Most people have a modern house elsewhere on the reservation, and so the time spent living in the Pueblo is for intense religious rituals, for learning how to live in the traditional ways, to become selfsufficient.

BBC: New Mexico��s alien nation

Relied on by generations of Indians for tilling fields, dairy products and dung fuel, the cow is regarded by Hindus as gau mata, or maternal figure, and has had a long-standing central role in India's religious rituals.

CNN: Growing beef trade hits India's sacred cow

The job of a military chaplain serving in a war zone goes well beyond conducting religious rituals and offering spiritual counseling.

NPR: From Chicago to Anbar: A Chaplain's View of War

The textiles form an indispensable part of important social and cultural occasions such as religious rituals and festivals, and in particular weddings, for which Li women design their own dresses.

UNESCO: Culture

Dr McNamara, for example, plans to analyse a database called the Ethnographic Atlas to see if he can find any correlations between the amount of cultural co-operation found in a society and the intensity of its religious rituals.

ECONOMIST: The science of religion