The study of religious or heroic legends and tales. One constant rule of mythology is that whatever happens amongst the gods or other mythical beings was in one sense or another a reflection of events on earth. Recorded myths and legends, perhaps preserved in literature or folklore, have an immediate interest to archaeology in trying to unravel the nature and meaning of ancient events and traditions.
Religious specialists are those people in a given society who have a connection to the deities who control things humans cannot.
Or...who at least have the chutzpah to claim that they can!
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
I like the distinction between shamans and priests.
The personal vs. public uses of them by society.
(The confessional booth kind of blurs that line though.)
It would explain the long continued coexistence of Catholicism and Voodoo in the Caribbean and Africa.