CALL. 15.03.2018: [PANEL 18]: Archaeology of ritual in the Ancient Mediterranean: Recent finds &
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 15/03/2018
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 03-04-05-06/01/2019
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina (San Diego, CA, USA)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Erica Angliker ; Michael Anthony Fowler
INFO: web - maf2209@columbia.edu ; Erica.angliker@sas.ac.uk
CALL:
The new millennium has seen an intensification of scholarly attention on the material dimensions of religious/magical practices and collective/personal experiences in the ancient Mediterranean. The identification of material traces of ritual in the archaeological record and the use of artefactual and ecofactual assemblages to reconstruct ritual activities are major topics of interest. Due to their high archaeological visibility, animal sacrifice and communal feasting in sanctuaries and official cults have unsurprisingly been the focus of many studies. Far less studied from a material perspective are rituals performed in contexts that are less cleanly demarcated as cultic and/or those which are personal, mundane, or occasional in nature. The present panel is meant to stimulate scholarly interest in the latter class of rituals and to generate rigorous methods for recognizing the material signatures of archaeologically lower profile rituals (e.g. domestic, funereal, magical). We seek papers dealing with rituals practiced in spaces beyond very well defined cult centers (caves, springs, mountains, harbors, houses, etc.). Topics may concentrate on any geographic area of the Mediterranean, and may include any period from the Late Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. Papers which present unpublished materials, whether recently discovered in an active excavation or ‘re-excavated’ from museum storerooms, will be given priority. A variety of interpretative approaches to ritual and its material dimension (e.g. synchronic/diachronic, local/regional) is also highly desired. Since the panel is presented under the auspices of the Coroplastic Studies Interest Group, papers which address the identification and function of terracotta objects used in ritual are particularly encouraged. Interested scholars should submit for consideration an abstract of approximately 250 words in length by Thursday, 15 March 2018 to the panel co-organizers: Erica Angliker (Erica.angliker@sas.ac.uk) and Michael Anthony Fowler (maf2209@columbia.edu).