Theme:
4. Persisting with Change: Theory and Archaeological Scrutiny
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
BC_Before Church. Cult Buildings in Ancient Mediterranean Europe. Session 2: Hut - Temple - Church (Xth BC - IIIrd-IVth AD)
Content:
In a seminal paper, Christopher Hawkes outlined a "ranking" of possible interpretations derived from archaeological data that judged it virtually impossible to reconstruct the ideology and spiritual life of primitive communities (Hawkes C. 1954, Archeological Theory and Method: Some Suggestions from the Old World, American Anthropologist 56: 156, 158). Fortunately, the study of the relationship between religion and archaeology - particularly our ability to identify evidence for religious activity and associated places of worship at the archaeological level - has advanced considerably in recent decades. Analysis of cult buildings aims to identify various elements with increasing precision, including architectural features, the nature of rites practiced within cult buildings and archaeological indicators that allow their identification, methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of material culture, bioarchaeological evidence for cult offerings, the "ritual" landscape in which a cult building is inserted, and relationships with local geomorphological features.
This session will analyse the evolution of cult buildings from the huts dedicated to this function in settlements of the early first millennium BC, to the emergence and development of the temples that replaced them, and the earliest evidence of Christian cult structures (III-IV century AD).
The session will welcome papers addressing the following themes: theoretical and methodological reflections on the topic of the session, revisionist analysis of previous contexts using new methodologies, and finally, the latest discoveries from ongoing archaeological research.
Keywords:
Sacred hut, Temple (timber-stone-cement), Cult building, Early churches
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Ugo Fusco (Italy) 1
Co-organisers:
Penelope Davies (United States) 2
Michele Truffi (Italy) 3
Margaret Woodhull (United States) 4
Affiliations:
1. Tor Vergata University of Rome
2. University of Texas
3. Roma Tre University
4. University of Colorado, Denver
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