This page groups sacred sites by whether their sacred status is still actively maintained. Wikipedia notes that Mircea Eliade "argues that while the concept of a sacred space is often associated with religious traditions, it is not exclusive to them," since secular societies can keep treating a place as significant too. Browsing this way lets a visitor tell a site with living religious observance apart from one preserved mainly for its history.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingMonuments and places of apparent ritual use from before writing, whose religious meaning must be inferred from the structures themselves, from what was deposited in them and from their alignments. Nothing here is the sacred site of a named religion: the grouping is defined by the absence of a text, not by a shared belief. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredUnrelated societies across tens of thousands of years and several regions - Ice Age cave painters in France, the builders of Gobekli Tepe and Catalhoyuk in Anatolia, the Maltese temple builders, and the megalith builders of Brittany, Britain, Ireland and Orkney. They are grouped by the state of the evidence about them, not by any shared culture, descent or religion. 2 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThese are the monuments most heavily claimed by others: ley lines, lost civilisations, ancient astronauts, and modern ceremonies presented as the builders' own. Rigorous work on alignments exists and is cited on the entries; it is not the same thing as the claims made in its name. Where a monument is used by a modern movement, the atlas records that use as modern. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryContested. Whether a prehistoric structure can be identified as religious at all is disputed. The "temple" reading of Gobekli Tepe has been challenged on the ground that the same buildings are equally readable as houses, and the line archaeologists draw between ritual and domestic space may not have existed for the people who built them. 3 Learn More
Prehistoric Sacred Sites
This group gathers prehistoric sacred sites, monuments and places of apparent ritual significance from before written history, whose religious meaning must be inferred from the structures themselves and their alignments rather than from any surviving text. They range from megalithic circles and standing stones to painted caves and ancient sanctuaries.
The browser will find such monuments from across the ancient world. Because their builders left no scripture, the atlas is careful to distinguish what is known of these sites archaeologically from the many later and modern interpretations projected onto them.
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Filter Results10 entries
Avebury
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Callanish Standing Stones
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Carnac
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Chauvet
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Ggantija
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Lascaux
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Newgrange
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Skara Brae and the Heart of Neolithic Orkney
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Stonehenge
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum
Standing, but maintained as a museum or heritage monument
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland
3. So Fair a House: Gobekli Tepe and the Identification of Temples in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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