Excavating Pilgrimage: Archaeological Approaches to Sacred Travel and Movement in the Ancient World [Hardcover]

This volume sheds new light on the significance and meaning of material culture for the study of pilgrimage in the ancient world, focusing in particular on Classical and Hellenistic Greece, the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity. It thus discusses how archaeological evidence can be used to advance our understanding of ancient pilgrimage and ritual experience. The volume brings together a group of scholars who explore some of the rich archaeological evidence for sacred travel and movement, such as the material footprint of different activities undertaken by pilgrims, the spatial organization of sanctuaries and the wider catchment of pilgrimage sites, as well as the relationship between architecture, art and ritual. Contributions also tackle both methodological and theoretical issues related to the study of pilgrimage, sacred travel and other types of movement to, from and within sanctuaries through case studies stretching from the first millennium BC to the early medieval period.

List of figures

Preface

Notes on contributors

1. Introduction: Archaeologies of pilgrimage
Wiebke Friese and Troels Myrup Kristensen

2. Inter-cultural pilgrimage, identity, and the Axial Age in the ancient Near East
Joy McCorriston

3. Collective mysteries and Greek pilgrimage: The cases of Eleusis, Thebes and Andania
Inge Nielsen

4. Of piety, gender and ritual space: An archaeological approach to womens sacred travel in Greece
Wiebke Friese

5. The pilgrims passage into the sanctuary of the Great Gods, Samothrace
Bonna Wescoat

6. Pilgrimage and procession in the Panhellenic festivals: Some observations on the Hellenistic Leukophryena in Magnesia-on-the-Meander
Kristoph J?rgens

7. Palimpsest and virtual presence: A reading olÓ'