Location, location, location

The scholarly focus becomes what people do in ritual and how they do it; what objects do they use and how are these ritualized. Ritualization is a culturally specific phenomenon; rituals are not universal, and one needs to study them contextually in order to recognize and interpret them. By concentrating on the ritualized actions and artifacts within their original context, one can begin to reconstruct their meanings and significance even when one cannot reconstruct the entire ritual itself.—Ancient Egyptian Prisoner Statues: Fragments of the Late Old Kingdom, 166