Placing the Gods Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece

by Alcock, Susan E.; Osborne, Robin

• ISBN13: 9780198149477
• ISBN10: 0198149476
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-11-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Cult activity played an extremely important role in ancient Greece--to the point, historians believe, that the placing of cult centers played a major part in establishing the whole concept of the city-state in archaic Greece. The essays in this collection critically examine the social and political importance of sanctuary placement, extending the analysis back to Mycenean Greece and on to Greece under Roman occupation. Revealing the complexity of relations between religion and politics in ancient Greece, these essays show how important tradition, gender relations, and cult identity were in creating and maintaining the religious mapping of the ancient Greek countryside.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Mediation, Competition, and Sovereignty: the Evolution of Rural Sanctuaries in Geometric Greece	p. 3
After the 'Big Bang'--What? or Minoan Symbols and Shrines beyond Palatial Collapse	p. 19
The Spatial Configuration of Belief: the Archaeology of Mycenaean Religion	p. 37
Introduction	p. 77
Placing the Past: the Bronze Age in the Cultic Topography of Early Greece	p. 79
The Evolution of a Sacral 'Landscape': Isthmia, Perachora, and the Early Corinthian State	p. 105
Archaeology, the Salaminioi, and the Politics of Sacred Space in Archaic Attica	p. 143
Conclusions	p. 159
Sanctuaries in the Chora of Metaponto	p. 161
Demeter in the Ancient Greek City and Its Countryside	p. 199
The Distribution of Sanctuaries in Civic Space in Arkadia	p. 217
Trees in the Landscape of Pausanias' Periegesis	p. 231
Minding the Gap in Hellenistic and Roman Greece	p. 247
Index	p. 263
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