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Cave and Worship in Ancient Greece: New Approaches to Landscape and Ritual book cover

1st Edition

Cave and Worship in Ancient Greece New Approaches to Landscape and Ritual

Edited By Stella Katsarou, Alexander Nagel Copyright 2021
270 Pages 96 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

270 Pages 96 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

270 Pages 96 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Cave and Worship in Ancient Greece brings together a series of stimulating chapters contributing to the archaeology and our modern understanding of the character and importance of cave sanctuaries in the fi rst millennium BCE Mediterranean. Written by emerging and established archaeologists and researchers, the book employs a fascinating and wide range of approaches and methodologies to... Read more
  1. Introduction: On Reading Caves and Ancient Greek Cult

    2. Stella Katsarou and Alexander Nagel

  2. The Dawn of Ancient Greek Cave Cult: Prehistoric Cave Sanctuaries

    3. Stella Katsarou

  3. Caves as Sites of Sensory and Cognitive Enhancement: The Idaean Cave on Crete Nassos　Papalexandrou　

  4. Caves and Consumption:　The Case of Polis Bay, Ithaca

    5. Catherine Morgan and Chris Hayward

  5. Communities, Consumption and a Cave: The Profile of Cult　at　Drakaina　Cave on　Kephallonia

    6. Agathi Karadima　

  6. A River Ran Through It: Circulating Images of Ritual and Engaging Communities in a Cave in Aitoloakarnania

    7. Alexander Nagel　

  7. The Cave of Pan at Marathon, Attica:　New Evidence for the　Performance of Cult in the Historic Era

    8. Jorge J. Bravo III and Alexandra Mari　

  8. The Face of Cave Rituals: Terracotta Figurines in Greek Sacred Caves

    9. Katja Sporn

  9. Approaching Cult and Ritual in Cycladic　Caves

    10. Erica Angliker　

  10. Grottoes and the Construction of Cult in Southern Italy

         Rebecca Miller Ammerman

Biography

Stella Katsarou is an archaeologist at the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology–Speleology of the Greek Ministry of Culture. She has carried out fi eldworkin caves and prehistoric sites in Thessaly, the Peloponnese, the Aegean islands and, recently, Aitoloakarnania. She studies and writes about the functional, social, and ritual aspects of cave use and their material expression in prehistoric Greece.

Alexander Nagel is Chair of the Art History and Museum Professions Program and Assistant Professor at the State University of New York, Fashion Institute of Technology, and a Research Associate in Residence at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

The volume serves as a sturdy base for future cave explorations across the Mediterranean that will encourage fresh avenues of interpretation, but readers should be prepared for varying terms across chapters (“sacred caves,” “ritual caves,” etc.) that may or may not indicate the same ancient reality. While the study of Greek caves is not new, this book proposes the ongoing need for systematic cave studies, proves the continuing influence of survey and landscape archaeology, and reminds us that caves, their finds, and their diachronic human use, are a fundamental part of both the archaeological and religious heritage.

Tyler Jo Smith, University of Virginia, Religious Studies Review

The volume offers substantive contribution to the study of cultic cave sites and provides interesting avenues for future scholarship on the topic of Greek cave sites as places of cult practice.

Alexandra Creola, ARYS: Antiquity, Religions and Societies

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