Resources > Objects
On February 24th 2021, Dr Eva Mol (University College London) and Dr Eleanor Betts (Open University) joined Dr Emma-Jayne Graham (Open University) to discuss the role of objects in ancient religion.
Follow this link or click on the image above to watch a recording of the three presentations.
About the Reassembling Ancient Religion seminar series…
The seminar series (running in Spring 2021) has been designed to explore the key themes and approaches to ancient religion that are adopted in a new book by Dr Emma-Jayne Graham, entitled Reassembling Religion in Roman Italy. The series comprises five online seminars, each of which is connected with one of the book’s broadly themed chapters - (1) Place, (2) Objects, (3) Bodies, (4) Divinity, and (5) Magic. During the seminars we will explore how the new materialist and relational approach to ancient lived religion that is advocated by the study might relate to lived religion as it was experienced in other chronological, geographical and cultural contexts across the ancient world.
Abstract of ‘Objects’ chapter from ‘Reassembling Religion in Roman Italy’
“This chapter explores the thingly qualities of cult instruments (instrumenta sacra) and their active role in the ritualised assemblages associated with the performance of civic sacrificial activities. It asks questions about how the potential affordances of cult instruments as material things functioned within ritualised assemblages, endeavouring to move beyond rather generalised categorisations of the types of objects used by humans to bring about specific aspects of the ritual process to focus on the relationships that might be formed when their potential affordances were brought together with humans. In particular it is concerned with determining the consequences of the agency that was produced by these relationships for the lived experiences of an individual and the production of personal, deeply proximal forms of religious knowledge. Although material instruments of cult were necessary for enabling ritual to be performed, this chapter demonstrates that material things such as incense containers (acerrae) and the distinctive leather cap worn by the flamines (the galerus), might also be a much more necessary component within the production of religious knowledge than has been previously acknowledged.”
