Paper short abstract:

The paper utilizes the recent dispute over an architectural project on the site of the largest Celtic oppidum in Czechia, analysing relations between heritage and religion. It argues modern Pagans adjust authoritative heritage discourse by pointing out site’s sacred, wild, and religious dimension.

Paper long abstract:

Following Smith (2006) or Harrison (2012), heritage is an active process of assembling objects, discourses, places, and practices to make sense of the past and future in the present. Religious discourses significantly influence such processes as they peculiarly interpret the past. Modern Paganism revives and reconstructs the pre-Christian European religions. Modern Pagans re-explain the past, e.g., by considering Celtic, Slavic, or, for instance, megalithic culture sites sacred and claim them Pagan.

Scholars investigated religious constructions of the past, landscapes, and various sites (Gunzburg and Brady 2021). Also, scholars explored how prehistorical places provide feelings of ontological security and relaxation (Nolan 2020). However, little scholarship examined the impact and influence of modern Paganism and its usage of heritage processes.

In this paper, I utilise an ongoing architectural project concerning the largest Celtic oppidum “Závist,” near the Czech capital Prague to make sense of the relations between modern Paganism and heritage. The local municipality planned to build a lookout tower and a concrete pad on the hill’s top and change the site’s face. The plan caused a heated dispute and initiated a petition as locals, experts, and representatives of the modern Pagan community questioned the project. Their call was successful and forced the municipality to reconsider the site’s renovation. Both modern Pagans and locals argue that oppidum Závist is a heritage site, the capital’s last piece of wilderness, highlighting its sacred dimension, and refuse the architectural plan.

In this paper, I argue that modern Pagans challenge and adjust authorized heritage discourse by linking religious discourses (imaginations of the Pagan past) with the sacredness of nature and tensions between notions of urban and wild. Thus, the paper offers a new perspective on addressing relations between heritage processes and the utilisation of religious representation of the past on the example of modern Paganism.