Materiality and Religion in Antiquity (MaReA)
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Series editor: Nicola Laneri

The Material Religion in Antiquity (MaReA) series aims to be a source for scholars and students interested in investigating how to approach the materialisation of ancient religious practices and beliefs through case-studies as well as theoretical and methodological approaches. During the last decades, the search for religious materiality has strongly increased among scholars interested in analysing religious beliefs in both ancient and contemporaneous societies. A main goal of this series is to broadly investigate archaeological contexts in which clear correlates of religious practices and beliefs have been or can be unearthed. Titles are each dedicated to a specific topic and result from a workshop or conference dedicated to that theme.

Archaeology of Symbols Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9798888570982
Pub Date: 28 Feb 2024
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Material Religion in Antiquity
Illustrations: 130 B/W illustrations
Description:
This third volume in the Material Religion in Antiquity series stems from the First International Congress on the Archaeology of Symbols (ICAS I) that took place in Florence in May 2022. The archaeological process of reconstructing and understanding our past has undergone several reassessments in the last century, producing an equal number of new perspectives and approaches. The recent materiality turn emphasizes the necessity to ground those achievements in order to build fresh avenues of interpretation and reach new boundaries in the study of the human kind and its ecology.
Sacred Nature Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 136
ISBN: 9781789259179
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Material Religion in Antiquity
Illustrations: B/W
Description:
Sacred Nature: Animism and Materiality in Ancient Religions is the second volume of the series Material Religion in Antiquity (MaReA). The book collects the proceedings of the international online workshop carrying the same title organized by CAMNES, SoRS on 20–21 May 2021. Sacred Nature brings together the perspectives of scholars from different disciplines (archaeology, anthropology, iconography, philology, history of religions) about the notions of nature, sacredness, animism and materiality in ancient religions of the Old and the New World.
The Sacred Body Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781789255188
Pub Date: 15 May 2021
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Series: Material Religion in Antiquity
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
The human body serves as a symbolic bridge between communities of the living and the divine. This is clearly evident in mythological stories that recount the creation of humans by deities within ancient and contemporaneous societies across a very broad geographical environment. In certain circumstances, parts of selected humans can become an ideal proxy for connecting with the supernatural, as demonstrated by the cult of human skulls in Near Eastern Neolithic communities, as well as the cult of relics of Christian saints from the early Christian era.