Oxbow Books Godscapes: New Approaches to the Study of Ancient Religions

In the past few decades, the integration of multidisciplinary approaches in the study of religion has demonstrated that different forms of religiosity should be framed within the cognitive activity that engages mind and body with the world of material objects, visual representations, words, and meaningful places. Such complex relationships are materialised in the landscape, as physical as well as imaginative space that includes cultural landmarks like sacred sites, connecting the local topography with myths and spiritual beliefs. Moreover, these sacred landscapes are constantly reshaped through the incorporation and re-elaboration of new elements, that is the process of religious hybridisation. The research project ‘Godscapes: Modelling Second Millennium BCE Polytheisms in the Eastern Mediterranean’ has employed new Semantic Web technologies to develop a model for religious hybridisation, tracing how cultural interactions shaped the novel religious beliefs in which the roots of the Israelite monolatry can be traced. Following the path outlined by the innovative Godscapes project, and particularly its attention to four elements that are pivotal to our understanding of ancient religiosity, i.e. sacred architecture, iconography, funerary rituals, and religious texts, this volume aims to advance our knowledge of ancient religion by bringing together original perspectives on approaching and interpreting material culture and ritual practices. It has been developed out of a series of seminars and workshops organised within the remit of the project. With a strong emphasis on scientific approaches and their replicability, the case studies presented range from the Neolithic to the Roman period, embracing new methods of gathering, modelling, and understanding archaeological data for the reconstruction of sacred landscapes with their synchronic and diachronic processes of interaction and hybridisation. ‘Godscapes: Modelling Second Millennium BCE Polytheisms in the Eastern Mediterranean’ is a National Relevance Research Project (PRIN 2020) funded by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR), conducted in collaboration with the University of Rome La Sapienza, the University of Pisa, and the National Research Council (CNR ISPC). It has been evaluated as the best PRIN 2020 project in its scientific sector (SH6 – Classical Antiquity).