Bones, behaviour and belief : the zooarchaeological evidence as a source for ritual practice in ancient Greece and beyond / edited by Gunnel Ekroth & Jenny Wallensten.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Wallensten, Jenny, 1971- editor.

Ekroth, Gunnel, editor.

Series:

Skrifter utgivna av Svenska institutet i Athen. 4o ; 55.

Skrifter utgivna av Svenska institutet i Athen. 4°, 0586-0539 ; 55

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rites and ceremonies--Greece.

Rites and ceremonies.

Processual archaeology.

Greece.

Greece--Religion.

Religion.

Processual archaeology--Greece.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

272 pages : illustration (partly color) ; 28 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stockholm : Svenska Institutet i Athen, 2013.

Summary:

"The importance of the zooarchaeological evidence as a source for ritual practices in ancient Greece is gradually becoming widely recognized. Animal bones form the only category of evidence for Greek cult which is constantly significantly increasing, and they can complement and elucidate the information provided by texts, inscriptions and images. This volume brings together sixteen contributions exploring ritual practices and animal bones from different chronological and geographical perspectives, foremost ancient Greece in the historical period, but also in the Bronze Age and as early as the Neolithic period, as well as Anatolia, France and Scandinavia, providing new empirical evidence from a number of major sanctuaries and cult-places. On a methodological level, the complexity of identifying ritual activity from the zooarchaeological evidence is a recurrent theme, as is the prominence of local variation visible in the bone material, suggesting that the written sources and iconography may offer simplified or idealized versions of the rituals actually performed. Although zooarchaeology needs to and should be integrated with other kinds of sources, the independent study of the bones in an unbiased manner is of utmost importance, as the bones can provide a different "reality" than that encountered in our other sources."--Publisher's website.

Contents:

Introduction: bones of contention? / Jenny Wallensten & Gunnel Ekroth

What we would like the bones to tell us: a sacrificial wish list / Gunnel Ekroth

L'assemblage osseuz comme un dernier état de la présence animale en contexte archéologique / Armelle Gardeisen

Evidence of animal offerings in Iron Age Scandinavia / Maria Vretemark

Dans l'ombre du rite : vestiges d'animauz et pratiques sacrificielles en Grèce antique / Katerina Trantalidou

Bones and the body politic? / Valasia Isaakidou & Paul Halstead

Hittite animal sacrifice / Peter R.W. Popkin

The taphonomy of ritual bone depositions / Ola Magnell

"Side" matters: animal offernings at ancient Nemea / Michael Mackinnon

Dealing with the unexpected / Dimitra Mylona

Rituels sacrificiels et offrandes animales dans le Sarapieion C de Delos / Hélène Brun & Martine Leguilloux

Thesmophoriazousai / Deborah Ruscillo

The sea in the temple? / Tatiana Theodoropoulou

Sacrificed animals in Swedish Late Iron Age monumental mound burials / Sabine Sten

The zooarchaeology of cult / Gerhard Forstenpointner, Alfred Galik & Gerald E. Weissengruber

Bones in Greek sanctuaries: answers and questions / Scott Scullion

Archéozoologie et pratiques rituelles / Stella Georgoudi, Véronique Mehl & Francis Prost.

Notes:

Contains contributions in English and French

International conference proceedings.

12 English, and 4 French contributions.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789179160623

917916062X

OCLC:

855530707