Toward an Anthropology of Sacred Mountains

Students of the anthropization of mountain landscapes must look for evidence of ritual activity. Cultural reverence for striking geologic protuberances—mountains, tors, inselbergs, large boulders, replicated in human-made mounds—is probably universal. This chapter applies the author’s model of a “vertical dimension” of religious beliefs to understand the universal belief in elevated divinities, and the conceptualization of a sacred mountain. Some representative examples from world ethnology, and some possibly universal symbolic themes, are reviewed. The concept of the “horned mountain,” perhaps coined by art and architecture historian Vincent Scully, is examined for the possibility of wider ethnological application. For example, it is suggested that the central Balinese Hindu temple at Besakih was constructed in relation to the sacred volcanic Mount Agung, in a way similar to the positioning of the Minoan palace at Knossos vis-à-vis Mount Juktas.