**1. Identification of Cultic Places**

Cult places such as temples, shrines, or open-air cultic complexes are an important part of the 'religious landscape' of ancient peoples. However, the identification of excavated buildings as cult places is not unambiguous. Much research has gone into the question of how cult practices and ritual behaviour express themselves in the material culture and how to follow the trail, so to speak, from cult to excavated remains (see for instance Blake 2005). The problem many field archaeologists are struggling with is rather how to interpret archaeological remains and which criteria to apply in order to define these remains as related to cultic practices. This may be the same trail, but walking it backwards. Not: which traces do cult practices leave in the archaeological record, but: which archaeological remains may be connected to cultic practices. To establish this is a much harder endeavour. Two examples are below.

Rituals concerning the communal consumption of meat may leave traces in the ground in the form of hundreds of animal bones. But not every find of large amounts of animal bones should be interpreted as evidence of those rituals and thus of the cultic nature of the site in question. Other explanations are possible, such as butchering for household consumption, the communal consumption of meat not connected with a religious ritual but, for instance, a wedding, or it being the remains of a dump site.

The placing of figurines as votive objects in a shrine often results in the excavations of many such objects in a building, but not every building containing figurines is by definition a shrine. Figurines may have been used and are often found in domestic contexts and tombs. The building may be the place where such objects were made, stored or sold, or maybe figurines were used not only as votive objects. Arguing from cult practices (the placing of votives in a shrine) to archaeological finds (the presence of figurines in a building) is much more straightforward than arguing from the excavated remains (figurines in a building) to cult practices (so this building is a shrine). As the 'backward trail' is hard to follow, archaeologists have to use the criteria that argue from cult practice to material culture, bearing in mind that other explanations are possible and should be examined.
