MISCELLANEA ARCHVS XIXXX (20152016), p.

291-301

DIGGING UP LIVED RELIGION

NOTES ON A RECENT COMPANION OF
ARCHAEOLOGY OF RELIGION
Review article of Rubina RAJA, Jrg RPKE (eds.), A Companion to
the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World, Malden-Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2015 [May], 520 pp., 18 x 25 cm. ISBN 978-1-
4443-5000-5, hardcover, 150 .

Csaba SZAB1
Max Weber Kolleg, Erfurt | University of Pcs

Editing a companion must be a hard task. It needs a well established

common methodological framework, theoretical concepts and chapters
which reflect not only by their terminology but also by their structural
composition the methodological novelty of such a collective work.
Nevertheless, the Blackwell Companions of the Ancient World
produced in the last decade a large number of important companions,
some of them focusing on Roman religion, history and archaeology
such as the Companion to the Roman Religion (2007) also edited by
Jrg Rpke. While some of these are the results of workshops, others
such as the present one are the fruit of a well-established academic
network and collaboration between various scholars and several
disciplines, connected through the two editors and their new project.
This companion arrives probably intentionally in a period when
various monographs and edited volumes are dealing with the
archaeology of cults, religion and the sacred2, producing not only an

1
Ph.D. candidate of the University of Pcs and the Max Weber Kolleg from
Erfurt. His doctoral thesis Sanctuaries in Roman Dacia: materiality and
religious experience (forthcoming) is testing the Lived Ancient Religion
approach on the case study of a so called perypheral context. Further research
interests: small group religions in Dacia and the Danubian provinces
(especially the cults of Mithras) and the history of archaeological thought in
Romania.
2
Although this notion is outdated and highly problematic since the dychotomy
of sacred and profane is long time ago was abandoned even in the

Romanian Association for the History of Religions Institute for the History of Religions
member of EASR & IAHR Romanian Academy, Bucharest
www.ihr-acad.ro
292 ARCHVS XIX-XX (2015-2016)

abundant literature of this topic, but a variety of terminologies and

definitions too, often in opposition with each other3. This tendency
was well presented in a critical monograph-sized study of Thomas
Meier and Petra Tillessen, who claimed, that the great variety of
definitions and methodologies created several fictional/imaginary
narratives and academic discourses on the problematic relationship of
archaeology and religion4. In the period, when humanities generally
facing a struggle of pedantic semantics 5 and sophisticated
intellectualisms6, writing a companion to the archaeology of
religion is a great responsibility.
The main aim is reflected already in the title of the book: a
more general, but theoretically well framed guide for the archaeology
of religion on a global (ancient world) scale. Despite the ambitious
title however, which would presume also the entire Hellenic world
and the Asian civilizations (if not the ancient civilizations of the
Americas too), the book is dealing exclusively with the Western and

archaeological discources, it is still very popular in academic narratives. See

N. LANERI (ed.), Defining the sacred: approaches to the archaeology of
religion in the Near East, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015.
3
T. INSOLL (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and
religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; F. FONTANA (ed.), Sacrum
facere: atti del I. Seminario di Archeologia del sacro: Trieste, 17-18 febbraio
2012, Trieste: Edizioni Universit di Trieste, 2013; B. P. LEISTEN, K. SONIK
(eds.), The materiality of divine agency, Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 2015;
LANERI, op.cit. There is an impressive bibliography on the topic, see e.g. Th.
MEIER, P. TILLESSEN, Archaeological imaginations of religion: an
introduction from an Anglo-German perspective, in Th. MEIER, P. TILLESSEN
(eds.), Archaeological imaginations of religion, Budapest: Archaeolingua
Kiad 2014, p. 99.
4
Th. MEIER, P. TILLESEN, op cit. pp. 11-247; Their work although hard to
follow in some points and perhaps it is much too eclectic for non-specialists in
Religionswissenschaft is the most comprehensive sythensis on the
historiography of the archaeology of religion. They picked up the idea of
Jonathan Z. Smith and Edward Tilley on academic imagination and fictional
scholarly narratives dominating the disciplines of religious studies and
archaeology and created a critical historiographic timeline, in which this work
can be placed as such too.
5
D. MILLER, Stuff, London: Polity Press, 2009, pp. 1-3.
6
R. L. GORDON, Monotheism, Henotheism, Megatheism: debating pre-
Constantinian religious change, Journal of Roman Archaeology 27 (2014), p.
676.
 BIBLIOGRAPHICA 293

Southern Mediterranean world, as the editors write (p. 8.)7. In this

sense, neither global archaeology, nor the axial age theory of history
of religions is represented in the structure of the volume8. After a short
overview on the latest tendencies in the archaeology of religion (or
archaeology of cult, belief, sacred), the editors present the real
innovation of this volume: the theoretical framework of the Lived
Ancient Religion project9.
Supported by an Advanced Grant financed by the European
Research Council (ERC, 20122017), this project produced already
valuable articles and proceedings of international workshops focusing
on the latest issues and innovative questions of the study of Roman
religion10. Although there are for sure other research centres
producing relevant contributions on Roman religion11, the school of

7
Some examples and analogies come from Northern Europe, Mesopotamia
and the South Asian world too. See also A. ERSKINE (ed.), A Companion to
Ancient History, Blackwell-Wiley: Oxford, 2009. For a global view of
archaeology of religion, see INSOLL, op. cit.
8
R. BELLAH, H. JOAS, The Axial Age and its consequences,
Cambridge/Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2012; C. SMITH (ed.), The
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, New York: Springer, 2014; M. PITT, M.
J. VERSLUYS (eds.), Globalisation and the Roman world: World history,
connectivity and material culture, Cambridge-New York: University Press,
2015.
9
Further reading about this approach includes M. MCGUIRE, Lived Religion.
Faith and practice in everyday life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; J.
RPKE, Lived Ancient Religion: Questioning Cults and Polis Religion,
Mythos n.s. 5 (2011), 2012, pp. 191-204; R. RAJA, J. RPKE, Appropriating
religion: methodological issues in testing the Lived Ancient Religion
Approach, Religion in the Roman Empire 1 (2015), no. 1, pp. 11-19, J.
RPKE, Editorial notes, Religion in the Roman Empire 1 (2015), no. 1, pp. I-
II; J. RPKE, On Roman Religion. Lived Religion and the Individual in ancient
Rome, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016.
10
For the workshops organized by the project, see: https://www.uni-
erfurt.de/en/max-weber-centre/projects/cooperation-projects/lar-
project/workshops-und-konferenzen/. Last accessed: 17.09.2016. See also G.
PETRIDOU, R. L. GORDON, J. RPKE (eds.), Beyond Priesthood: Interacting with
Religious Professionals and Appropropriating Traditions in the Imperial
Period, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016 (forthcoming), and the contributions to
Religion in the Roman Empire (RRE): https://www.mohr.de/en/journals/
religion-in-the-roman-empire-rre.
11
J. SCHEID, The Gods, the state and the individual. Refletions on civic religion
in Rome, Pennsyvalnia, 2015; C. ANDO, Religion et gouvernement dans
l'Empire romain, Turnhout, 2016. See also the Fana, Templa, Delubra
294 ARCHVS XIX-XX (2015-2016)

Erfurt probably represents today the most innovative approach.

Adopting the theory of Meredith McGuire on lived religion from the
contemporary American anthropological studies, the approach of Jrg
Rpke and Rubina Raja on Roman religion and its materiality is
questioning the traditional approach on cults and polis religion. As a
self-proclaimed cultural-historical approach, which stand aside from
the cognitive studies of Roman religion 12, Lived Ancient Religion is
focusing on the following major concepts: religious experience,
appropriation, embodiment and culture in interaction (editors, p. 4.).
Religious experience in the frame of this project is following the
definition of Matthias Jung, who claims, that personal, lived
experience in its qualitatively emotional dimension, so long as it is not
articulated symbolically, remains silent and unable to alter
behaviour13. By concentrating on experience in a religious-historical
investigation, the focus turns thus to be on the actor, the observer and
user of images and of the sacred space in a religious communication
between human and semi-divine or divine agents. This communication
which by Rpkes definition is far more than just religion of texts
and languages is dependent on the use of materiality (objects or
things as known in recent archaeological discourses) 14.
Appropriation, as adopted from Michel de Certeau, can be attested as
a focus point on the situational religious experiences instead of
coherent individual worldviews and traditions although these
institutionalized religious options are also presented in some of the
contributions to this volume.
The major concepts of the Lived Ancient Religion approach are
shortly presented in one of the subchapters of the editors introduction
(pp. 9-10), but the reader especially field archaeologists less
familiarized with the terminology of the contemporary study of
religion will find this section hard to read and adopt for their work.

Project of J. SCHEID: http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/john-scheid/fana-

templa-delubra.htm. Last accessed: 18.09.2016.
12
L. MARTIN, The Mind of Mithraists: Historical and Cognitive Studies in the
Roman Cult of Mithras, London, 2014; I. CZACHESZ, Religious Experience in
Mediterranean Antiquity: Introduction, Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2 (2015), no. 1, pp. 5-13.
13
J. RPKE, Religious deviance in the Roman World, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016, p. 63. See also M. JUNG, Qualitative experience and
naturalized religion: an inner tension in Deweys thought?, in H. DEUSSER,
M. SCHLETTE (eds.), The Varieties of Transcendence: Pragmatism and the
Theory of Religion, New York: Fordham University Press, 2016, pp. 91-105.
14
D. MILLER, op. cit.
 BIBLIOGRAPHICA 295

The introduction however presents nine major concepts which then

become titles of the chapters in details. Archaeology of ritual,
embodiment, experiences, creating spaces of experiences, designing
and appropriating sacred space, sharing public space, expressiveness,
agents and transformations are the titles and keywords of this volume
in which are organized thirty-six articles. These notions as a whole
reflect the methodology of the Lived Ancient Religion project, where
the archaeological material is presented as tool in the religious
communication and everyday experience of human agency in
public/shared, secondary and private spaces. Such matrix introduced
not only a new view on what is e.g. a votive object and context, but
also a new typology of religious spaces and actors.This methodology
and the new terminology introduced by J.Rpke 15 is reflected in the
structure of the volume and the titles of the chapters too. Some of the
notions, such as religious experience or embodiment would need
a much more detailed definition and theoretical clarification 16.
The first part focusing on the Archaeology of ritual contains
five articles. The first one of William Van Andringa (pp. 29-40)
presents the major problems of interpreting religious communication
in ancient (mostly Roman) sanctuaries. As a field archaeologist,
Andringas contribution offers very pragmatic examples of ritual
activity and their identification on the field, and also highlights some
decisive aspects, such as the relativity of architectural plans and forms
in sanctuaries, which does not play a crucial role in the religious
rituals. Although, some of his analogies are from Pompeii which
cannot serve as a relevant case study for most of the cases in field
archaeology in Europe and beyond he answers the pragmati
questions of a field archaeologist with the possible answers offered by
the Lived Ancient Religion approach. Thierry Luginbhl writes about
ritual activities, processions and pilgrimages. He offers a useful table
for classification of rites by objective or function and community level
and geographic area (the space of religious communication). He also
classifies (p. 120) a large number of rites in ten categories, although
the complexity of this does not really reflect the use or completeness
of such an approach. He also omits to cite the important contribution

15
See also J. RPKE, Ein neuer Religionsbegriff fr die Analyse antiker
Religion unter der Perspektive von Weltbeziehungen, Keryx 4 (2016), pp. 21-
35.
16
M. TAYLOR (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies, Chicago-London:
University of Chicago Press, 2008.
296 ARCHVS XIX-XX (2015-2016)

by Biehl and Bertemes on the very same topic17. Lara Weiss article
(pp. 41-60) follows the idea of Jan Assmann on high and low
culture (or monumental memorial and quotidian) and presents the
written, speech and pictorial act as situational alternatives of Egyptian
religious communication in Deir-el Medina. Robert Parker (pp. 60-71)
offers a short introduction to the problematic dichotomy between
public and private which seems to be dissolved by modern
scholars in the neutral term of domestic religion 18. His short, but
very eloquent case studies present literary and archaeological
examples too, mostly from Roman period. Despite of this chapter
however, many of the authors and even some of the major parts (part
VI.) are still using the private-public dichotomy - at least on the level
of semantics.
The second part presents four articles on Embodiment,
focusing on the religious experiences related to amulets (by Gideon
Bohak, pp. 83-96), dress and ornaments (Laura Gawlinski, pp. 96-
107), dance (Frederick Naerebout, pp. 107-120) and gender
(Zsuzsanna Vrhelyi, pp. 120-131). Sensorial experiences and the
sensescape, a valuable new trend in Roman religious studies 19, as
illustrated by Philippe Borgeaud and his Geneva team of young
historians of religions, represents a novelty of this volume for
archaeological investigation. More exemples from experimental
archaeology would have made this chapter much stronger 20. The
human and more specifically the female body in religious experiences
are also presented here as human agency in various rites.
A third part focuses on Experiences and includes five
articles. A rather hard to follow why precisely this notion has a
distinct chapter, while all the previous ones focused also on rites and
the senses in the frame of religious experiences. The article of S. Fine
(pp. 133-144) presents the impact of polychromy on Jewish visual

17
P. BIEHL, F. BERTEMES, The archaeology of cult and religion. An
introduction, in P. BIEHL, F. BERTEMES (eds.), The archaeology of cult and
religion, Budapest, Arhaeolingua Kiad, 2001, pp. 11-24.
18
See also C. ANDO, J. RPKE (eds.), Public and Private in Ancient
Mediterranean Law and Religion, Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 2015.
19
M. BRADLEY, Colour and meaning in ancient Rome, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2009; M. SQUIRE (ed.), Sight and the ancient senses,
London: Routledge, 2015.
20
Y. HAMILAKIS, Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory,
and Affect, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013; J. R. PELLINI, A.
ZARANKIN, M.A. SALERNO (eds.), Coming to Senses: Topics in Sensory
Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
 BIBLIOGRAPHICA 297

culture in Roman Antiquity, through the case study of the Arch of

Titus. Valrie Huet asks the poignant questions on who, how and why
watched rituals and religious experiences (pp. 144-155). By analyzing
the sensescape of sacrifices, dances and prayers, Huet indirectly
evokes the major problems and questions of cognitive studies in
religion, still not using the abundant literature on cognitive approaches
on viewing and gazing, which seems to be indispensable in the study
of Roman prayers, public rituals and representations of sacrifices on
stone monuments21. She introduce also the aspect of inside and
outside within the space of religious communication, used till now
mostly in the study of Egyptian religion. Patrice Mniel presents one
of the few articles which presents in details the archaeological
evidence of religious experience, in this case, the animals used for
sacrifices (pp. 155-167). Although some of the subchapters are similar
to those presented by Marleen Martens (pp. 167-181), they present
different case studies from the Western provinces of the Roman
Empire. Olivier de Cazanoves contribution (pp. 181-194) gives a new
highlight on the importance of terminological clarifications. His
article dissolves a historiographic stereotype the water sanctuaries
as a category in the archaeology of Roman religion. He argues that the
role and use of water in various types of sacralised spaces are much
more complex and cannot be labelled with a too simplistic
terminology. Richard L. Gordons chapter (pp. 194-207) presents case
studies of temporary deprivations (sensory and legal), rules and
habits, which refers to the corporeality (bodiliness) of religious
regulations and laws. Human body appears here as a vacant signifier
in the Geertzian definition of religion. Shortly, he also presents the
sick human body where ancient medical and magical knowledge
meets religious communication22.
Creating spaces of experiences, the fourth part, presents three
contributions. From the new taxonomy of space introduced by the
Lived Ancient Religion approach, in this part the home (Kim Bowes,
pp. 209-220) and the gardens (Richard Neudecker, pp. 220-235)
represents the first category of primarily and secondary spaces 23.

21
M. PATZELT, Das Richtige und das Falsche Beten, Ph.D. thesis,
University of Erfurt, 2016.
22
See now also G. PETRIDOU, CH. THUMIGER (eds.), Approaches to the Patient
in the Ancient World, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2016.
23
A slightly different view on spatial aspects of religion in Kim KNOTT,
Spatial methods, in Michael STAUSBERG, STEVEN ENGLER (eds), The
Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion, Routledge:
London, 2011.
298 ARCHVS XIX-XX (2015-2016)

It is highly useful that was also included here a chapter on religious

communication within the Roman cemeteries (Henner von Hesberg,
Christianne Nowak, Ellen Thiermann pp. 235-251), a popular topic in
the recent study of funeral rites and commemoration. The fifth part
(Designing and appropriating sacred space) focuses exclusively on
the grand variety of secondary spaces, where the number of human
agents and the accessibility of the sacralised space was regulated. In
this chapter, the article by Robin Jensen (pp. 253-268) addressing the
archaeology of early Christian communities, the contribution by Julia
Kindt on the oracle shrines (pp. 268-279), and the chapter of Inge
Nielsen (pp. 279-293) on buildings of religious communities are good
examples for the contemporary discourse on small group religions and
the spatial aspects of their religious communication within Greco-
Roman world24. Marlis Arnhold highlights the impact of urban setting
on these small group religions and their communal meeting places
through the case study of Ostia (pp. 293-305).
The third type of space, where religious communication is
attested is the shared or public space. The sixth part, with five
articles, presents the notion of complex sanctuaries (Rubina Raja, pp.
307-320), Roman temples and the role of their interior decorative
program (Henner von Hesberg, pp. 320-333), the role of the theatres
in creating religious experiences (Susanne Gdde, pp. 333-349)25, the
archaeology of processions (Eftychia Stavrianopoulou, pp. 349-362).
In the last section of this part, Christopher Smith presents an
interesting the city of Rome as space of spectacle and religious
memory (362-377 p.) a topic which became recently intensively
debated26.
The next, seventh part dealing with the tools of religious
Expressiveness highlightes the problematic notion of images and

24
J. STEINHAUER, Religious associations in the Post-classical polis, Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner, 2014; E. REBILLARD, J. RPKE, Introduction: groups,
individuals and religious identity in E. REBILLARD, J. RPKE (eds.), Group
Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity, Washington, Catholic
University Press of America, 2015, pp. 1-13.
25
See also V. GASPARINI, Staging religion. Cultic performances in (and
around) the temple of Isis in Pompeii in N. CUSUMANO, V. GASPARINI, A.
MASTROCINQUE, J. RPKE (eds.), Memory and religious experience in the
Greco-Roman world, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2013, pp. 185-211.
26
For a similar attempt, see also K. GALINSKY (ed.), Memory in Ancient Rome
and Early Christianity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016; J. A. LATHAM,
Performance, Memory, and Processions in Ancient Rome: The Pompa
Circensis from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016.
 BIBLIOGRAPHICA 299

their consecration, idolatry as well as choice of material (Sylvia

Estienne, pp. 379-387). Anne Viola Sieberts chapter is an updated
version of her important monograph on instruments and vessels used
in various religious communication, mostly in sacrifices (pp. 388-
397). Her diagram on tools and their Latin denomination is a very
useful summary of the topic (here 393). Gnther Schrner presents a
good overview on anatomical ex votos and their geographic
distribution (pp. 397-411). Following the model of Kleinmann on the
idea of religious health care as strategy, he presents a topic which
offered numerous works only in the last few years27. Wolfgang
Spickermanns contribution on monumental inscriptions and their
impact on the visual sensescape of urban environments and sacralised
spaces through the competition of the local, political and economic
elite (pp. 412-424).
The next part, coined Agents, begins with the contribution of
Eric Rebillard (pp. 427-437)28. The author discusses in details the
notion of religious grouping, questioned by R. Brubaker and the latest
theories on multiple identities and plural actor. Instead of taking
religious group as a granted category, Rebillard suggests that it would
be more intriguing to focus on group making processes and not giving
an agency for groups, but for individuals who create these traditions
and categories, reflecting their own world-view on certain social
orders. This highly critical and innovative article seems to be in a
methodological conflict with some other chapters of the book, where
communities and groups are still used as well established
categories. His focus although it rarely brings any concrete case
studies and material evidence highlights the new approaches which
should focus on when religious identities are activated, rather than
trying to identify the very religion of individuals and groups through
material culture.
Jrg Rpkes contribution (pp. 437-451) on religious
individuation and individualization is a good introduction of his wide-
spread idea, although one may find his introduction from 2013 much
more detailed and terminologically more accurate, presenting the five
major categories of religious individualization in a historical

27
See also PETRIDOU-THUMIGER, op. cit.; V. GASPARINI, Listening stones.
Cultural appropriation, resonance, and memory in the Isiac cults, in V.
GASPARINI (ed.), Vestigia. Miscellanea di studi storico-religiosi in onore di
Filippo Coarelli nel suo 80 anniversario, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016, pp.
555-574.
28
See also REBILLARD-RPKE, op. cit.
300 ARCHVS XIX-XX (2015-2016)

perspective29. Eva Mol and Miguel J. Versluys chapter (pp. 451-460)

focus on what active role material culture plays in historical context,
and how objects (as agents) create and change ritual as well as
community. Their definition of community is slightly different, if not
even opposite to what we just read few pages before in Rebillards
article. Admitting that it is difficult to say what exactly a religious
community is, Mol and Versluys rightly point out, that individuals
should be analyzed as part of religious groups, and then the different
small group religions should be considered as connected and
consequently not studied in isolation. Defining communities as mental
constructions, they use the cognitive notion of imagined
communities of B. Anderson.
The last part (Transformations) has two chapters. The first one,
by Greg Woolf (pp. 465-478), presents the ritual traditions of non-
Mediterranean Europe, dealing with particular problems of this area,
such as the limits of the written traditions on Celtic rituals in Greco-
Roman and Irish-Nordic texts, or the problem of the so-called
structured depositions and sanctuaries of non-Mediterranean Europe.
Last but not least, the contribution of Valentino Gasparini (pp. 478-
489) presents an intriguing case study of Northern Africa. After
discussing the problematic notion of Hybridisation, Punicization and
Arabization as anachronistic notions for antiquity, Gasparini presents
the problem of religious continuity and the lack of material evidence
of pre-Roman African divinities and religious communication a
striking case study and analogy for many other provincial case studies
for the Danubian provinces too30.
By its own definition, every companion tries to give a holistic
yet general overview of a large topic. The volume edited by R. Raja
and J. Rpke arrives in a period when the scholarship addressing the
archaeology of religion generally, and more specifically focusing on
the Greco-Roman world too, produces a very large number of titles.
They have a common feature: such relevant works focuses almost
exclusively on Western Europe and the Mediterranean, and only
rarely on North America31, or the Indian subcontinent32, and almost

29
J. RPKE, Individualization and individuation as concepts for historical
research, in J. RPKE (ed), The individual in the religions of Ancient
Mediterranean, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 3-40.
30
L. ZERBINI (ed.), Culti e Religiosit nelle Province Danubiane, Bologna, I
libri di Emil, 2015.
31
T. BRAY, The Archaeology of Wak'as: Explorations of the Sacred in the Pre-
Columbian Andes, Boulder: Colorado University Press, 2015
 BIBLIOGRAPHICA 301

always ignoring the archaeology of religion in Central and Eastern

Europe, Russia, China 33, Africa and South America. A global view is
missing also from this work. Be that as it may, the innovative
methodological approach of the Lived Ancient Religion project
represents the real novelty of this new companion, when comparing it
to other similar attempts. Although not always consequent in
terminology and avoiding several spaces and strategies of religious
communication34, this companion is probably the very first one which
asks radically new questions on everyday religious experience, on
material agency and their role in religious communication in
primarily, secondary and shared spaces of the Mediterranean world. In
this sense, it is a good response to the shift of paradigms suggested by
Thomas Meier and Petra Tillessen a year before. In their work
situational/contextual religious communication, the fluidity of the
notions and the great influence of C. Bells ritualisation was presented
as a possible new wayout from the recent struggle and eclecticism on
this field. A consequence of the globalization of classical studies and
the Altertumwissenschaft is the increasing gap between national and
international bibliographies and academic narratives both carrying
the possibility to fall in the mistake of ignoring each other and
reinventing the wheel35. The fertile discussion on religious
communication produced by the Religionswissenschaft is still,
marginally cited in the works of field archaeologists and this

32
L. FOGELIN, Archaeology of Early Buddhism, Lanham: AltaMira Press,
2006; M. WILLIS, The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the
Establishment of the Gods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
33
Y.Y.JAFFE, Questioning religious essentialism. Ritual change and religious
instability in ancient China, Journal of Social Archaeology 15.1, 2015, pp. 3-
23.
34
Magic, for example appears only in the article of R. Gordon. See also
Dietrich BOSCHUNG, Jan BREMMER (eds.), The materiality of magic,
Paderborn-Mnchen: Wilhelm Fink, 2015. Funerary spaces are represented
also only by few case studies. Natural environments are also under-
represented. See K. SPORN, M. KERSCHNER (eds.), Natur, Kult, Raum: Akten
des internationalen Kolloquiums Paris-Lodron-Universitt Salzburg, 20.-22.
Jnner 2012, Wien, 2015. The relationship of text, imaginary and materiality
is also rarely mentioned. See also I. ELSNER, Visual culture and ancient
history: Issues of Empiricism and Ideology in the Samos Stele at Athens,
Classical Antiquity 34 (2015), pp. 33-73.
35
MEIER-TILLESEN, op cit., p. 156.
302 ARCHVS XIX-XX (2015-2016)

dissonance will be hard to dissolve even with an innovative approach,

such as the Lived Ancient Religion36.
Field archaeologists would probably still prefer conference
proceedings and companions focusing on more specific problems,
such as votive depositions37 or well researched sanctuary
monographs38, but the volume edited by R. Raja and J. Rpke will
hopefully offer an alternative to think outside the box, far beyond the
traditional views dominating the contemporarily discourses of Roman
religious studies and provincial archaeology.

36
A case study where this dissonance is observable is the reception of the
work of Istvn Tth in the Hungarian archaeological academic discourse. His
work following the school of Kroly Kernyi and Angelo Brelich on
religious phenomenology and ritual is still less popular, than the statistical
and more positivist approach of the Alfldi school, dominating the Hungarian
scholarship on Roman religion. On the impact of Tths work, see L. NAGY,
Gondolatok Tth Istvn Pannoniai vallstrtnetrl, Korall 63 (2016), pp.
158-174.
37
A. SCHFER, A., M. WITTEYER (eds.), Rituelle Deponierungen in
Heiligtmern der hellenistisch-rmischen Welt: internationale Tagung Mainz
28.-30. April 2008, Mainz: Landesarchaeologie Verlag, 2013.
38
Although many of these well published sanctuary monographs have a
poorly elaborated theoretical and historical chapter. Thomas Meier and Petra
Tillessen also highlighted the dominant impact of Mircea Eliade on the
contemporary academic discources especially in the works of field
archaeologists: MEIER-TILLESSEN, op.cit., pp. 38 and 57.