Cultural Buildings Research Articles

Flint Knapping and the Early Bronze Age I Temple of Megiddo, Israel

The Early Bronze (EB) Ib Temple of Megiddo Level J-4, with its complex architecture, marks an important threshold in the development of complex societies that characterized the Early Bronze Age of the Levant. The temple was abandoned at the end of the EB Ib, leaving behind few traces of the activities performed within—the primary remains being deposits of animal bone sacrificial waste found in different localities within the structure and its vicinity. Chipped stone tools and production waste were found together with these and other deposits nearby. Considering the paucity of other finds among the temple’s assemblages, the chipped stone items constitute important evidence for activities within its vicinity, and perhaps its role in relation to the community within which it functioned. The lithic assemblage includes a wide range of tool types and waste indicating that knapping and a variety of activities occurred nearby the temple. The range of activities represented is characteristic of earlier Neolithic and Chalcolithic, as well as Bronze Age, cult buildings in the Mediterranean world. Overall, the architectural and lithic evidence demonstrates that while the Great Temple of J-4 represents major innovations in the organization of cult that will become characteristic of the Bronze Age, there were also certain profane activities associated with the temple, as in other early sacred spaces. Furthermore, this study emphasizes the potential that lithic assemblages have for contributing to the understanding of the dynamic roles of cult buildings in general from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age and how the mundane and sacred commingle.

LYKOPHRON AND EPIGRAPHY: THE VALUE AND FUNCTION OF CULT EPITHETS IN THEALEXANDRA

The subject of this paper is a striking and unavoidable feature of theAlexandra: Lykophron's habit of referring to single gods not by their usual names, but by multiple lists of epithets piled up in asyndeton. This phenomenon first occurs early in the 1474-line poem, and this occurrence will serve as an illustration. At 152–3, Demeter has five descriptors in a row: Ἐνναία ποτὲ | Ἕρκυνν' Ἐρινὺς Θουρία Ξιφηφόρος, ‘Ennaian … Herkynna, Erinys, Thouria, Sword-bearing’. In the footnote I give the probable explanations of these epithets. Although in this sample the explanations to most of the epithets are not to be found in inscriptions, my main aim in what follows will be to emphasize the relevance of epigraphy to the unravelling of some of the famous obscurity of Lykophron. In this paper, I ask why the poet accumulates divine epithets in this special way. I also ask whether the information provided by the ancient scholiasts, about the local origin of the epithets, is of good quality and of value to the historian of religion. This will mean checking some of that information against the evidence of inscriptions, beginning with Linear B. It will be argued that it stands up very well to such a check. TheAlexandrahas enjoyed remarkable recent vogue, but this attention has come mainly from the literary side. Historians, in particular historians of religion, and students of myths relating to colonial identity, have been much less ready to exploit the intricate detail of the poem, although it has so much to offer in these respects. The present article is, then, intended primarily as a contribution to the elucidation of a difficult literary text, and to the history of ancient Greek religion. Despite the article's main title, there will, as the subtitle is intended to make clear, be no attempt to gather and assess all the many passages in Lykophron to which inscriptions are relevant. There will, for example, be no discussion of 1141–74 and the early Hellenistic ‘Lokrian Maidens inscription’ (IG9.12706); or of the light thrown on 599 by the inscribed potsherds carrying dedications to Diomedes, recently found on the tiny island of Palagruza in the Adriatic, and beginning as early as the fifth centuryb.c.(SEG48.692bis–694); or of 733–4 and their relation to the fifth-centuryb.c.Athenian decree (n. 127) mentioning Diotimos, the general who founded a torch race at Naples, according to Lykophron; or of 570–85 and the epigraphically attested Archegesion or cult building of Anios on Delos, which shows that this strange founder king with three magical daughters was a figure of historical cult as well as of myth.

Evaluation Of Temperature And Humidity Regime In An Orthodox Church

This study describes the cult buildings, properties and specifics of the cult building microclimate-related problems, based on the statutory requirements, also considering optimal parameters of the air. This study presents the results of indoor air monitoring in the cult building. The proposed methodology was evaluated in Riga All Saints Orthodox Church. During the evaluation, practical measurements of indoor air quality were taken. The recommendations for improvement of temperature/ moisture conditions were presented.

The Housing of the World: The Significance of Cosmographic Concepts for Habitation

A specific mode of human existence shows up in modelling the structures and processes of the world onto the living space, consisting of certain landscapes, locations, and habitations. Concepts of housing the world are implemented in the lodgings, cultic buildings, settlements, territories, and the artificial shaping of the landscape. These structures offered humans a ‘domestic’ sphere within a realm of wild nature, ensuring stability, centricity, meaning, security, familiarities, knowledge of controlling, social and power classifications. Cosmovisions of early cultures and indigenous people often address the idea of the housing as the world in miniature. Structures worked as a lively microcosm figuring the macrocosm and allowing interacting with the world by using a symbolic and ritual approach. The study points out basic principles and categories. It queries whether elements of archaic cosmovisions related architecture, ecosystems, and the mindset have survived until today and if so, why.

Le fondazioni ecclesiastiche nelle vicende delle aree rurali: spunti di riflessione per l’Occidente tardo antico (IV-V secolo)

The problem of the christianization of the countryside has been examined since the 18th century, mainly from the institutional point of view; the question was the origin of the organization of the Medieval parish, whose territorial structure was compared with the roman pagus system. In the last few decades a more critical appraisal of the written sources, new approaches to the spatial issues and archaeological discoveries have led to a different perspective, focused not only on the continuity but also on the transformations which took place between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This paper considers the very beginning of this process; by taking into account both written and archaeological sources it shows that in the 4th-5th centuries there is no evidence of a real programme of christianization of the countryside. The construction of cult buildings which mark the spread of Christianity is due in turn to the personal initiative of landowners, bishops and communities. Their localisation therefore, while corresponding to the different types of settlements in Late Antiquity, do not follow an evident, systematic pattern.

Diary entries and photographic documentation of J.A.R. Munro related to the archaeological exploration of Doclea (Montenegro) in 1893

This article presents the as yet unpublished diary entries and photographic documentation of J. A. R. Munro related to the archaeological exploration of Doclea in 1893, the year when remains of Christian cult buildings, basilica A, basilica B, and a cruciform church, were discovered in the eastern part of the city. Munro?s diary entries and photographs render our understanding of Christian topography of Late Antique Doclea more complete.

Mineralogy of the ceramic slags from the Bronze Age funerary site at Lăpuş (NW Romania)

A Bronze Age (13–12th century B.C.) necropolis and cult area in Lăpuş (NW Romania) has been studied. The mound investigated during the present campaign covered a multi-phased wooden cult building containing bronze objects, ceramic potshards and slag pieces. The latter have a mammillary smooth surface, irregular shape and a high porosity. Optical microscopy reveals a colourless to brown vitreous mass, full with various-sized pores making up to 40 vol.% of the total slag. The glass includes relic phases, e.g., quartz, partly melted plagioclase and rutile, rare zircon, ilmenite and magnetite-rich spinel. Cristobalite and various silicates were formed within the glass and at the wall of the vesicles during cooling. The latter include fayalite, ferrosilite, magnetite-dominated spinel, hematite, clinopyroxene, mullite and cordierite. About 1/3 of the total volume of the slag consists of glass with a wide variety of SiO2 ranging from 49 to 76 wt.%. It is inhomogeneous, with local enrichment in Fe, Ca, Mg, Ti and K. The pore structure, the partial melting of plagioclase and rutile, the newly formed SiO2 polymorphs (cristobalite) and the Fe(Al) silicates indicate, all indicate maximum temperatures of 1100–1200°C for the fire generating the slags. The slags are not related to any metallurgical but to an anthropogenic pyrometamorphic process and formed as a result of overfiring some ceramic vessels which may have contained ritual offerings. Intentionally initiated firing of the wooden structures is the most likely the agent of this high temperature. The slags resemble buchites and can be termed “ceramic slags”  

The Roles of Pit Houses and Gendered Spaces on Viking-Age Farmsteads in Iceland

THE SMALL SEMI-SUBTERRANEAN buildings (jarðhús) with slab-built ovens that have been found on many Viking-Age farmsteads in Iceland (late 9th–11th century) have been subject to wide-ranging interpretations, from short-lived, expedient dwellings to saunas, women’s workrooms, the houses of Slavic settlers and in one case a cult building. This paper tests these hypotheses by making a thorough revaluation of pit-house dates, architectural forms, internal structural features and artefacts, and presents new geoarchaeological evidence from the pit house at Hofstaðir, NE Iceland. This lends strong support to the interpretation that they were women’s workrooms, primarily for the production of woollen textiles. Their abandonment in the later 10th and 11th centuries may be interpreted in the light of changing religious beliefs and social structures, the growing importance of homespun cloth as a valuable export commodity, and the rise in status of the women who made it.

Socialist Churches: Heritage Preservation and “Cultic Buildings” in Leningrad, 1924-1940

The demolition of churches is a notorious episode in Soviet political history, normally discussed in the context of the history of church-state relations. Yet which prerevolutionary buildings were meant to fit into a “model socialist city” such as Leningrad and how this was to happen was also a planning issue. Soviet planners (unlike members of the militant atheist movement) drew a distinction between buildings and their (current or possible) functions. The monument protection agencies were often successful in arguing that buildings of “historic and artistic importance” should be preserved, even in the face of considerable pressure from other city departments (for example, the suggestion that Smol'nyi Cathedral be demolished for the bricks). However, they gave preference to churches that lacked an “odiously ecclesiastical appearance,” were ruthless about sacrificing churches that they deemed to be of secondary significance, and readily agreed to secular uses for “cultic buildings.” As Catriona Kelly shows in this article, most of the local intelligentsia considered these planning decisions to be appropriate; it was not until the postwar decades, and more particularly the Brezhnev era, that attitudes to “cultic buildings” began to change.

Religionsskiftet i sen vikingetid – Belyst ud fra Harvey Whitehouses teori om religiøse modaliteter

Religionsskiftet i sen vikingetid – Belyst ud fra Harvey Whitehouses teori om religiøse modaliteter

So Fair a House

Archaeologists have proposed that quite a number of structures dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B in southwest Asia were nondomestic ritual buildings, sometimes described specifically as temples or shrines, and these figure large in some interpretations of social change in the Near Eastern Neolithic. Yet the evidence supporting the identification of cult buildings is often equivocal or depends on ethnocentric distinctions between sacred and profane spaces. This paper explores the case of Gobekli Tepe, a large Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Turkey that its excavator claims consisted only of temples, to illustrate weaknesses in some kinds of claims about Neolithic sacred spaces and to explore some of the problems of identifying prehistoric ritual. Consideration of the evidence suggests the alternative hypothesis that the buildings at Gobekli Tepe may actually be houses, albeit ones that are rich in symbolic content.

Notes on the Cult Buildings of Northern Mesopotamia in the Aceramic Neolithic Period

B efore the series of discoveries of monumental Upper Mesopotamian communal ritual structures, the question of the construction of cult buildings during the Aceramic Neolithic period remained unresolved. The research conducted at the existing Aceramic Neolithic sites in Northern Syria, Iraq, and especially Southeastern Turkey dating to the tenth through the eighth millennia b.c. (fig. 1) provides evidence for the existence of public cult buildings during the period under discussion. The reports and publications on excavations at Hallan Cemi, Jerf el-Ahmar, Tell ‘Abr 3, Dja‘de el-Mughara, Nevali Cori, Cayonu Tepesi, and Gobekli Tepe are extremely informative. 1 Analysis of the reports and other publications provides an opportunity to trace the development of the general principles of the erection of cult structures in early Neolithic settlements in Northern Mesopotamia.

The Question of Ancient Scandinavian Cultic Buildings: with Particular Reference to Old Norse hof

The article focuses on the question of ancient Scandinavian cultic buildings, with particular reference to the concept Old Norse hof. I survey the semantics of this term in written sources, in poetic traditions, in the Sagas of the Icelanders and in place names. My hypothesis is that the term does not refer to a static phenomenon, but rather its meaning varies across different sources and contexts. It is therefore often difficult to apply it as a general concept, or to connect it with a specific type of archaeological find or structure, as has occasionally been the case in the archaeology of religion.

A Winepress at Apollonia-Arsuf: More Evidence on the Samaritan Presence in Roman-Byzantine Southern Sharon

This article examines the results of the 2006 and 2009 seasons in the far northern end of the site - a large mosaic floor winepress with a Greek inscription in the center of its treading floor. The inscription reads: “One God only, help / Cassianos together with (his) wife / and children and everyone.” Such commemorative inscriptions are mostly known from Samaritan cult buildings (synagogues). Both the inscription and the finds discovered in the area point to a Samaritan ownership over the complex in Byzantine times (ca. fifth-sixth centuries CE). The winepress is thus analyzed against its inscription and other Byzantine winepresses with inscriptions found in Palestine. Based on the archaeological evidence the winepress ceased to function in the first half of the sixth century CE (possibly in relation to the Samaritan revolt [529 CE]).

Conchas de salvación

Hispanic protohistoric archaeology counts on an increasing repertoire of seashell pavements. These special grounds appear in the Iberian South, from Portugal to, at least, the Spanish province of Alicante. Their presence in the Middle East and their greater antiquity in the Syrian-Palestinian area prove that they were another cultural element out of the many others that reached The Western World with the Phoenician colonization. In both ends of the Mediterranean Sea, seashell floors were used as apotropaic elements placed in the accesses of cult buildings and other constructions.

Book Review of The Small Temple: A Roman Imperial Cult Building in Petra, Jordan, by Sara Karz Reid

Book Review of The Small Temple: A Roman Imperial Cult Building in Petra, Jordan, by Sara Karz Reid

La première cathédrale de Zadar

Relying on the historical description in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ text (10th century) as well as on the incomplete archaeological researches, the author tries to describe the original building which preceded the construction of the romanesque cathedral of Zadar built through the 12th and the 13th century. On the basis of Porphyrogenitus’ description one can conclude that the building was a basilica with galleries above the lateral aisles, that its floor was decorated with rich mosaics and that some other parts of the building were painted, too. The author suggests a new interpretation of Porphyrogenitus’ syntagm xylographia archaia which would refer to the painted ceiling or the painted beams as proved in the 9th century architecture in Zadar (fig.3). Although very few, the remains of the mosaics in the lateral aisles show the basic ground plan of the carpets. There was a series of 11 identical motives in each of the aisles (fig.2) which directs us to the conclusion that there were 11 bays of the original building. The cathedral was built in the vicinity of the Forum, leaning on the northern side of the back of the former tabernae. It integrated itself completely into the urban matrix of the Roman city so that its consignatorium occupies the space of three former tabernae while the baptistry occupies the space of the other two (fig.5). In the archaeological researches in today’s sacristy, i.e. in the former consignatorium, a 5th century mosaic floorboard with deer was discovered (fig.9), while below there is a monochrome mosaic floorboard. This earlier mosaic is the floorboard of a room that was made by joining the three former tabernae and it had a subsellium in the eastern part of the building. So this was Zadar’s first christian place of worship which was transformed into the consignatorium of the monumental cathedral after it was built during the 5th century. Its northern wall has been completely preserved (today this is the wall that divides the sacristy from the cathedral), as well as the stone gutter for rain water at the height of 6m which also belonged to it (fig.8). Thus it is possible to reconstruct the entire primitive church building of Roman Jader (Zadar) (fig.6). The history of the first christian community in Zadar is not known. The oldest cult building was built in the middle of the city, in the vicinity of the Forum. Thus one may conclude that the city government provided a space for the gathering of the christian community and that this may have happened not earlier that at the time of Theodosius I, when christianity became the official state religion.

Animal Remains from Temples in Roman Britain

ABSTRACTApproximately twenty temple excavations have yielded significant assemblages of animal bones. All come from Romano-Celtic temples in southern Britain, with the exception of four shrines for eastern cults. This paper picks out major characteristics of the assemblages and draws some general conclusions about the nature of the ritual activity that led to their deposition. At temples such as Uley or Hayling, sacrifices were probably an important part of the rituals, and the animals carefully selected. At other temples, animals had a lesser role, with little evidence of selection. At healing shrines, such as Bath and Lydney, animal sacrifices are not clearly attested, and would probably have taken place away from the areas used for healing humans. In contrast to the Romano-Celtic temples, animal remains at the shrines of eastern cults have very different characteristics: individual deposits can be linked to specific rituals within the cult buildings, and have many similarities to the continental evidence

Mary M. Voigt. « A Temple at Hasanlu », in : N. F. Miller & K. Abdi, eds., Yeki Bud, Yeki Nabud. Essays on the Archaeology of Iran in Honor of William M. Sumner. Monograph Series 48, Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA

The article proposes a comparison of Hasanlu’s Burnt Building II (phase IVB) dated to the 9th century BC, with contemporary Mesopotamian cult buildings in terms of structure and artifact description. The authors use Margueron’s architectural definition for a temple as a guideline in defining the Burnt Building. First the Burnt Building is compared with Middle Assyrian and Middle Babylonian temples where the straight-axis temple plan is predominant. An account of the different places within th...

Christianity and Nationality in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia: Mutual Intrusions and Instrumentalizations

The five Central Asian Muslim republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan) count many Christian—Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian and Protestant—minorities. Unlike the religious communities in the Near and Middle East, most Christians in Central Asia consist of Slavic/European minorities (Russians, Germans, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, etc.), which came in the area during the Russian colonization in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries. The main traditionally Christian nationalities living in Central Asia are Slavs and Germans. Today, Russians are mainly present in Kazakhstan (4.5 million), in Kyrgyzstan (600,000) and in Uzbekistan (at least half a million). There are only several tens of thousand Russians in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Like Russians, the number of the other Slavic nationalities has considerably decreased in Central Asia since the last three decades. There are 50,000 Ukrainians in Kyrgyzstan, 500,000 in Kazakhstan and about 100,000 in Uzbekistan. Byelorussians number 111,000 in Kazakhstan, and about 20,000 in Uzbekistan. According to the 1999 census, there are only 47,000 Poles in Kazakhstan. Today there are 353,000 Germans in Kazakhstan, 21,000 in Kyrgyzstan, and less than 8,000 in Uzbekistan, and their community is nearly nonexistent in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Other nationalities are also present in the Christian communities, though more modestly: among them, Koreans (about 160,000 in Uzbekistan, close to 100,000 in Kazakhstan in 1999), Greeks (10,000 in Uzbekistan), Tatars (248,000 in Kazakhstan) as well as Armenians (there remained 40,000 Armenians in Turkmenistan in 1995, with 42,000 in Uzbekistan today). Armenians have only one cult building in Samarkand. Moreover, after the fall of the USSR, more and more natives have been converted to Christianity: many—especially Protestant—missions, are now acting among Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, etc.