coleman and Eade 2004). He explained that during

pilgrimage, liminal processes are analogous to those of the body,

especially ‘gestation, parturition and suckling’ (Turner 1967,

Eliade 1927, 1958, 1973:10310). Huts and tunnels are also

10 Also see Rennie 2006, 2007:193-94.7

redolent of tombs and wombs; and the same can be said for the

moon, on account of its monthly waxing and waning. A case in

point is Mnajdra, a megalithic temple complex in Malta (circa

3000 BCE) that was built to resemble and symbolize the female

body, namely the goddess of regeneration (Gimbutas 2001:55, 60;

Thomas 2000).

Religious architecture has long been known to symbolize

parts of the human anatomy/social body and shaping a unique

religious experience. Caves, the epitome of womb-like

receptacles, served as venues for religious rituals before

assuming residential functions (Mumford 1961; Healy 2007). Dark

recesses were reserved for ceremonies that pertain to life, death

and the after world. Regarded as the Earth’s wombs, caves were

highly venerated places. Those containing a spring, which is

reminiscent of the maternal fluids nourishing the unborn child,

were considered to be especially sacrosanct11. According to

11 In Mesoamerican cosmology, the planet was generally deemed to

be a female (Milbrath 1988:159-60, 1997), so that caves were

closely associated with the Mother Earth/fertility goddess

complex (Brady and Prufer 2005).8

Heyden’s study (1975), these practices cover the entire life

cycle, from birth to demise, reinforcing social order12.

A second school of thought posits that devotional landscapes

reflect not only the physical, corporeal, and symbolic order, but

an area’s political and power structures as well (Kong 2004).

Scholars from this camp are interested in how shrines and their

attendant rituals challenge or resist the status quo. Kong (2004)

argues that the ideologically variegated, contested, and

exceedingly politicized attributes of holy places stem from their

socio-spatial nature. Similarly, Eade and Sallnow (1991:5, 10)13

contend that sacred sites entail a farrago of imported, often

disputed, and radically polarizing interests, perceptions,

images, and discourses regarding the object(s) of sanctification.

12 Mesopotamian mythology also employs these symbols. Inanna, the

Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility and warfare, was the

most prominent female deity in ancient Mesopotamia (Jacobsen

1976; Wolkstein and Kramer 1983; Harris 1997; Shin Shifra and

Klein Jacob, 1996:104-5).

13 Also see Chidester and Linenthal 1995.9

For this reason, quite a few of these venues, particularly those

with competing ownership claims over a tangible space, are the

scene of intense power struggles between groups that are locked

in complex religious, political, national, and ethnic disputes

(Bowman 1991, 1993; Bax 1995; Tweed 1997; Harris 1997; Herrero

1999; Berger, Reiter, and Hammer 2010; Gómes-Barris and Irazabal

2009; Napolitano 2009).

Despite the pre-eminence of womb-tomb veneration and

cosmology, surprisingly little has been written on this topic in

the ethnographic literature on Mediterranean (and Middle Eastern)

religions. Hence, the ensuing discussion is predicated on the

scholarly explication of myths, while also garnering insight from

the archaeological record. In this article we demonstrate how the

rituals preformed at Mary’s Tomb and Maqam Abu al-Hijja have been

linked to an age-old tradition of body-based fertility and

wellbeing rituals. In this we take heed of what (1996:69-70)14

14 According to Douglas (1966), there is a constant exchange of

ideas between the physical and symbolic body, so that each

dimension reinforces the other’s categories.10

avers that the body shapes how the physical world is perceived

(also in Mauss, 1934) . In addition, we follow Scheper-Hughes'

and Lock's (1987:7, 30) suggestion to look at three semantic

realms of representation and practice: the individual’s sentient,

the social and the political body (also see Strathern 1996). We

argue that the womb tomb shrine constitutes a place for seeking

preternatural intervention for infertility, fertility, illness

and pain, and as such giving an opportunity to voice local

identities, buttressing claims of nativeness, lands and resisting

current hegemony. Saying that, in Israel/Palestine womb tomb

shrine renewals and restorations are profoundly linked to

assertions of Palestinian identity and land claiming of different

minorities and their voices

Methods

The fieldwork underpinning this anthropological enterprise

consists of roughly a decade of research at both shrines. Each of

the authors launched their respective projects on an individual

basis. Over the last two years, though, we have joined forces on

a comparative study. The nub of the fieldwork at both venues has

11

been our own observations and informal interviews with pilgrims,

visitors and organizers. While attempting to accommodate our

subjects by conversing with them in Arabic, English, French,

Greek and Russian, some of them spoke to us in Hebrew on their

own volition. The findings with respect to Mary’s Tomb were

culled from observations of Orthodox masses, blessings,

processions, rosaries and other rituals between 2003 and 2012.

Although we visited the church throughout the year, the study

concentrated on Jerusalem’s Feast of the Dormition – a holiday

commemorating the Virgin’s last days on Earth (Stadler 2011).

Held on an annual basis from August 25 to September 5, this rite

attracts thousands of pilgrims from both local communities and

Orthodox countries across the globe. Alternatively, the field

work on Maqam Abu al-Hijja commenced in 2002. The survey of

textual sources (mostly in Arabic) was complemented with

routinely observations of the socio-spatial changes of the place

and it's environ. As of 2002 open-ended interviews and meetings

were held with local religious and political figures in the

village. These were complemented with informal interviews with

12

both pilgrims and visitors15 upon their visits and rituals in the

Maqam and we continue to pay weekly visits to this site.

There are a few key differences between the two shrines.

Whereas the pilgrims attending the maqam are comprised entirely

of local Muslims, the Tomb of Mary draws Christian pilgrims from

throughout the Orthodox world. In addition, the latter is a

canonical site. More specifically, it is part of a route that

includes the presumed locations of several momentous occasions in

the Madonna’s life. The tradition of the Dormition Feast at this

site turns up in a number of scriptural texts, some of which are

over 1,600 years old (Shoemaker 2002:3; Rubin 2009). Another

noteworthy distinction surrounds the accessibility and

jurisdiction over the two sites. While the majority of the local

participants in the Jerusalem event are Christian residents of

the Palestinian territories, and many are from the Old City of

15 Not all visits are aimed at practicing faith or conducting a

pilgrimage, some of the people arrive at the place simply to

enjoy the park that was developed next to it. Some of them were

actually oblivious to the religious/sacred aspects of the Maqam

and were surprised when asked about them.13

Jerusalem and surrounding Palestinian neighborhoods; all the

devotees that we have encountered at the Galilean shrine are

Muslim citizens of Israel. By virtue of their status, Israeli

Arabs are unencumbered by formal constraints that could

potentially keep them away from the maqam. In contrast, the

Christian Palestinians at Mary’s Tomb are an intra-Palestinian

minority (see Dumper 2002). Not only are they hindered by various

Israeli authorities and security forces, but face similar

obstacles from Palestinian factors. These contrasting elements

impact the overall experiences in various ways. For example,

there were differences concerning the level of determination to

visit the sites and perform certain rituals as well as the

political meaning of their visits.

In diagnosing our findings, we availed ourselves of both

emic and etic approaches. Put differently, each of the analyses

relied on two distinct source categories: an assortment of voices

and narratives that were obtained during interviews with

subjects; and the interpretation of our own observations, field

notes and comparative perspectives, which largely stem from the

archaeological, geographic and anthropological data on veneration14

at popular sacred sites in general and womb tombs in particular.

As such, we begin our conspectus with the body-based aspects of

womb-tomb rituals, which were largely gleaned from observations

of the pertinent activities at the two shrines, the layout of

each site and the theoretical explication thereof. The discussion

then shifts to the visitors’ politics of resistance and their

narrative of belonging – issues that surfaced during interviews

and informal conversations out in the field.

Womb-Tomb Shrines and the Poetics of the Body

Researchers have shown that the architecture and layout of a

religious venue influence its ambience and can substantially

enhance or detract from the numinous experience therein (Kong

1992:23). As Walter puts it, design and other physical properties

can ‘draw the believer’ into a state of mind. For instance, he

observed that mosques and churches often have ‘surfaces that de-

materialize the walls’ (Walter 1988:75). As we observe when a

site is dimly lit and resembles certain body parts, the effect on

the religious experience is all the more powerful, as its

15

corporeal nature heightens the devotee’s empathy for the place16.

In our finding we see that womb tombs are body-performances in

which internal spatialities are designed to elicit and mediate a

moving bodily experience (See also Rennie 2006, 2007, 2011).

Over the course of the fieldwork at Mary’s Tomb, we

discovered that its simulations of the human body underpinned the

religious experience (see figure 1). Built inside a cavern, its

décor imparts a subterranean, the shrine is a Crusader-era

complex with Byzantine foundations (Pringle 2007:287; Schiller

1978:103). Its commemorative-style cruciform structure, according

to the local Orthodox clergy, embodies the ancient narratives of

the Virgin’s final days on Earth, including her resurrection and

ascent to heaven (see Figure 1). Upon entering the building, the

visitor leaves behind the limpid brightness of Jerusalem for a

16 Additionally, Butler (1993) suggests that ‘the body has to be

materialized: it has to be performed in order to be realized’. In

works on the role of the body in rituals, scholars often focus on

how particular social groups distinguish themselves from others

by cultivating distinctive practices (Bartkowski 2005; Davidman

2011).16

dark passage that solemnly echoes every release of sound. The

building’s doorway is redolent of a uterus. Likewise, its dim and

humid entrance chamber symbolizes a birth canal, a gateway to

regeneration. Once inside, the devotee encounters a monumental

Crusader-era staircase numbering 48 steps. This appreciable

descent to the main level is intended to gradually differentiate

the outside world from the inner sanctum of the womb tomb. At the

bottom of the staircase is a chapel that is purported to house

Mary’s ancient sepulchre. Having reached this chest-high

aedicule, pilgrims crouch down and squeeze their way inside,

where they kiss and fondle the stone tomb. They then squeeze into

the narrow entrance and bend down to touch and kiss the stone

tomb. In these moments, most of the faithful hold vivid

discussions about Mary’s personal effects of their body and life,

such as her shrouds and cincture, which she is believed to have

left here in the cave. Ana, an elderly Orthodox Palestinian, said

that she comes to the shrine after every feast in order to

fulfill the vows she took after giving birth to her eldest son.

Pursuant to her votive offering, Ana helps a few other women

17

maintain the premises. She escorts them in the tomb; explain

about the icons and the various crawling rituals.

These mimetic acts and the interaction with the Madonna’s

clothing draw the faithful ever closer to Mary. As we walked down

the steps on one of our field trips, a middle-aged local

Palestinian woman, Mariam, told us about her long bout with

cancer. According to Mariam, her numerous visits to this site,

particularly the crawling, have helped her overcome the disease.

“After crawling under her icon (the Theotokos) the tumor

“completely disappeared” she said, after she vowed to turn her

visitations to the tomb into a regular life habit. Mariam

described how Mary had provided succor with her own body and how

crawling and kissing the Icon inside the grotto gave her strength

during treatments and her everyday life as a Palestinian woman.

Maqam Abu al-Hijja constitutes another take on this body

based architecture (see figure 2). Nestled amid olive orchards

along the edge of Kaukab, an Arab village in the Lower Galilee,

the compound is unpresumptuous. A modest (5 x 4 meters wide),

roofless courtyard leads to a pair of small halls, the domes of

which have recently been painted a conspicuous green (see Figure18

2). The entrance to the first chamber is so low that visitors

must squat to get inside. Furnished with mattresses and pillows

for sitting, the visitors pray in the direction of the room’s

mihrab (the symbolic niche pointing towards Mecca).

A curved gateway leads to the second, inner hall, which

holds the shrine’s main attraction to visitors – two stone

tombs17. The walls of the two chambers are adorned with various

17 As part of his disquisition on modern-day Egyptian folk

cosmology, El-Aswad (1987, 2002:156, 167) cites the following 19

Islamic ornaments: Quranic inscriptions, photos of major shrines

in Mecca and Madina; and various representations of Jerusalem’s

Dome of the Rock. Some of the inscriptions and photos have been

replaced over the years. However, an embroidery of a verse from

the last chapter of the Quran (Surat al-Nas), which is

traditionally believed to ward off evil, has been hanging on the

wall overlooking the sepulchres since the outset of this project.

Our interlocutors from the village narrate that according to the

traditions, one of the tombs bears the remains of the said Abu

al-Hijja, while the second belongs to either his son or an

story on barrenness: In an effort to stave off divorce, a

childless woman visits a cemetery on a dark, moonless night under

the assumption that a frightening experience can ignite her

reproductive organs. According to El-Aswad, this tale implies

that there is a correlation between womb and tomb, which involves

the cosmic dynamics of birth and rebirth, fertility and

resurrection. Put differently, in our strange universe, it is

quite possible for something to be produced or reproduced by its

antithesis (2002:157).

20

anonymous companion. Upon entering this chamber, devotees pray

near the graves and bend down to stroke and kiss the ornamental

coverings on top of the stone exteriors. The most revered spot is

about fifty centimetres wide nook between the two sepulchres,

where devotees customarily prostrate themselves. According to

several interviewees, pilgrims occasionally spend the night in

the interstice praying for succour and some devotees, they claim,

have been miraculously cured of severe ailments. For this reason,

visitors stay as long as possible near the tombs and the maqam

has developed a reputation for healing powers.

Although there is scarce information about him in the

written historical sources (see Arraf 1993), we do know that Abu

al-Hijja was of Kurdish origin and a senior officer (amir) in

Saladin’s army. During the Third Crusade (1189-1192), he saw

action in the Siege of Acre (Holt 1986). By dint of his valour on

the battlefield, the warrior was granted the revenues from vast

tracts of taxable lands (Iqta'). Most of his fiefdom18, which18 For lack of a better word, we use the European term fiefdom.

However, the Islamic system of granting appanages differed from

the occidental one.21

included the village under review, was in the Lower Galilee. Abu

al-Hijja died in 1196 while heading back to his hometown of Irbil

in modern-day Kurdish part of Iraq (Ibn Taghri-Birdi 1913). This

highly militaristic background is attested in his assigned name

as Abu al-Hijja literally means ‘father of the war,’ but is

probably best interpreted as ‘the fearless warrior’. One of the

questions we asked is why did a renowned local warlord, Hussam

al-Din Abu al-Hijja, merit a burial site that has evolved into a

local pilgrimage destination? It needs to be stressed that this

allegedly intriguing issue (to say the least) rarely bothered or

indeed posed a problem to any of our interviewees. For most of

them the "actual" historical backgrounds is insignificant and

suffice themselves with accepting local traditions: "we were told

that this is a sacred place". For Ali who runs the local post

office in the village and is familiar with the historical

narrative(s), this is surely not an issue. Indeed he is aware

that Abu al-Hijja was not a scholarly man and had neither

religious background not any acclaimed religious virtues during

his life time but as he puts it: "he excelled himself in the

battlefield against the enemies of Islam and died while22

performing Jihad [Istashada in Arabic]". Ahamd, a former mayor of

the municipality provides a highly political motivation for the

veneration of the site and contemporary popularity:

“I feel close to Abu al-Hijja, not because he was a general

or a Kurd, but because he was involved and helpful with the

battle against the Crusaders. Through fighting the Crusaders he

ultimately helped the Palestinian cause and people” (Interview

December 28, 2008).

Both shrines provides an opportunity to venerate a saint in

a unique architecture that resembles certain body parts, its

corporeal nature heightens body practices and the devotee’s

empathy for the place.

Imitating the Human Body: Rituals of Fertility and Wellbeing

23

The use of ancient body-based symbolism and structures in womb-

tomb veneration is closely linked to rituals of wellbeing and

fertility. Due to the sites’ evocation of human organs,

interviewees spoke of their pilgrimages in terms of an odyssey

for convalescence and reproduction. The rite of Mary’s Tomb is

characterized by, among other things, a mélange of fertility

rituals. For instance, on the first day of the Dormition Feast,

the Icon of the Dormition—a revered simulacrum of Mary—is24

transferred from the Matoxion (a monastery adjacent to the Church

of the Holy Sepulchre) to the Virgin’s tomb on the Mount of

Olives. This sacred task is entrusted to a procession of clergy

and lay devotees, which navigates its way through the Old City’s

narrow streets. Most of the feast’s customs, be they part of the

well-established rite of the Jerusalem Patriarchate or the oft-

improvised personal variety, reflect the Orthodox canonical

traditions regarding the Holy Mother’s final days in Jerusalem.

Unlike the rest of the year, the epitaphios (icon) is out in the

open and thus accessible to one and all until the end of the ten-

day celebration. Devotees expressed a desire to touch and kiss

the icon, and to take part in the crawling under the holy icon.

This mass event constitutes the high point of the feast for

practically all the visitors, as they are willing to brave a long

line in order to share a fleeting moment with the sacred effigy.

An Orthodox nun is stationed by the icon for the purpose of

instructing the devotees on how to touch, face, scatter flowers

and basil, crawl and pray before the sacred object. It bears

noting that pilgrims engage in such mass crawlings all over the

globe. Examples of Marian regeneration rituals of this sort can25

be found in the Madonna of the Annunciation Monastery in Tinos

Greece (Dubisch 1995), Mexico’s Basilica of the Guadalupe,

France’s Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes (Harris 1997), and the

Black Madonna in Częstochowa, Poland (Galbraith 2000). Just like

in Mary’s tomb, at all of these sites, the crawling rituals

toward or around Marian icons or relics symbolize the foetus’

transition from the mother’s womb to the world at large (Dubisch

1995).

Maria, an Orthodox-Christian Palestinian from Bethlehem, can

be viewed as a minority within minority. In her words: “I really

like to repeat this ritual again and again, to feel Mary in my

body, [to experience her] life that ended in her Assumption and

reunion with her son.” Emily, a young girls from Beit Jala said

“Walking inside the tomb make me feel at home, close to my

family, when I kiss the icons and crawl I feel that I am loved,

that I belong to this land”. According to many devotees, the

precious moments opposite the sarcophagus are the high point of

their voyage, as some are moved to tears and others are left

shuddering.

26

Compared to rituals at Mary’s Tomb, the annual calendar of

events and daily activities at the Maqam Abu al-Hijja are

characterized by a great deal of improvisation. Owing to its

mounting popularity among Arab citizens of Israel, a parking lot

was constructed in a few years back. Over the course of the

study, we have met both pilgrims from nearby villages and those

who drove over two hours to reach the shrine. The short climb

from the lot to the compound passes through Kaukab’s active

graveyard, thus offering an experience of a funeral. Upon

reaching the site, a small iron gate leads to the inner

courtyard. While some believers tarry in the first hall, others

head directly to the sepulchres. Despite the lack of clerical

supervision, our findings point to a moderately recurrent

visitation pattern. The average pilgrim tends to pray (mostly in

silence) opposite the warrior’s tomb, before lowering him or

herself to kiss the green ornamental cover. After reciting their

prayers, some visitors sit by the tomb (womb) for varying lengths

of time, or until they feel they have recovered. The lone

‘official’ regulatory activity that we noticed was the opening

and closing of the venue by a custodian from the village. In27

contrast to Mary’s tomb, there is no authority that seeks to

impose its narrative or rite on the faithful.

While most of the visitors to the shrine are women, the

reasons behind their pilgrimages are many and manifold. For both

Hadijja, a recent divorcee from Kaukab, and Ibtisam, who

travelled 150 kilometres from Ramla, the trip was spurred on by

financial anxieties. Israeli-Palestinians are a marginalized and

dispersed minority which time and again pay the price of a biased

and a premeditated state policy of favouring the Jewish majority

group (Lustick 1980; Rouhana 1998). These women are therefore to

be found in two or three spheres of marginalization and

denigration: a; their very belonging to the Palestinian minority

in Israel which is constantly being marginalized and peripherized

by the state; b. Being women in a very masculine and traditional

society and, c. their precarious marital status in a highly

patriarchal society. Naifa, an elderly woman from Kufr Manda (a

nearby village), recently underwent major heart surgery. Escorted

by her family, she beseeches Abu al-Hijja for a recovery. Her

experienced upon leaving the sunshine for the relatively dark

compound and then coming back outside through an undersized door28

was explained as a rebirth, recuperation from her illness that is

both metaphoric and real.

At both sites, devotees explain that entering the dark room

and the presence of a saint tomb reflects the power of holy

intermediaries to restore their health, improve their wellbeing,

or deliver them from the trials and tribulations of bareness.

Rituals at Mary’s Tomb centre around the desire for motherhood

and fertility, while the focus at the maqam is on healing. In

other words, for devotees, the two shrines reconnect death and

rebirth, tomb and life, as both the Virgin and warrior embarked

on a transition to a new realm that would eventually improve

their existence.

Body-Based Shrines: Politics and Claims to the Land

Forthwith, we return to our initial question of how and why are

womb-tomb shrines venerated today. As already shown, the unique

ancient layouts and symbols of these venues are designed to

confer a strong bodily experience that mimics the foetus’

departure from the womb, or a sapling emerging from the ground.

Taking our explanation one step further, we show that our29

interviewees add to the set of body rituals, fertility and

wellbeing preformed in an ancient setting, a voice of a plethora

of contemporary and local political issues, predicaments and

tensions over lands that are associated with these shrines (see

Friedland and Hecht 1991).

Against the backdrop of the said revival of Jewish holy

places scattered through the landscape, our findings indicate

that Christian and Muslim minorities utilize the architecture and

rituals at the shrines of Mary’s Tomb and Maqam Abu al-Hijja as

political springboards for reasserting local Palestinian claims

to the land (Ben-Ze'ev and Abouraiya 2004). The State of Israel

has placed an emphasis on cultivating Jewish shrines (Bilu 2010;

also Sered 1986; Reiter 2010). In response, as shown from our

findings, the Arab populace is clinging and encouraging

pilgrimage to their own shrines. At the Galilean maqam and

Jerusalem crypt, members of a discriminated sector and/or

religion undertake to mitigate, deny or counter the position of

other groups, not least the hegemonic one (Scott 1985). Within

the context of the rising popularity of these sites in

Israel/Palestine, shrines that are attended by minorities30

exemplify how pilgrims leverage a corporeal experience that is

triggered by womb tomb (prehistoric) architectural models to

reinforce their own claims to the land19.

Rabinowitz (2001) has referred to Israeli Palestinians as a

‘trapped minority’, for their identity is at odds with the

hegemonic Jewish character of Israel, an increasingly ethnocratic

state20. For the sake of resisting majority control and demanding

equal rights, Israeli Palestinians are currently turning also to

religious venues as loci for defining and consolidating their

identity (Luz 2004, 2005, 2008; Hervieu-Léger 2000). Sacred

shrines, with prehistoric architecture are an authentic way to

voice these claims.

One of our interviewees, Sophia, is a Christian-Palestinian

teacher from the West Bank city of Ramallah. At each of our

frequent meetings, she described the personal Via Dolorosa that

she had endured: “After being diagnosed with cancer, I ‘turned to

19 Saltman (2002) describes a similar phenomenon in the Caribbean

Islands.

20 This definition is the gist of Yiftachel’s comprehensive

analysis of Israel’s democratic regime; idem 2006.31

Mary’ and was delivered from her plight. Consequently, I returns

to the Old City every year for the Dormition Feast in order to

fulfil her vows to the Theotokos”. Every August 25, well before

the crack of dawn, Sophia wakes up her two toddlers and carries

them through Israeli roadblocks and probing examinations so her

family can partake in each stage of the celebration. Like many

other pilgrims from towns and villages across the West Bank and

Israel, Sophia stresses the importance of preserving the

traditions at the Virgin’s crypt, even in the face of onerous

political and security constraints. When we interviewed her

before coming to the tomb she said:

“Visiting the shrine in important dates is a way to

reinforce my belonging to this place, that is part of my heritage

that I would like to transmit to my children, the land that they

belong to...”

During the 2009 Dormition Feast, we met Maria and George – a

newly-wed Arab-Orthodox couple. Maria intimated that this rite

offers the most effective and feasible means for rebuilding her

“seriously fragmented and besieged” Christian identity and body.

While leaving the crypt, George added that given Jerusalem’s 32

supreme importance to local Christians as both Arabs and members

of a minority group, it is incumbent upon them to do everything

possible to express their belonging to the Holy Land. The Arab-

Israeli struggle “is a problem of power and ownership” he said.

“We, in our faith, prefer to show our respect to the land through

veneration of Mary, at her tomb, and not to seize the land with

blood and wars.”

As per the narrative of our interviewees, both the Tomb of

Mary and Maqam Abu al-Hijja are part of the Palestinians’ long

history in this land. By visiting these sites, performing various

body rituals, they trigger related memories and underscore their

rights to the place. This is accomplished not only in spirit or

with words, but by physically asserting themselves at these

shrines. A self-proclaimed ‘secular’ political activist from

Kaukab who launched a renovation project at the town’s maqam a

few years ago, expounded on this point in an interview that we

conducted on December 28, 2005:

I would like to renovate all historical sites. True, I’m

not a religious person, but I think that some places need

to be preserved by the people they belong to because they33

are part of their history. If you do not have a history,

you have nothing. It is especially because I am

unobservant that I renovated Maqam Abu al-Hijja, his

tomb, as I wanted to prevent my history in the region

from being erased.

On the other hand, he explains that part of his motivation stems

from the fact that the identity of the saint is an old Islamic

tradition, which ‘goes back well before the advent of the

secularizing Jewish state’.

Jamil, a young man from the same village, holds similar

sentiments. In June 2005, he was entertaining friends on his

front porch when we passed by his home. Jamil invited us to join

them and told us that his father had recovered from a serious

walking impediment after spending a night by the tombs. The

interviewee insisted that he too does not consider himself a

practicing Muslim, but nevertheless visits the shrine on a

regular basis:

I do not go there because I believe in the sanctity of Abu

al-Hijja, nor do I actually pray there. For me, this is my

place; it is important to me that the site looks nice,34

especially because of the new Jewish places that have

recently been developed in the area. I’m not ashamed of

what I have – far from it. Abu al-Hijja is a part of my

history, even though I’m not religious.

From Jamil’s perspective, then, the shrine is a part of his

cultural heritage and thus a way to voice a claim of lands.

Apart from the narrative of indigenousness and land, the

maqam is invariably linked to disagreements over symbolic

meaning and struggles for control. As a ‘web of signification’

(Olds and Ley 1988), the compound is indeed an object of debate

between the powers that be and the opposition over its ‘true’

nature and ‘legitimate’ heirs.

As we argued, womb tombs shrines serve as anatomical-cum-

spatial metaphors with which individuals and groups represent

themselves and express their particular identity, place and land.

Put differently, body-based architectural allow cultural ideas

and abstractions to assume a more concrete form. Our case studies

and the figures they commemorate have been reconceived and

rebranded as components of the Christian/Muslim minority’s

national/religious legacy. By visiting and practicing bodily35

rituals in these shrines, devotees have the opportunity to create

a sense of place with their own politicized body. Moreover, these

same customs have become a vehicle for protesting the status quo

and taking issue with the government’s policies toward the Arab

population. The dual functions of preserving ancient traditions

and enlisting them for contemporary political causes enable

visitors at Maqam Abu al-Hijja and Mary’s Tomb to sustain a

complex, protean form of identity and resist the cultural sway of

Israel/Palestine’s Jewish majority.

Conclusion

While most pilgrimage scholars focus on either communitas or the

contested nature of sacred places, this paper is dedicated to the

relation between womb tomb veneration and territorial claims. The

present article has explored various facets of the religious

experience at two Israeli-Palestinian womb-tomb shrines where the

ancient knowledge/architecture that is engraved into the very

structure of these sites is being physically preserved, refreshed

and swept back into the spotlight. Likewise, pilgrims are

observing, modifying and recreating an assortment of venerable36

practices that are connected to these places (Bell 1992, 1997;

Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994). In so doing, they are harking back to

the genesis of religiosity and primordial inklings of devotion

and belonging. More specifically, Christian and Muslim minorities

are evoking and transforming elements of what they consider to be

their own ancient history and native identities. While the body-

mimicking structure of womb tombs its social meanings never cease

to be re-contextualized. Israeli Arabs use these sites to

reaffirm their sense of belonging and collective identity.

Although fertility and wellbeing rituals are obviously driven by

personal needs, in the context of Mary’s Tomb and Maqam Abu al-

Hijja they also constitute forms of resistance against the

hegemonic order, the state, as they express new forms of

indigenousness and land claiming.

The focus of this study has been on the particular

identities and counter-hegemony politics that are manifested in

the architectural layouts of womb-tomb shrines as well as the

bodily acts performed at these same venues. In this respect, a

pilgrim’s is inevitably political, for even the most intimate

rituals are politicized (see Kugle 2007). A case in point is the37

aforementioned custom of crawling away from a burial site, as

this ritualistic simulation can be interpreted as the foetus

leaving the womb, a ritual that symbolizes the revival of the

Palestinian identities and other minorities. Rituals at these

sort of places allows devotees to vividly express their

nativeness by comparing themselves to a deep-rooted, indigenous

plant that has sprung forth from the local soil. Thus, merely

entering these sites is akin to restoring a primal state, for it

is a metaphor for re-uniting a people with its land. As we have

seen, all notions of belonging and rejuvenation in the Israeli-

Palestinian context are inexorably linked to competing

territorial claims. Within this framework, the various camps

secure the ‘homeland’ with their own bodies. In a similar vein,

religious revivals tend to involve the restoration of ancient

sites in the face of opposition from multiple factors and trends:

adversarial faiths and nationalities; the state; other streams

within the same movement; and the group’s own theological

doctrines and official institutions. Accordingly, Muslim and

Christian Arabs in Israel are contending, first and foremost,

with the Jewishness of the majority’s venerated spaces and the38

Judaization of the landscape. Amid these struggles, womb tombs

play a key role in denoting symbolically and actively, who owns

the land. Thus, the tombs restorations are part of a general

political project of restoring traces of Palestinian identity on

the landscape.

Furthermore, womb tombs are a unique option to raise claims

for land that are not through the official legal or political

systems. The idea of staking one’s claim to a land by reframing

customs and symbols turns up, inter alia, in the classic literature

on indigenous people. Myerhoff (1974:15) interprets the Huichol’s

yearly return to Wirikuta, in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains, as

a prototypical ritual – a journey back to Paradise when the world

was created and all was one. Another riveting example is the

Mohawk creation legends, which reinforce the tribe’s Native

American identity and its claims to vast tracts of the

continent’s land (LaDuke 1999:11). For Mintz (1996ab), the

Creolization of the Caribbean Islands on the part of slaves and

their descendants constitutes a form of resistance against the

plantation owners of yesteryear and present-day factors that are

perceived as exploiting the ‘indigenous’ population (also see39

Saltman 2002:181). In light of the above, scholars are best

advised to refract the insights from these studies on other

minority claims, not least the freighted case of

Israel/Palestine. Age-old womb-tomb structures along with the

attendant body-based rituals are enlisted by Muslim and Christian

groups in the hopes of stemming the tide of the land’s

Judaization and bolstering their own native identity. As such,

womb tombs illuminate the nexus between religious revival and

hegemon-minority struggles.

Bibliography

Arraf, S. 1993. Tabaqat al-anbiya' w-al-awliya' al-salihin fi al-

ard al-muqadassa, 2 vols. Tarshikha: Matbaat al-Ikhwan Makul

[Arabic].

Bartkowski, J.P. 2005. Faithfully embodied: religious identity

and the body. Disclosure 14, 8-37.

40

Bax, M. 1995. Medjugorje: religion, politics and violence in

rural Bosnia. Amsterdam: VU University Press.

Bell, C. 1992. Ritual theory, ritual practice. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

- - - 1997. Ritual: perspectives and dimensions. Oxford: Oxford

University Press

Ben-Ze'ev, E. & I. Abouraiya. 2004. ‘Middle ground’ politics and

the re-Palestinization of place in Israel. Journal of Middle East

Studies 36, 639-55.

Berger, M., Y. Reiter & L. Hammer (eds.) 2010. Holy places in

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. confrontation and co-

existence. London, New York: Routledge.

Bilu, Y. 2010. The saints’ impresarios. Brighton, MA: Academic

Studies Press.

41

Bowman, G. 1991. Christian ideology and the image of the Holy

Land. The place of Jerusalem pilgrimage in the various

Christianities. In Contesting the sacred. The anthropology of

Christian pilgrimage (eds.) Eade, J. & M.J. Sallnow, 98-121.

London: Routledge.

- - - 1993. Nationalizing the sacred: shrines and shifting

identities in the Israeli-occupied territories. Man 28/3, 431-

60.

Brady, J.E & K.M. Prufer (eds.) 2005. In the Maw of the Earth

Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use. Austin: University of

Texas Press.

Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of

‘sex’. London: Routledge.

Chidester D. & E.T. Linenthal (eds.) 1995. American sacred

spaces. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

42

Coleman, S. & J. Eade. 2004. Reframing pilgrimage: culture in

motion. London: Routledge.

Davidman, L. 2011. The transformation of bodily practices among

religious defectors. In Embodied resistance: challenging the

norms, breaking the rules (eds.) C. Bobel & S. Kwan, 209-219.

Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and danger. London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul.

Douglas, M. 1996 [1970]. Natural symbols. London: Routledge.

Dubisch, J. 1995. In a different place: pilgrimage, gender, and

politics at a Greek island shrine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press.

Dumper, M. 2002. The politics of sacred space: The Old City of

Jerusalem in the Middle East conflict. Boulder, CO: Lynne

Rienner.43

Eade, J. & J.M. Sallnow (eds.) 1991. Introduction. In Contesting

the sacred, 1-29. London: Routledge.

El-Aswad, el-S. 1987. Death rituals in rural Egyptian society: a

symbolic study. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural

Systems and World Economic Development 16/2, 205-41.

- - - 2002. Religion and folk cosmology, scenarios of the

visible and invisible in rural Egypt. London: Praeger.

Eliade, M. 1927. Zalmoxis: the vanishing God. Comparative

studies in the religions and folklore of Dacia and Eastern

Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

- - - 1958. Patterns in comparative religion. New York: Sheed &

Ward.

- - - 1973. The sacred in the secular world. Cultural

Hermeneutics 1, 101-13.44

Friedland, R. & Hecht, R.D. 1991. The politics of sacred place:

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif. In Sacred places

and profane spaces. Essays in the geographics of Judaism,

Christianity and Islam (eds.) Scott J. & P. Simpson-Housley. New

York, London, Westport CT: Greenwood Press.

Galbraith, M. 2000. On the road to Częstochowa: rhetoric and

experience on a Polish pilgrimage. Anthropological Quarterly

73/2, 61-73.

Gelder, K. & Jacobs, J. M. 1998. Uncanny Australia: sacredness

and identity in postcolonial nation. Melbourne: University of

Melbourne Press.

Gimbutas, M. 2001. The living goddesses. California: University

of California Press.

Goldziher, I. 1971. Muslim studies [Muhammedanische Studien].

(ed.) S.M. Stern. London: Alllen and Unwin Press.45

Gómes-Barris, M. & C. Irazabal. 2009. Transnational meaning of La

Virgen de Guadalupe: religiosity, space and culture at Plaza

Mexico. Culture and Religion 11/1, 107.

Harris, C. 2002. Making native space. Vancouver: University of

British Columbia Press.

Harris, R. 1997. Gender and the sexual politics of pilgrimage to

Lourdes. In Religion and rebellion (eds.) Devlin, J. & R.

Fanning, 152-73. Dublin: University College of Dublin Press.

Healy, P.F. 2007. The anthropology of Mesoamerican caves. Reviews

in Anthropology 36: 245-78.

Herrero, J.A. 1999. Mejugorje: ecclesiastical conflict,

theological controversy, ethnic division. Research in the Social

Scientific Study of Religion 10, 137-70.

Hervieu-Léger, D. 2000. Religion as a Chain of Memory. New York: Rutgers University Press.

46

Heyden, D. 1975. An interpretation of the cave underneath the

pyramid of the sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico. American Antiquity

40/2, 131-47.

Holt, P. 1986. The age of Crusades. London, New York: Longman.

Humphrey, C. & J. Laidlaw. 1994. The archetypal actions of

ritual: a theory of ritual illustrated by the Jain Rite of

Worship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ibn Taghri-Birdi, 1913. Al-nujum al-zahira fi muluk Misr w-al

Qahira vol. 5. Berkeley: The University of California Press.

Ivakhiv, A. 2001. Claiming sacred ground: Pilgrims and politics

at Glastonbury and Sedona. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jacobsen, T. 1976. Treasures of darkness: a history of

Mesopotamian religion. New Haven: Yale University Press.

47

Kong, L. 1992. The sacred and the secular: exploring contemporary

meanings and values for religious buildings in Singapore.

Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 20/1, 18-42.

- - - 2004. Religious landscapes. In A companion to cultural

geography (eds.) Duncan, J., N. Johnson & R. Schein, 365-81.

Oxford: Blackwell.

Kugle, S.A. 2007. Sufis and saints’ bodies. Mysticism,

corporeality and sacred power in Islam. Chapel Hill, NC:

University of North Carolina Press.

LaDuke, W. 1999. All our relations, native struggles for land and

life. Cambridge MA: South End Press.

Lustic, I. 1980. Arabs in the Jewish state: Israel's control of a

national minority. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Luz, N. 2004. Al-Haram al-Sharif in the Arab-Palestinian public

discourse in Israel: identity, collective memory and social48

construction. Jerusalem: Floersheimer Institute for Policy Study

and Achva Press [Hebrew].

- - - 2005. The Arab community of Jaffa and the Hassan Bey

Mosque. Collective identity and empowerment of the Arabs in

Israel via holy places. Jerusalem: Floersheimer Institute for

Policy Study and Achva Press. [Hebrew].

- - - 2008. The politics of sacred places. Palestinian identity,

collective memory, and resistance in the Hassan Bek Mosque

conflict. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26/6,

1036-052.

Mauss, M. 1934. Le Techniques du Corps. Journal de Psychologie 32/3-

4, 271-293.

Milbrath, S. 1988. Birth images in Mixteca-Puebla art. In The

role of gender in pre-Columbian art and architecture (ed.) V.E.

Miller, 153-78. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

49

- - - 1997. Decapitated lunar goddesses in Aztec art, myth, and

ritual. Ancient Mesoamerica 8, 185-206.

Mintz, S.W. 1996a. Tasting food, tasting freedom: excursions into

eating, culture, and the past. Boston: Beacon Press.

- - - 1996b. Enduring substances, trying theories: the Caribbean

region as Oikoumen. Journal of the Royal Anthropological

Institute 2/2, 289-311.

Mumford, L. 1961. The city in history. New York: Harvest Book.

Myerhoff, B. 1974. Peyote hunt: the sacred journey of the Huichol

Indians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Napolitano, V. 2009. Virgin of Guadalupe, a nexus of affect.

Journal of the Royal Anthropology Institute 15, 96-112.

Olds, K. and Ley, D. 1988. Landscape as Spectacle: World's Fairs

and the Culture of Heroic Consumption. Environment and Planning D:

Society and Space 6, 191-212.

50

Pringle, D. 2007. The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom ofJerusalem, A Corpus (vol. III). Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, pp. 287–306.

Rabinowitz, D. 2001. The Palestinian Citizens of Israel, the

Concept of Trapped Minority and the Discourse of Transnationalism

in Anthropology. Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (1): 64–85.

Reiter, Y. 2010. Contest of cohabitation in shared holy places?

The Cave of the Patriarch and Samuel’s Tomb. In Holy places in

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 158-77.

Rennie, B. 2006. Mircea Eliade: A critical reader. London:

Equinox Publishing.

- - - 2007. Mircea Eliade: the perception of the sacred in the

profane. Intention, reduction, and cognitive theory.

Temenos: Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 43/1, 73-98.

51

- - - 2011. Fact and interpretation: sui generis religion,

experience, ascription, and art. Archaeus: Studies in the

History of Religions 15, 51-74.

Rouhana, N. 1998. The Crisis of minorities in an ethnic state:

The case of the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

International Journal of Middle Eastern Stduies 30/3: 321-

346.

Rubin, M. 2009. Mother of god: a history of the Virgin Mary.

London: Allen Lane.

Saltman, M. 2002. From cattle herding to cultivation – from

territoriality to land. In Land and territoriality (ed.) idem,

159-174. New York: Berg Publishers.

Scarre, C. 2011. Monoumentality. In, Timothy. (ed.) The Oxford

Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual & Religion (ed.) T. Insoll,

9-23. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

52

Scheper-Hughes, N. & M. Lock. 1987. The mindful body: a

prolegomenon to future work in medical anthropology. Medical

Anthropology Quarterly 1, 6-41.

Schiller, E. 1978. The Mount of Olives. Jerusalem: Ariel Press[Hebrew].

Scott, J. 1985. Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant

resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sered, S. 1986. Rachel’s Tomb and the Milk Grotto of the Virgin

Mary: two women’s shrines in Bethlehem. Journal of Feminist

Studies in Religion 2/2, 7-22.

Shifra, S. and K. Jacob, 1996. In those Distant Days: Anthology

of Mesopotamian Literature in Hebrew, Tel Aviv: Am Oved.

Shoemaker, S. 2002. Ancient traditions of the Virgin Mary’s

Dormition and Assumption. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

53

Stadler, N. 2011. Between scripture and performance: cohesion and

dissent at the Feast of Mary’s Dormition in Jerusalem. Religion

41/4, 645-64.

Stol, M. & F.A.M. Wiggermann. 2000. Birth in Babylonia and the

Bible: its Mediterranean setting. Leiden: Brill.

Strathern, A. 1996. Body thoughts. Ann Arbor, MI: University of

Michigan Press.

Thomas, J. 2000. Death, identity and the body in Neolithic

Britain. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6/4, 653-

68.

Turner V. 1967. The forest of symbols: aspects of Ndembu Ritual.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Tweed, T.A. 1997. Our Lady of the Exile: diasporic religion at a

Cuban Catholic shrine in Miami. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

54

Walter, E.V. 1988. Placeway: a theory of the human environment.

Chapel Hill, NC & London: University of North Carolina Press.

Wolkstein, D. & S. N. Kramer. 1983. Inanna: Queen of Heaven and

Earth. New York: Harper Perennial.

Yiftachel, O. 2006. Etnocracy. Land and identity politics in

Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

55