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The contributions of the present volume deal with the repercussions of intercultural encounters between Greek and non-Greek groups in the Hellenistic period. Its methodological focus lies in exploring the transformative potential of those encounters and their impact on the social imaginaries of all parties involved.
A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World presents a comprehensive overview of a wide range of topics relating to the practices, expressions, and interactions of religion in antiquity, primarily in the Greco-Roman world. • Features readings that focus on religious experience and expression in the ancient world rather than solely on religious belief • Places a strong emphasis on domestic and individual religious practice • Represents the first time that the concept of “lived religion” is applied to the ancient history of religion and archaeology of religion • Includes cutting-edge data taken from top contemporary researchers and theorists in the field • Examines a large variety of themes and religious traditions across a wide geographical area and chronological span • Written to appeal equally to archaeologists and historians of religion
The analysis of the dynamic nature of rituals has become a heuristic tool for the investigation not only of religious behaviour and beliefs, but also for the study of social practice and communication in ancient and modern societies. From public assembly gatherings and funerals to celebration of cult feasts or the honouring of individuals, rituals mark socially important occasions, define beginnings and endings, and aid social transitions. Thus, rituals carry all kinds of messages intended to support and express the performance of those involved, and to create the desired results. The present volume brings together a collection of articles on rituals in the Graeco-Roman world, focussing on the interconnection between ritual as a means of communication and communication as a ritual phenomenon. In regarding rituals as an interface in the realm of cultural practices, the contributors demonstrate the manifold function of ritual communication in the life of ancient communities.
There is a long tradition in classical scholarship of reducing the Hellenistic period to the spreading of Greek language and culture far beyond the borders of the Mediterranean. More than anything else this perception has hindered an appreciation of the manifold consequences triggered by the creation of new spaces of connectivity linking different cultures and societies in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. In adopting a new approach this volume explores the effects of the continuous adaptations of ideas and practices to new contexts of meaning on the social imaginaries of the parties participating in these intercultural encounters. The essays show that the seemingly static end-products of the interaction between Greek and non-Greek groups, such as texts, images, and objects, were embedded in long-term discourses, and thus subject to continuously shifting processes.
The essays in this volume originate from the Third Qumran Institute Symposium held at the University of Groningen, December 2013. Taking the flexible concept of “cultural encounter” as a starting point, the essays in this volume bring together a panoply of approaches to the study of various cultural interactions between the people of ancient Israel, Judea, and Palestine and people from other parts of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. In order to study how cultural encounters shaped historical development, literary traditions, religious practice and political systems, the contributors employ a broad spectrum of theoretical positions (e.g., hybridity, métissage, frontier studies, postcolonialism, entangled histories and multilingualism), to interpret a diverse set of literary, documentary, archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic, and iconographic sources.
Inspired by a critical reconsideration of current monolithic approaches to the study of Greek religion, this book argues that ancient Greeks displayed a disquieting capacity to validate two (or more) dissonant, if not contradictory, representations of the divine world in a complementary rather than mutually exclusive manner. From this perspective the six chapters explore problems inherent in: order vs. variety/chaos in polytheism, arbitrariness vs. justice in theodicy, the peaceful co-existence of mono- and polytheistic theologies, human traits in divine imagery, divine omnipotence vs. limitation of power, and ruler cult. Based on an intimate knowledge of ancient realia and literary testimonia the book stands out for its extensive application of relevant perceptions drawn from cultural anthropology, theology, cognitive science, psychology, and linguistics.
Contributions in this volume demonstrate how, across the ancient Mediterranean and over hundreds of years, women’s rituals intersected with the political, economic, cultural, or religious spheres of their communities in a way that has only recently started to gain sustained academic attention. The volume aims to tease out a number of different approaches and contexts, and to expand existing studies of women in the ancient world as well as scholarship on religious and social history. The contributors face a famously difficult task: ancient authors rarely recorded aspects of women’s lives, including their songs, prophecies, and prayers. Many of the objects women made and used in ritual wer...
Winner of the Runciman Award Winner of the Charles J. Goodwin Award “Tells the story of how the Seleucid Empire revolutionized chronology by picking a Year One and counting from there, rather than starting a new count, as other states did, each time a new monarch was crowned...Fascinating.” —Harper’s In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, his successors, the Seleucid kings, ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia and Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. In 305 BCE, in a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, Seleucus I introduced a linear conception of time. Time would no longer restart with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years—c...
This volume presents the proceedings of the eighth workshop of the international network 'Impact of Empire', which concentrates on the history of the Roman Empire and brings together ancient historians, archaeologists, classicists and specialists in Roman law from some thirty European and North American universities. The eighth volume focuses on the impact of the Roman Empire on religious behaviour, with a special focus on the dynamics of ritual. The volume is divided into three sections: ritualising the empire, performing civic community in the empire and performing religion in the empire.
This unique collection applies globalization concepts to the discipline of archaeology, using a wide range of global case studies from a group of international specialists. The volume spans from as early as 10,000 cal. BP to the modern era, analysing the relationship between material culture, complex connectivities between communities and groups, and cultural change. Each contributor considers globalization ideas explicitly to explore the socio-cultural connectivities of the past. In considering social practices shared between different historic groups, and also the expression of their respective identities, the papers in this volume illustrate the potential of globalization thinking to brid...