Popular Religion and Ritual in Prehistoric and Ancient Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean

This volume features a group of select peer-reviewed papers by an international group of authors, both younger and senior academics and researchers. It has its origins in a conference held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, which aimed to bring up the frequently-neglected popular cult and other ritual practices in prehistoric and ancient Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. The topics covered by the chapters of the volume include the interplay between elite and popular ritual at cemeteries and peak sanctuaries just before and right after the establishment of the first palaces in Minoan Crete; the use of conical cups in Minoan ritual; the wide sharing of religious and other metaphysical beliefs as expressed in the wall-paintings of Akrotiri on the island of Thera; the significance of open-air sanctuaries, figurines and other informal cult and ritual paraphernalia in the Aegean, Cyprus and the Levant from the late bronze age to the archaic period; the role of figurines and caves in popular cult in the classical period; the practice of cursing in ancient Athens; and the popular element of sports games in ancient Greece.

Table of Contents

Popular religion and ritual: introductory notes – by Giorgos Vavouranakis

Ritual, multitude and social structure in Minoan Crete – by Giorgos Vavouranakis

What relationship with the First palace of Phaistos? The funerary complexes of Kamilari and Ayia Triada in the Protopalatial period – by Ilaria Caloi

Mass and elite in Minoan peak sanctuaries – by Matthew Haysom

Inverting vases in Bronze Age Crete: Where? When? Why? – by Santo Privitera

A Minoan ‘chytros’? Unexpected archaeological evidence for the possible pre-historic origin of an ancient Greek ceremonial practice – by Lefteris Platon

Metamorphoses and hybridity in the wall-paintings at Akrotiri, Thera – by Annette Højen Sørensen, Walter L. Friedrich and Kirsten Molly Søholm

Approaches to popular religion in Late Bronze Age Greece – by Helène Whittaker

The Mycenaean figurines revisited – by Nagia Polychronakou Sgouritsa

Mount Lykaion (Arkadia) and Mount Oros (Aegina): two cases of Late Bronze Age sacred ‘high places’ – by Eleni Salavoura

The ‘Minoan Goddess with Upraised Arms’ today – by Theodore C. Eliopoulos

Re-positioning ‘rural’ sanctuaries within the Cypro-Archaic societies: some considerations – by Anastasia Leriou

Popular religion in ancient Judah during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. The case of the female pillar figurines – by Valia Papanastasopoulou

Representations of the demon-god Bes in Rhodes and Samos during the 7th and 6th centuries BC and their influence on popular religious beliefs: Bes and the ‘fat-bellied demons’ – by Electra Apostola

Of curses and cults: public and private ritual in Classical Xypete – by Jessica L. Lamont and Georgia Boundouraki

Cursing rituals as part of household cult: a fourth century BC inscribed bowl from Salamis – by Yannis Chairetakis

Representations of masked figures: a comparative study and an interpretative approach to their cult-use and meaning – by Maria G. Spathi

Detecting the cult of a border sanctuary on the Messenian slopes of Mount Taygetos – by Socrates Koursoumis

Popular religion and the beginnings of the Olympic Games – by Panos Valavanis

Giorgos Vavouranakis is Assistant Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His main research interests are Aegean Prehistory and archaeological theory.

KONSTANTINOS KOPANIAS is Assistant Professor of Ancient Civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean at the Department of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He studied at the same university and also at the Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg and the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. He has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Athens, as adjunct faculty at the University of Crete and as Allgemeiner Referent at the German Archaeological Institute in Athens. Since 2011 he has been the director of the University of Athens excavaton in Tell Nader and Tell Baqrta in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq.

CHRYSANTHOS KANELLOPOULOS is an archaeologist specializing in classical architecture. He is Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He was employed for a number of years as a historical architect at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, where he worked on the buildings of both Amman and Petra. His PhD thesis treated the classical and Hellenistic phases of ancient Karthaia on the island of Kea. He is the author of Amman: The Great Temple (Amman 1996) and the Late Roman Temenos Wall at Epidauros (Athens 1999), co-author of the Petra Church (Amman 2001), The Thymele at Epidauros (Fargo 2017) and The North Ridge in Petra (Amman 2018). During recent years, Dr Kanellopoulos’ work has focussed on the architecture of the Library of Hadrian in Athens and of the temple of Zeus Basileus in Levadeia.