Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice in Ancient Mediterranean Religion
The study of material culture has helped create a common meeting ground for scholars seeking to integrate images, sites, texts and implements in their approach to religion in the ancient Mediterranean.
This book explores the productivity of these approaches, with case studies from Israel, Athens, Rome, Sicily and North Africa. The results foreground the capacity of material approaches to cast light on the cultural creation of the sacred through the integration of rhetorical, material, and iconographic means.
The discussion opens more nuanced pathways to the uses of text in the study of material evidence, and highlights the potential for material objects to bring political and ethnic boundaries into the sacred realm.
Sandra Blakely has a PhD in Classics and Anthropology from the University of Southern California, and is currently an associate professor of Classics at Emory University. Her research focusses on religion, mobility, historiography, and the anthropology of the ancient world. Fellowships include the Getty Research Institute, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.