Ancient Greece

Abstract

This article focuses on the study of ancient Greek religion. It begins with a brief discussion of the need to integrate the archaeological evidence better into historically oriented scholarship on ancient Greek religion. It then considers the types of evidence and the emergence of a genuine discourse between classical archaeology and historically oriented scholarship on ancient Greek religion. There are now a variety of promising areas of current debate which pursue the study of ancient Greek religion and ritual as a truly interdisciplinary effort, grounded in both the literary and the material evidence. As a result, classical scholarship has come to realize that the archaeology of the sacred is, in many ways, central to our understanding of ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices.