German excavations carried out between 1980 and 1995 in Tall Bi’a (Raqqa, Syria) uncovered the remains of a unique Syrian orthodox monastery on the top of the central hill above the Bronze Age city of Tuttul. The building complex is unique in that, although it is of inexpensive mudbrick, three of the rooms are decorated with carefully executed mosaic floors with figural decoration. Two of these mosaics have Syriac inscriptions that date the construction of the building (509 AD) and the renovation of parts of it (595 AD). The complex can be identified as the monastery of Mar Zakkai. This chapter focuses on the economic life of the monastery and describes it as a household unit. The starting point is the well-preserved refectory, the large kitchen, and the storerooms. The refectory is equipped with circular benches, unique in Syria, parallels of which are known only from Egypt.

The early seventh-century papyrus from the St Sergius Monastery at Nessana in Roman Third Palestine (Negev desert, Israel) illustrates how early byzantine monastic stewards categorized and handled lay donations. Called an ‘Account of Church Offerings’, P.Ness. III 79 preserves registers that formally separate gifts called ‘blessings’ (eulogiai) from ‘offerings’ (prosphorai). Though unique in the papyrus record, such categorical distinctions are also implied by contemporary hagiography; P.Ness III 79 confirms that monks formally recognized a categorical difference between these two types of gifts, as implied by hagiography. Moreover, hagiography indicates that blessings were considered gifts that did not oblige their recipients to give anything in return, while offerings expected recipients to provide some sort of service. Marks placed next to entries of offerings in P.Ness III 79 suggest that concern for obligation guided monastic stewardship practices. Such monastic practices and concerns may be illuminated by distinctions drawn between restricted and unrestricted gifts by modern non-profits.

This chapter explores aspects of the transformation of the spatial and built environment of monasteries in the Southern Levant, with a focus on Arabia and Palaestina. Literary sources and archaeological excavations provide tangible evidence of the development of monasteries into productive units in the context of a larger rural economy. The success of the management model and its integration into the social and economic fabric are testified by the growing number of minor monastic structures equipped with wine and olive oil production units, cisterns, and terraced fields. The rise of monasticism reflects the importance of the Church in daily life, the agency and jurisdiction of local bishops – as evidenced by the mosaic inscriptions – and mutual contacts with adjacent villages. Papyri and other written sources combine to produce a picture of a well-structured economy aimed at intensive production, especially in the sixth and seventh centuries, even in the wake of critical conditions such as pandemics, climatic downturns, and political changes.

This chapter targets the local horizon of sanctuaries whose scope and spheres of influence transcended the local. Variously labelled as ‘regional’ or ‘Panhellenic’ sanctuaries, Funke’s contribution challenges the implicit dichotomy between these descriptors and the local. He begins with the observation that religious conduct in the polis was always subject to diverse spatial dynamics, articulated, for instance, in the different reach of urban and liminal cult sites. A similar spatial and functional diversification is pitched for Panhellenic sites. Rather than being elusive or purely notional, Panhellenic perspectives manifested themselves in the evocation of Greek gods and in cult practices that were considered genuinely Hellenic in nature. As shared points of reference, Panhellenic commodities were not only commonly accepted by the Greeks but, in fact, were substantiated through hardwired regulations that assured availability to all.

Rethinking the local horizon of Greek religion is a challenging but necessary endeavour. After two decades of fascination with Mediterranean connectivity and entangled worlds, it is worthwhile to remember that a significant part of the population in Antiquity, as well as in later periods up to the twentieth century, moved and functioned in a vital space that hardly exceeded a radius of 25 km from their home.1 This observation provides an image of a ‘small world’ that is quite different from the one recently explored by Irad Malkin. The attention paid to the local dimension is by no means a historiographical narrowing: works on globalisation and its early manifestations in Antiquity convincingly ascertained that the global–local binomial, with various variations and intermediate scales, was structurally inescapable. In other words, questioning the local dimension of Greek religion in no way means isolating idiosyncratic cultic realities and studying specific identities in restricted contexts. On the contrary, as all the contributions in this book show, it is a matter of articulating several levels of social reality, in which the local dimension fuels interactions, comparisons, differentiations, collaborations, representations, within individual and collective dynamics. In ancient Mediterranean contexts, distant in time and space, with variable unknowns and incomplete evidence, it is necessary and salutary to avoid optimistic generalisation and to carefully analyse each single situation as a social laboratory prone to elaborate creative social devices. Religion is a space of communication between people and superhuman entities, open to change and uncertainty. The local scale is, at the same time, the most evident, rich, and intricate layer for an archaeology of religious practices.

Jan Bremmer’s contribution returns to the thorny issue of divine identities. Bremmer offers a case-study that shows the interplay between local and universal forces that characterises most recent works on localism, religious and otherwise. His study of the presence of the goddess Hera on the Greek island of Samos during the Archaic and Classical periods integrates myth, ritual, and cult, and brings them together in a comprehensive account of the same divine persona. The chapter confirms that one and the same divine presence might combine both local and universal elements. Visible throughout is a distinct tendency to localise elements of the divine persona by attributing Hera with particular local connections. Through an erudite study of the larger contexts in which the worship of Hera took place on Samos, Bremmer teases out some of the forces at work in this localising process: among them are the move to integrate aspects of the local landscape or environment into the cultic practice.

This chapter focuses on ancient Corinthia as an area that housed several sizeable Greek sanctuaries, including those of Poseidon at Isthmia, Hera at Perachora, and Demeter and Kore on the Acrocorinth. All of these sanctuaries have yielded extensive assemblages of items left by worshippers as votives dedicated to the ancient Greek gods and goddesses. The study of the similarities and differences of their votive deposits illuminates the uses of these sanctuaries within different local contexts. The quantitative look at dedicatory assemblages is combined with the qualitative look at individual objects or groups of objects to consider questions of the wealth and gender of those dedicating the votives as well as their geographical origin. The chapter shows that dedicatory assemblages can provide invaluable insights into the way in which the local constitutes itself in ever different ways at each of these sanctuaries. It also illustrates that material objects can point to both their practical uses as well as the thinking of those engaged in their circulation.

Shaped by the confinement to place and a limited number of participants, the local horizon of Greek religion is typically circumscribed as subject to a smallness in importance and meaning; at best, it is viewed as a canvas for the projection of local idiosyncrasy. This chapter calls for a reassessment of the prevailing orthodoxy. In the first section, Hans Beck gauges the vectors that lent particular, culture-specific traits to the local as a source domain of ancient Greek belief and cult practice. The second part applies the findings to an exemplary case study, the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia. Contextualising the site in space and time, Beck argues that Kalaureia gained religious prominence as a satellite sanctuary of the city of Troizen. Kalaureia documents not only the merits of the local perspective, but exemplifies the role of the local as a feeder of religious practice and purpose.

This chapter explores how the local and the general dimensions of ancient Greek religion come together on the Greek island of Rhodes in the south-eastern Aegean during the late Classical and Hellenistic periods. McInerney puts the focus squarely on the role of the Lindos Chronicle as a powerful tool to reassert older local identities within a new (pan-Rhodian) context. Through a careful study of the claims and assertions made in different sections of the Chronicle, McInerney visualises different kinds of negotiations between local and general identities at work. In his contribution, the federal city of Rhodes features once as the larger dimension in interaction with which the Lindians sought to maintain their local identity, and once as the local dimension itself that sought to assert its place in negotiation with even larger entities and identities (such as Rome). This shift in focus confirms that the local and the general are ultimately relational categories, the meaning of which changes according to what level of Greek society we look at.

This chapter alerts readers of the shortcomings of a mining approach to Pausanias’ Periegesis as a prime evidence for the study of local religion in ancient Greece. The question of where local specificities are discussed in the narrative is as critical as the actual information conveyed. The chapter speaks to the analytical challenge of interpreting a narrative that is, on the one hand, reflective of the non-linear and essentially decentralised nature of the local, yet on the other filters this nature through the linear rigours of writing. Starting from fleeting experiences of the local, highly subjective to the individual that makes them, Hawes turns to an exemplary discussion of Argos, Thebes, and Messenia that exposes the mechanics of a scripted localism, a literary approximation to place. The discussion of Pausanias’ localistic perspective extends to the narrative technique of cross references and to instances where such connections were deliberately denied: the case in point being Pausanias’ treatment of the notorious problem of the location of Homeric Pylos.

This chapter explores the Thesmophoria as a festival that was celebrated in multiple places in the ancient Greek world. McLardy approaches this festival from a comparative perspective, investigating its manifestations at Attica and on Sicily. Through an analysis of similarities and differences in the celebrations at these two locations, she shows how the festival drew on local landscapes, myths, and histories. In highlighting the local horizon, McLardy takes issue with an approach that has focused on describing the general elements of the festival (at the price of everything else) and that has pieced them together in a composite account. In her contribution, local elements are more than mere deviations from a universal template. Rather, such local dimensions of the Thesmophoria illustrate how Greek religion remained deeply embedded in the way people lived.

Rethinking the local horizon of Greek religion is a challenging but necessary endeavour. After two decades of fascination with Mediterranean connectivity and entangled worlds, it is worthwhile to remember that a significant part of the population in Antiquity, as well as in later periods up to the twentieth century, moved and functioned in a vital space that hardly exceeded a radius of 25 km from their home.1 This observation provides an image of a ‘small world’ that is quite different from the one recently explored by Irad Malkin. The attention paid to the local dimension is by no means a historiographical narrowing: works on globalisation and its early manifestations in Antiquity convincingly ascertained that the global–local binomial, with various variations and intermediate scales, was structurally inescapable. In other words, questioning the local dimension of Greek religion in no way means isolating idiosyncratic cultic realities and studying specific identities in restricted contexts. On the contrary, as all the contributions in this book show, it is a matter of articulating several levels of social reality, in which the local dimension fuels interactions, comparisons, differentiations, collaborations, representations, within individual and collective dynamics. In ancient Mediterranean contexts, distant in time and space, with variable unknowns and incomplete evidence, it is necessary and salutary to avoid optimistic generalisation and to carefully analyse each single situation as a social laboratory prone to elaborate creative social devices. Religion is a space of communication between people and superhuman entities, open to change and uncertainty. The local scale is, at the same time, the most evident, rich, and intricate layer for an archaeology of religious practices.

This chapter embarks from the observation that ancient Greek settlements occupied three categorically separate yet interwoven landscapes: the natural, the human, and the imagined environment. It traces their presence at Hermione in the south-eastern Argolid to disclose multiple levels and layers of localisation and steers the investigation to places where all of these vectors combined. In the highly inclusive cult of Demeter Chthonia, the blend included communal preference, local vegetation, and a deliberately local variant of underworld conceptions. The cult of Demeter Chthonia at Hermione involved the killing of a frisky cow with sickles by four old women. It appears impossible to explain why the cow ritual took the idiosyncratic form that it did. Yet the comparison with cults of Demeter Chthonia elsewhere suggests the close interplay between agricultural and eschatological aspects. Although united with other Demeter cults under the same epiclesis and in accordance with the polymorphous nature of Greek religion, the cult in Hermione attests to lively conversations with the specific features of the local landscape, and the desire of the community to make sense of it.