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Comment by jccooper | Hacker News Reader

The common understanding of cult (which I would argue is probably "religion I don't like", but that doesn't matter) is not in use here. This is a technical usage in archaeology to refer to religious interaction with place and object... which is basically all prehistoric archaeology can see.

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I wasn't aware of that. It was so drummed into me at university (Religious Studies) to avoid the word that I'm intrigued as to why another academic field would uses it seriously. Do you have any reading recommendations that might give an insight into its technical usage?

>It was so drummed into me at university (Religious Studies) to avoid the word that I'm intrigued as to why another academic field would uses it seriously.

Because there would be very little feedback from Religious Studies into other fields on what words are acceptable. There are disagreements on terminology within academia in the same sub-field (I saw this in even programming language research).

The Latin word cultus had no negative connotation and described this activity. Anything classicist and classicist-adjacent continues to use the word "cult" because that's how it was used in Latin and in English. The negative connotation did not arise until much later, probably in the mid-20th century.

The "technical" usage is simply the normal usage of the word for anyone who mostly reads books published prior to the 1960s.

I went looking into it, but haven't found a good capsule reference. It's a pretty strong cultural practice (and an old one; references to Classical practices like "the cult of Dionysis" are well-worn) and isn't always specified.

This article "“Cult” in the Study of Religion and Archaeology" in ASMA (https://www.academia.edu/5061036/Cult_in_the_Study_of_Religi...) has a pretty good discussion.

Here's an article from a text book on "Archaeology of Cult and Religion": (https://www.academia.edu/13590600/2005._Archaeology_of_Cult_...)

You can see a working usage in "A Problem Oof Definition: “Cultic” and “Comestic” Contexts in Philistia" (https://www.academia.edu/1868319/A_Problem_of_Definition_Cul...)

I haven't read the books, but there's a couple books covered in this review from AJA on the topic: https://www.ajaonline.org/book-review/619

Modern archaeology makes some odd-seeming linguistic choices to try to avoid implying more than they actually know; part of that is avoiding "religion" in favor of "ritual" and "cultic practices", because "religion" implies a whole lot of stuff that artifacts just can't see.

> This is a technical usage

No: the audience is BBC article readers so the meaning is defined by that audience. The BBC is not a technical journal of archaeology, and if they want to use a technical term then they need to explain it and avoid using it in the heading. “cu*t” is wildly incorrect for the audience here.

I understand if you think we're too fragile to hear the word "cult", but the way you chose to obscure it is... not an improvement.

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