International Council for Traditional Music Study Group on Iconography of the Performing Arts Symposium

Rituals exist in all human societies from the times immemorial. They could be religious, political, juridical, and calendrical urban and rural collective and individual public and private. Some rituals have been long forgotten the others are still being performed following hundreds of years of their tradition new rituals are being formed in front of our eyes. As with all aspects of intangible heritage, that is constantly recreated by communities and groups, evidence about its past forms is often blurry, and besides travelogues, ethnological descriptions, and ceremonial book, visual and archaeological sources can provide critical information about their past.