Ritual in the Roman World

Contents

1. Reflections on the Intention and Structure of the Current Volume – Jason Lundock

2. Ritual of Place

Chapter 1. Ritual and Belief in the Villas of Roman Britain – Martin Henig

Chapter 2. Hexagonal Structures, Pythagoras, and Ancient and Early Christian Theories of Number – Anthony King

Chapter 3. Cults, Rituals, and Temples in the Fourth-Century CE Levant Between Pragmatism and Religious Ideology – Jacopo Dolci

3. Objects and Action in Ritual Practice

Chapter 4. Fluid Meanings, Surface Tensions: Coin and Pewter Deposits and Watery Contexts in Roman Britain – Adrian Chadwick and Eleanor Ghey

Chapter 5. Proselytism and the Propagation of Polytheistic Cults – Aaron W. Irvin

Chapter 6. Ritualised Epigraphic Performance: Understanding the Performativity of Gender in Roman Dacia – Nina Andersen

Chapter 7. The Craftsman’s Tale: Discerning Rituals and Beliefs in the Archaeological Record – Sonja Willems

4. Focused/Site Specific Studies

Chapter 8. Interpreting Responses to Abandoned Sacred Spaces, Then and Now: Ritual Litter at the Carrawburgh Mithraeum – David Walsh

Chapter 9. The Sanctuary of Gournay-sur-Aronde and the Development of Ritual Archaeology in France – Carole Quatrelivre

Chapter 10. Being Roman in Malta: Artefacts, People, and Rituals in the Sanctuary of Tas-Silġ – Filippo Airoldi, Francesca Bonzano, Elisa Grassi

Chapter 11. Transformed: Hybridity and the Animal Performer in Romano-British Cult – Miles Clifford

About the Author

Alessandra Esposito was awarded her PhD in Classics from King’s College London in 2018 with a thesis titled Performing the Sacra. Priestly roles and their organisation in Roman Britain, now published by Archaeopress. She has since published and presented on the archaeology of religion and hoarding practices in the Roman North-West and she is more recently working on digital methods applied to archaeology of religion.

Jason Lundock completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and his graduate and post-graduate studies at King’s College London. He has worked at the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the British Museum and the Appleton Museum of Art. His doctoral thesis, A Study of the Deposition and Distribution of Copper Alloy Vessels in Roman Britain, was published with Archaeopress. He is currently Associate Course Director for Historical Archetypes and Mythology at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.

Kaja Stemberger Flegar obtained her PhD in Roman mortuary archaeology from King’s College London in 2018, and has since continued researching several topics of theoretical archaeology and identity studies, with a firm basis in thearchaeological material from Roman Slovenia. She is employed as a small finds specialist at the private archaeological company PJP, d.o.o., within which she recently co-founded and became head of Institute Primus Devotus.

David Walsh received his PhD from the Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent in 2016 for his thesis Development, Decline and Demise: The Cult of Mithras in Late Antiquity. He has since published his thesis along with various articles on the archaeology of Roman religion. He has taught at the universities of Kent and Newcastle and worked for various archaeological field units. He is currently a Career Development Fellow at Durham University.