link

What a nice surprise for Christmas! This exciting book is fully available in open access.

Naming and Mapping the Gods in the Ancient
Mediterranean

Spaces, Mobilities, Imaginaries

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110798432 

Ancient religions are definitely complex systems of gods, which resist our understanding. Divine names provide fundamental keys to gain access to the multiples ways gods were conceived, characterized, and organized. Among the names given to the gods many of them refer to spaces: cities, landscapes, sanctuaries, houses, cosmic elements. They reflect mental maps which need to be explored in order to gain new knowledge on both the structure of the pantheons and the human agency in the cultic dimension. By considering the intersection between naming and mapping, this book opens up new perspectives on how tradition and innovation, appropriation and creation play a role in the making of polytheistic and monotheistic religions.
Far from being confined to sanctuaries, in fact, gods dwell in human environments in multiple ways. They move into imaginary spaces and explore the cosmos. By proposing a new and interdiciplinary angle of approach, which involves texts, images, spatial and archeaeological data, this book sheds light on ritual practices and representations of gods in the whole Mediterranean, from Italy to Mesopotamia, from Greece to North Africa and Egypt. Names and spaces enable to better define, differentiate, and connect gods.

Conference postponed "Naming and Mapping the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean"

 

We are glad to announce that the conference is postponed to February 2021, 10th to 12th (with the opening lecture on February 9th).

The Antiquity is a world full of gods. Far from being confined to their sanctuaries, the gods are rooted in the human environment in multiple ways: towns, crossroads, borders and boundaries, forests, mountains, the sea and many other spaces where they continue to dwell. Equally, they colonise imagined spaces, when poets and authors evoke their living areas or those that they move through during their different adventures. It is therefore logical that specialists on the Antiquity have studied the inscription of the divine in space for a long time already. In this perspective, the conference Naming and Mapping the gods in the Ancient Mediterranean. Spaces, Mobilities, Imaginaries hopes to bring together the competences and specialties of multiple disciplines – archaeology, history, geography, anthropology, history of religions, philology, reception, social network analysis – in order to consider new documentation corpora concerning the intersection between the divine and space. Furthermore, the conference aims to differentiate itself by proposing an innovative angle of approach, inspired by the themes of the ERC MAP project: the intersection between the spaces and designations of the gods. The ways of naming the divine powers, given that they are envisaged as ways to define, characterise, differentiate, but also to connect, effectively constitute many indexes of a dynamic and complex “mapping” of the divine.

The conference will be held from the 10th to the 12th February 2021. The opening lecture is scheduled for February 9th 2021.

The face-to-face sessions will take place at the Maison de la Recherche, Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France (see. Access).

For the other sessions: videos of the papers will be available via this site. The discussions will be held by videoconference and can be followed from this site as well.

Conference "Naming and Mapping the gods in the Ancient Mediterranean. Spaces, Mobilities, Imaginaries"

Calenda

Toulouse, 25th-27th March 2020

Organised by the ERC Advanced Grant “Mapping Ancient Polytheisms. Cult Epithets as an Interface between Religious Systems and Human Agency” (MAP - 741182), the conference Naming and Mapping the gods in the Ancient Mediterranean. Spaces, Mobilities, Imaginaries hopes to bring together the competences and specialties of multiple disciplines – archaeology, history, geography, anthropology, history of religions, philology, reception, social network analysis – in order to consider new documentation corpora concerning the intersection between the divine and space. Among other things, the conference aims to propose an innovative angle of approach: the intersection between the spaces and designations of the gods.


Presentation

The Antiquity is a world full of gods. Far from being confined to their sanctuaries, the gods are rooted in the human environment in multiple ways: the towns, the crossroads, the borders and boundaries, the forests, the mountains, the sea and many other spaces where they continue to dwell. Equally, they colonise imagined spaces, when poets and authors evoke their living areas or those that they move through on their different adventures. It is therefore logical that specialists on the Antiquity have studied the inscription of the divine in space for a long time already. In this perspective, the conference Naming and Mapping the gods in the Ancient Mediterranean. Spaces, Mobilities, Imaginaries hopes to bring together the competences and specialties of multiple disciplines – archaeology, history, geography, anthropology, history of religions, philology, reception, social network analysis – in order to consider new documentation corpora concerning the intersection between the divine and space. Subsequently, this intersection invokes a multitude of questions, which are given in the lines of approach below. Furthermore, the conference aims to differentiate itself by proposing an innovative angle of approach, inspired by the themes of the ERC MAP project: the intersection between the spaces and designations of the gods. The ways of naming the divine powers, given that they are envisaged as ways to define, characterise, differentiate, but also to connect, effectively constitute many indexes of a dynamic and complex “mapping” of the divine. In this regard, many points have been proposed: Space as an onomastic trait, Naming the space of the gods, The ways of presenting the gods in space, Putting the gods and places in equation, Sanctuaries and the emergence of towns, Urban “religions”.

Conference coordination: Élodie Guillon

Deadline for submission of proposals: 14th of June, 2019, 12:00 (Paris time)
to the following address: https://mappinggods.sciencesconf.org/



Scientific committee

• Sandrine Agusta-Boularot (UMR3140-ASM, University of Montpellier 3)
• Nicole Belayche (UMR 8210-ANHIMA)
• Corinne Bonnet (PLH-ERASME, ERC-MAP, University of Toulouse 2)
• Laurent Bricault (PLH-ERASME, University of Toulouse 2)
• Pierre Brulé (University of Rennes 2)
• Thomas Galoppin (ERC MAP, University of Toulouse 2)
• Élodie Guillon (ERC-MAP, University of Toulouse 2)
• Adeline Grand-Clément (PLH-ERASME, University of Toulouse 2)
• Martine Joly (UMR 5608-TRACES, University of Toulouse 2)
• Sylvain Lebreton (ERC-MAP, University of Toulouse 2)
• Max Luaces (EHESS, UMR 5608-TRACES)
• Fabio Porzia (ERC-MAP, University of Toulouse 2)
• Jörg Rüpke (University of Erfurt)
• Christoph Uehlinger (University of Zurich)