Overview

The studies in this volume share a focus on religion in the ancient Mediterranean world: how ritual, myth, spectatorship, and travel reflect the continual interaction of human beings with the richly fictive beings who defined the boundaries of groups, access to the past, and mobility across land and seascapes. They share as well the methodological exploration of the intersection between human sciences, the integration of numerous disciplines around the study of all aspects of human life from the biological to the cultural, and the study of the past. In so doing, they continue a long dialogue that engages with critical models derived from specializations within history, philology, archaeology, sociology, and anthropology, and addresses, increasingly, the potentialities and pitfalls of quantitative and digital analyses. Many of the threads in this long conversation inform these chapters: the comparative project, human social evolution, disciplinary reflexivity, religion as an embedded, functional, and structural system, and the role for agency, networks, and materiality.

Full Product Details

9781948488518

Table of Contents

Reviews

[The book’s] novelty in discussing jointly the main recent methodological approaches from a theoretical and analytical perspective in the ancient Mediterranean stands out. It is a first volume that brings together anthropological models, CSR [cognitive science of religion], ESR [evolutionary science of religion], and analytical digital approaches. [ . . . ] It shows that research projects on ancient religion often [ . . . ] deal with data and the agency of individuals integrated into a social-construct environment and physical space. The volume also urges the creation of a standard system of categories (ontologies) and more comprehensive cross-disciplinary digital big-data projects and discussions specifically addressing ancient religions. Francesca Mazzilli, University of Bari Aldo Moro, in Antigüedad: Religiones y Sociedades, 23, 2025 [487-497]

Author Information

Sandra Blakely is associate professor of Classics at Emory University. Megan Daniels is assistant professor of ancient Greek material culture at the University of British Columbia.

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