Unlocking Sacred Landscapes: Cypriot Sanctuaries and Religion from Prehistory to the Roman times

Module Organiser: Dr. Giorgos Papantoniou
Duration: One Term (2013-14: Jan-Apr)
Weighting: 10 ECTS
Contact hours: 22 hrs (1 x 2-hr seminar p.w.)
Assessment: 2 written assignments

Overview and Aims

Perceiving sacred space as instrumental in forming power relations and worldviews in antiquity, this module aims at elucidating how meanings and identities were diachronically expressed in, or created by, the topographical setting of religion and its material depositions and dedications. It primarily focuses on the archaeological evidence, but it also incorporates art-historical, epigraphic, literary and sociological/anthropological evidence. The module, therefore, puts together a holistic interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion within the discipline of Classics, addressed to classicists, historians and archaeologists alike.

Using Cyprus as a case-study this module aims at introducing the students to the main theoretical and methodological issues concerning the study of ancient Mediterranean religions, and equipping them with the appropriate skills to study them. The island of Cyprus, in a permanent dialogue between Orient and Occident, has played the role of a ‘melting pot of cultures’, offering an ideal laboratory for a more sophisticated approach to cultural contact, interaction and negotiation, local responses and translations and the creation of various cultural forms influenced diachronically from Anatolia, Egypt and the Levant, Greece and Rome.

In particular, the module will offer: 1. a diachronic study of the development of Cypriot sacred space in relation to its socio-political and socio-economic setting; 2. a diachronic study of Cypriot sacred architecture; a diachronic study of votive offerings and practice (terracotta figurines, sculptures, loomweights, etc.); 3. a diachronic study of rituals and rites (festivals, sacrifice, dance and music, feasting, initiation, purification and healing); 4. a diachronic study of the ‘Cypriot pantheon’ and cults, from the worship of a prehistoric ‘mother goddess’ to that of Greek and Roman deities.

These aims give rise to the following questions:

• How are social power and ideology expressed diachronically in sacred landscapes?
• How are local, personal and communal identities affirmed and expressed within the sacred space?
• How did this expression affect people, landscapes and objects at a micro-level in their daily lives and at the macro-level of island culture?
• To what extent did religion exist as a transcultural phenomenon throughout the various phases, and particularly, through the transitional stages from prehistory to proto-history, and then from the autonomous Archaic and Classical city-kingdoms to the imperial unitary Ptolemaic and Roman environments?
• How does the interplay between sacred and secular space – if such a clear dichotomy exists when examining ancient societies – help us understand these transitional stages?
• How may history and archaeology, as disciplinary practices, project anachronistic social inequality or contradiction in the study of ancient religion, especially in relation to the ‘colonial’ situations of the past and the variety of ethnic groups in ancient Cyprus?

Working Methods

The course will be taught as a series of student-led discussion seminars. Guidance for reading and topics will be given in class.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:

• discuss current methodologies, theoretical perspectives and debates in the study of ancient Mediterranean religions and sacred landscapes
• have a sound knowledge of Ancient Cyprus and its religious systems diachronically
• have the appropriate skills in analysing religious material culture and art
• have the appropriate skills in analysing literary and epigraphic record related to ancient rituals and cult

Assessment

This module requires the completion of assignments as directed by the lecturer. All assignments are compulsory.