Barrett’s suggestion takes on more significance for this investigation in light of Taves’ comments on the importance of group-level analysis for the study of “Religion.” In an article (published two years before Barrett’s essay), “Reverse Engineering Complex Cultural Concepts” Taves clarifies the “Building Block Approach” she introduced in Religious Experience Reconsidered as one solution to the struggle to define “Religion.”¹ She writes, “We need to recognize, in other words, that ‘religion’ as a complex cultural concept doesn’t exist at the psychological or neurological levels. At those levels, we simply find various processes that have been and are combined to create complex cultural phenomena that sometimes get labeled or categorized in cultural terms, some of which are ‘religion-like.’”² Taves attempts to accommodate differences between disciplinary goals, sources, and training by suggesting that scholars in Religious Studies intentionally “reverse engineer” the complex cultural concepts that are religions.³ She argues that scholars in Religious Studies should construct inquiries in such a manner that allows for the work to be “maximally useful” to researchers from other disciplines.⁴ In the process of identifying the lack of this kind of work in the field, she lays out just what it might look like: “reverse engineering the concepts of religion and spirituality in a way that will be fruitful either for scientists, who need to operationalize component parts, or for historians and ethnographers, who want to consider how the parts have been synthesized into larger socio-cultural wholes.”⁵ This idea seems to allow for the difference in perspectives, discussed above, between various scholars working in CSR and scholars of “Religion.” Rather than arguing, as Geertz does, that disciplinary boundaries need modifying in order to accommodate interdisciplinary work across well-established historical divides between the Humanities and Natural Sciences, Taves suggests modification of the way scholars of "Religion" consider their object of study.⁶ This reorientation is key to Taves’ argument in Religious Experience Reconsidered: before one can begin to deconstruct separate “religions” into constituent “building blocks” one must allow that the former are not indivisible wholes. This seems to be a matter of researcher positionality as well as one of defining “Religion.”

Recall Taves’ experience of feeling pressure to categorize herself among the binary options including: “critic or caretaker, and religious or nonreligious.”⁷ In her 2009 book, Taves argues against a sui generis approach to the study of “Religion” that has some association with positions of “caretaker” or “religious” and views “Religion” as a category of phenomena incommensurable with others. She writes, “Under the influence of the sui generis approach to religion, scholars assumed that the boundary between religious and non-religious things was fixed and stable, even if sometimes hard to discern. With a sui generis understanding of "Religion" and religious experience there is no need to focus on this boundary to analyze how things become religious because religious things 'just are'.”⁸ Taves emphasizes that, by demarcating the boundary between “religious” and “non-religious” categories, scholars of “Religion” appear to regard the object of study somewhat religiously.⁹

By setting the category of “Religion” apart from other categories of human phenomena and treating it as incomparably special, scholars, regardless of personal religious perspective, contribute to the “protection” of “Religion,” and things religious, from reductive “destruction.” Although Taves does not seem to lay responsibility for the perpetuation of the sui generis approach at the feet of religious scholars, some within the field of Religious Studies do. In The Invention of World Religions, Masuzawa observes that a number of “secularist scholars” criticize religious studies departments for have a particularly high concentration of “unreconstituted religious essentialists” working in them.¹⁰ She writes, “This should not come as a surprise, it is often said, given that the field is populated, and by sheer number dominated, by the representatives, participants, and sympathizers of various religions or, more recently, by those who may be best described as advocated and sympathizers of 'religion' in general.”¹¹ Russell McCutcheon is a well-established critic of this sort, known for advancing this perspective in Critics Not Caretakers.¹² He writes, 

I do not see the participant as setting the ground rules for how his or her behavior ought to be studied by scholars. No other area of the human sciences is compelled to grant the people studied a monopoly on determining how their behaviors ought to be viewed, and I see no reason why such ownership of meanings should be granted in the study of religion…. participants’ viewpoint, their behavior, and the institutions they build and reproduce are data for the scholar intent on theorizing as to why human beings expend such tremendous creativity and intellectual/social energy in discourses on the gods, origins, and endtimes.¹³

Although McCutcheon’s argument is interesting and worth more consideration than the scope of this investigation will allow, it is important to note that, like McCutcheon, Taves is interested in the way that “Religion,” as a category, is constructed and used, particularly by scholars in Religious Studies. She writes, “‘Religion,’ as scholars regularly point out, does not designate a specific, cross-culturally stable thing that we can reliably look for on the ground. Any specification of ‘religious’ (or ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’ or ‘sacred’ or ‘magical’), whether by scholars or practitioners of religions or believers who are the subject of scholarly investigation, excludes phenomena that some people sometimes deem religious and includes other things that most would not consider religious.”¹⁴ Cogent to this investigation, Taves’ comments suggest that her approach is more nuanced and sensitive to the illusion of distinction between labels of “religious” and “non-religious.”¹⁵

At issue, in the sui generis promulgation of this “distinction” identified by Taves, is an assumption that a stable category called “Religion” can be defined. Taves’ approach is not concerned with what she calls “casual” usage of the term or category, but specifically with its construction and function (or lack thereof) in research.¹⁶ She writes, “When researchers stipulate definitions of religion rather than relying on more generic and at the same time more precise descriptors, they artificially stabilize the phenomena of interest. Doing so has several drawbacks. In stabilizing something that is inherently contested, stipulative definitions tell us more about what researchers think should count as religious than about what subjects think.”¹⁷ This insight is significant and instructive to the approach underlying this dissertation: artificially stabilizing the phenomena of interest has several drawbacks. She clarifies, “Reproducing these distinctions in our research not only makes meta-analysis more difficult, but also makes it more difficult to work across times and cultures where these distinctions do not hold. In stabilizing something unstable, we limit our ability to study how people determine what counts as religious where that category is operative and how they characterize similar phenomena when it is not.”¹⁸ Although the connection is not obvious, there is something in Taves’ comments that criticizes methodological limits similar to those imposed by Hultkrantz on his “religio-ecological method.” Like Hultkrantz’s notion that his method can only be applied where its applicability is clear, it sounds like the category of “Religion” is only stable and applicable where it is already clearly operative. This is particularly relevant to the historical case studies under investigation in my research wherein identifying the line between ancient things “religious” from “non-religious” is a notoriously difficult task.

In apparent solution to this problem, Taves uses the term “special” to account for the overarching category to which things “religious” (and things that seem similar) fit.¹⁹ She writes, “The idea of ‘specialness’ is one broader, more generic net that captures most of what people have in mind when they refer to ‘sacred,’ ‘magical,’ ‘spiritual,’ ‘mystical,’ or ‘religious’ and then some. We can consider specialness both behaviorally and substantively, asking if there are behaviors that tend to mark things off as special and if there are particular types of things that are more likely to be considered special than others.”²⁰ Taves’ solution is clever because it does not merely obviate the issue of defining “Religion” by widening the scope of categorization, it attempts to account for the systems in which such definitions, and the ascription of such labels, function. She writes, “I do not think scholars of religion have a monopoly on special things, since there are lots of special things that do not have religion-like connotations, but I think it is quite possible that the more special people consider something to be the more likely they and others are to place it under some religion-like heading (for example, 'religious', 'sacred', 'magical', 'superstitious', et cetera).”²¹ It is easy to begin to see how Taves’ approach, just by broadening the category of interest to include things “special,” lumps things that some might consider “religious” with things that all may agree are not. 

Taves’ “Building Block Approach” is based on an “ascriptive formulation” in which “religious things,” as objects of study, are reoriented to “things deemed religious.”²² In contrast to a sui generis approach, Taves’ model of ascription takes into consideration both “things deemed religious” and the processes and variables involved in socially/culturally constructing, or “deeming,” things so.²³ The process of forming “religions” is not as simple as regarding things as “special”, so Taves takes this as the most basic level (and necessary beginning) of processes that lead to what might be deemed “religious.” She writes: 

The distinctions between ascription and attribution and simple and composite formations have implications not only for the study of experiences that people consider special but also for the study of religion more generally. The distinction between ascription and attribution allows us to distinguish between the creation of special things through a process of singularization, in which people consciously or unconsciously ascribe special characteristics to things, and the attribution of causality to the thing or to behaviors associated with it. The distinction between simple ascriptions, in which an individual thing is set apart as special, and composite ascriptions, in which simple ascriptions are incorporated into the more complex formations characteristic of religions or spiritualities, in turn allows us to envision a building-block approach to the study of religion.²⁴

Taves’ description of processes that might contribute to the construction of religions is fascinating and important to understanding large questions of “how” religions or other cultural complexes develop. Although her argument regarding processes of ascription and formation underlie the research of this dissertation, it is beyond the scope of this writing to consider, too deeply, the theoretical nuances of Taves’ ascription model. It is, however, important to understand just how this model structures the current investigation.

The emphasis on the ascription of “specialness” or of a label of “religious” allows scholars to study the “thing deemed” in comparison to either different things similarly regarded or in comparison to similar things differently regarded. Taves writes, “identifying the basic elements and processes…will allow us to set up more precise comparisons across times and places, which will allow researchers to better understand how these basic elements and processes can be used to generate disparate cultural phenomena, some of which people view as sacred, and in some cases to elaborate into more complex systems that scholars and practitioners may characterize as religions and spiritualities.”²⁵ Taves’ approach suggests that, by focusing studies on these basic elements (“building blocks”), scholars can articulate more precise comparisons between the formations of these elements (“religions”). This kind of comparative work makes up the basis of this dissertation and the “Building Block Approach” offers a clear structure for setting up this study. 

Taves’ approach is easy to identify in Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight that focus on three specific “building blocks”: “buildings deemed religious”, “art deemed religious,” and “people (and texts) deemed religious.” Across the various publications in which she argues for this approach, Taves avoids defining specific rules for considering something a “building block.” Although she offers a few suggestions for possible study, it is important that Taves leaves the question open to scholarly interpretation, as needed for specific inquiries.²⁶ The “building blocks” mentioned above are particularly relevant to the literature concerning the ancient worship of YHWH or Ahura Mazda. The clever simplicity of Taves’ “ascription formulation” shows these elements to be much more available to cross-cultural examination than the familiar terminology of temples, icons, or prophets. Attempting to define the latter three terms appears nearly as difficult (and the results as unstable) as the unending task of defining “Religion.” The formulation of these points of analogy according to Taves’ approach offers opportunities that would not otherwise be available using familiar terms. Considering the dearth of research on the inquiry taken up in this dissertation (as discussed in the previous chapter), it would be difficult to expect to find specific work or insights on the impact of environmental factors on the development of temples or iconography. In contrast, however, research conducted on the influence of environmental contexts on the generation of buildings, building culture, or lack thereof – presented broadly enough to allow for religious and non-religious buildings alike – is rather difficult to miss in the course of research on the subject. This is just one example, but it illustrates a powerful advantage for this dissertation that might have been lost if Taves had chosen to stipulate restrictive parameters for defining “building blocks”.

Taves’ work informs the general structure of this investigation, but the specific approaches used in the course of research for each point of comparison vary by chapter and include the use of tools that belong to the recently developing category of “Digital Humanities” (DH). Due to the relative novelty of incorporating these tools into dissertation work, it is important to point out that the use of DH tools and methods stems from the motivation of scholars in “raider disciplines”, identified by Taves, to “borrow whatever seems useful relative to our subject matter from wherever we can find it.”²⁷ Given the absence of scholarship on the topic of this dissertation, the lack of guidance from Hultkrantz, and the newness of innovative work by Frachetti and Taves, employing the most advantageous and effective tools for conducting this investigation is reasonably pragmatic. Although the tools used for some of this research are digital, these projects could, at great cost of time and energy, be conducted to the same ends using non-digital methods. Mapping, spatial analysis, and qualitative text analysis are just a few research activities, for example, that have served the purposes scholars of religion (and the humanities) since long before the advent of computing and will continue in both digital and analog forms into the future.