Conference Session

Reconsidering the Cypriot ‘Extra-urban’ sanctuary in the context of Central Place Theory: The case of Kakopetria-Agilades

Giorgos Papantoniou (Trinity College Dublin)

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationship between sanctuaries and the territoriality of the Iron Age polities of Cyprus. The sanctuary site of Kakopetria-Agilades, is used as a case-study to test hypotheses regarding the connection between extra-urban sacred space and the formation of political and cultural identities. After a short introduction to the theme, a combination of archaeological (context and iconography) and geographic data are used to contextualise the centrality of this sanctuary within its political, economic, cultural and symbolic landscapes.

As in the case of a number of other sanctuaries examined in the context of the ‘Unlocking Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus’ project, the placement of Kakopetria-Agilades in front of the copper resources may have been ideologically connected with the territoriality of the Iron Age polity-kingdoms. If we consider the strong military iconography found at the sanctuary, along with the presence of an Athena-like deity, we may be able to reinforce this interpretation. The discussion proceeds, considering some of the main themes suggested for this conference (terminology, placement and function of sanctuaries, ancient understandings and change, polis and connecting shrines, integration, social and economic impact, and beyond the polis perspective), in order to manifest how site-based analysis may contribute to landscape archaeology, revealing the significance of this sanctuary as a central place, albeit lying in an un-central landscape.

The legendary gardens near Palmyra as sacred space

Eris Williams-Reed (Warwick University)

Abstract

To what extent does the term ‘extra-urban’ devalue sanctuaries that centre on and stem from the specific ecological features of their immediate environment? This paper will explore this question by focusing on the ‘sacred garden’ of Palmyra, a site located in modern-day Syria that flourished during the first three centuries AD. Epigraphic and sculptural evidence suggests that the garden was one of the most important sacred spaces in Palmyra: two of the city’s leading gods were worshipped in the garden and it was one of only four so-called ‘tribal sanctuaries’ where notable citizens were honoured with statues. The establishment of a ‘sacred garden’ in Palmyra is unsurprising, as the city itself was founded on an oasis with springs and trees, and it was supported by a vibrant agricultural hinterland. Yet, despite its importance, the garden remains largely absent in scholarly discussions of Palmyra’s religious and social history, with the term ‘extra-urban’ (and the connotations surrounding it) reinforcing the garden’s relegation to the physical and conceptual ‘fringes’ of the city. This paper will demonstrate the importance of recentring the sacred garden in our understanding of Palmyra and will make a case for foregrounding the human-environment relationship in our understanding of extra-urban sanctuaries.

Coffee Break

Minoan mountain peaks, sanctuaries and socio-political loci

Celine Murphy (Trinity College Dublin)

Abstract

In the Minoan period, Crete was host to a number of mountain sites today known as ‘peak sanctuaries’. Owing to their position on hostile or rugged terrain, often at a distance from large settlements, and due to the presence of thousands of ceramic drinking vessel and figurine fragments, these sites have been interpreted as extra-urban places of worship. The rudimentary appearance of the artefacts deposited at peak sanctuaries during their first period (Protopalatial) of use has led to the suggestion that they served as places of congregation for rural communities who did not have access to palatial or other urban shrines. A sudden shift in the quality of the deposited assemblages of the sites’ second period (Neopalatial) of use, however, has been regarded as indicative of their assimilation by the palaces as country satellites and of their adherence to ‘official’ religion.

Without contradicting this narrative, this paper more closely examines the use of the term ‘sanctuary’ in the description of these mountain sites while exploring how religion, its performance and material manifestation have been conceptualised in the context of the Minoan mountains. In highlighting the deep social, political and economic relevance of the assemblages through a technological and iconographical examination of a number of collections, I here propose a less binary view of urban and rural religion and ritual in Minoan Crete. In so doing, I moreover explore the theoretical and methodological ramifications that conceptualising these sites as peripheral, and thus subordinate, might bear, and subsequently propose how a more nuanced model, in which these mountain sites are attributed more influence, might shift our perception of their essence in both the Protopalatial and Neopalatial periods.

Understanding rural and Extra-urban sanctuaries in ancient Mediterranean communities: A view from the Italian peninsula

Tesse Stek (Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome)

Abstract

As in other Mediterranean areas, the Italian peninsula is dotted with a large number of cult sites, many of them located outside urbanized areas. In several waves of monumentalisation, cult sites are (re)built in stone, and as such visually stand out from the rural landscapes that surround them in the present day. Various models for interpreting the role of these sanctuaries in ancient communities have been proposed. However, the ideal models are often derived from other historical contexts, and have therefore strongly steered the interpretation in certain directions, obscuring other viable explanations. For instance, for the Italian peninsula, the Roman conquest has played a prominent role in our thinking about the role of sanctuaries, often resulting in a binary view discerning developed, city-state sacred landscapes on the one hand and primitive, tribal sacred landscapes on the other.

A key difficulty regards defining the cult communities that belonged to the sanctuaries. Our knowledge of the wider social and spatial context of sanctuaries is usually limited, which means that we have to combine all available types of information, from the literary sources and epigraphy to architecture and objects, but also to landscape archaeology, in order to reconstruct the functioning of these cult sites in antiquity.

Case-studies from a range of different historical contexts including the Italic, Apennine area, early Roman colonial settlements, as well as Rome itself demonstrate the particular methodological challenges in understanding the role of these ‘extra-urban’ sanctuaries. Yet, they also seem to point to some common characteristics. Together with the other participants of the conference, I hope to identify potential biases in our datasets, and, consequently, discuss whether or not the Italian situation is unique within the wider Mediterranean area.

In relation to…

Keynote: Marietta Horster (University of Mainz)

Abstract

Large sanctuaries such as Eleusis, linked to a city, administered and co-financed by it, are, like the Panhellenic sanctuaries, just as much at odds with the all-dominant narrative of the city and its territory as the small rural sanctuaries, which were possibly left to themselves. Just as crosswise are sanctuaries whose ‘political’ origins were initially different or are league-related, lying close to if not in one of the cities of an alliance, but with a nevertheless different reference. With changing political constellations, the perception and function of the embedding of a shrine in a given landscape changes the relationship to the previously responsible twists, original points of reference are lost, the clientele of worshipers probably changes as well. The "in relation to" becomes a different one.

Apart from consequences of political changes, narratives especially shaped perceptions of sacred landscapes in antiquity, much like they do today. Pausanias is a particular case in point, presenting the whole of Greece as a remembered sacred landscape in which everything else seems to become secondary. If anything, what would be the "relation to" in the case of the imperial-period author Pausanias? Time, probably more than place and space, or the many Greek political units, or Rome as the centre of the empire, or Corinth as the seat of the governor of Achaia, but the ‘classical period’.

The lecture undertakes to ask what changes can arise from such longer-lasting and temporary shifts in ‘relationships’ and what material and textual evidence shapes our image of them.