Week 4: Ritual Fire – Group E Data

Group 1

Bovine Femur and Tail Together

0min: 00sec femur and tail placed on fire

1:00 lots of smoke. tail starts moving wrong way

2:00 tail has moved really far wrong way. fire starting to get bigger

3:50 wind pushing fire over, but 3 feet of flame from fire

6:00 Jake flips over our tail (because it was curling the wrong way)

8:00 still some bursts of big flame, though fire is dying down. after turning tail, it has started to curl the other way

9:00 one side of bone which hadn’t caught finally starts burning and the fire gets real big

10:00-13:00 spurts of big flames

13:00 still big flames, rolled over bone to catch last bit of fat

15:00 The bone fire has burned down almost completely. The tail is basically straight (weird.).

18:00 wine poured over bone and then removal of the bone

This run, we placed the bone and tail parallel to the top level of wood which seems to have reduced the efficiency of burning either piece of meet. Perpendicular to the wood is the correct method.

Lamb bone wrapped

0:00 placed on the fire

4:00 maybe doing it’s thing? Hard to tell with wind and big flames from fire

5:00 a couple bursts of flame

6:00 wine and lamb bone taken off the fire

The lamb was pretty disappointing. It may be that our fire was large enough that its flames obscured any additional theatrics from the lamb bone burning.

Tail alone on fire

0min:00sec tail on fire

1:00 naturally tail bends the other way. This is how the tension works

4:00 lots of smoke from fire

6:00 arching more but in wrong direction. (in retrospect, this bend is the expected curl and leaving it on the fire after this point wasn’t entirely necesary)

3:14 some promising movement??? (Excitement)

3:16 wood shifts… not looking great

13:00 Feeling pretty disappointed because we didn’t think the tail had worked (maybe evidence for tension in the ritual?)

15:00 turns out, our platform sucked and after we shifted the wood the tail looks like it is supposed to

the logs had been used a couple times before this run so the top logs weren’t properly on fire (already burnt out partially). In comparison to the last tail we burned, this may have increased the amount of time required to make it curl. From this run, we also learned that the structural integrity of the alter is essential to fully appreciating the theater of the sacrifice. This is only a problem if multiple sacrifices are made on the same fire.

Unwrapped bone

0:00 femur put on the fire

7:00 rotated over

18:00 femur taken off the fire

The damage to this femur is very similar to that of the femurs wrapped in fat.

Wrapped Femur and Tail together

0:00 Femur and tail put on fire

2:00 Tail begins to curl and big ole fire starts real quick

5:00 This fire is going bigger faster. The tail is curled very far, apparently as much as it will go. Around this point everyone gathered around this fire to witness the spectacle. It was clearly very exciting and attests to the tension and joy Jake has discussed surrounding these rituals

8:00 fire dying down a bit. The theater of the ritual is over

Leg left on after this to have a femur that was burned for longer

21:00 wine poured over femur and then removed from fire

This bone has fractured a lot more than others, likely due to the time left on the fire. When the theatric element is over after 6-8 minutes, why would the bone be left on the fire for longer instead of being dosed soon after the flames die down?