Sacred Landscapes in Anatolia and Neighboring Regions

Product Description The ritual dimension of land use in both prehistoric and historic societies is a flourishing research issue examined by a growing number of archaeologists, historians, philologists, and anthropologists today. Anatolia, because of the time depth of its human settlement and its geographical as well as cultural diversity, offers a great potential for such studies. The chronological span of these papers stretches from the enigmatic world of Chalcolithic cave paintings at Latmos to the contemporary yet no less mesmerizing reality of sacred spaces in the Yezidi religion. Space in terms of its geographical aspect is equally well covered, reaching from the western and southwestern shores of Asia Minor to the Anatolian highlands, Cappadocia, and the Black Sea littoral, finally touching and crossing the easternmost borders of modern Turkey. Contents: 1) The Sacred Landscapes of Matar: Continuity and change from the Iron Age through the Roman period (Lynn E. Roller); 2) Sacred Space in Iron Age Phrygia (Susanne Berndt-Ersöz); 3) The Meaning of Shape: Pottery Innovations and Traditions in the Sanctuary at Bronze Age Miletus (Ivonne Kaiser) 4) Epigraphy versus Archaeology: Conflicting Evidence for Cult Continuity in Ionia during the Fifth Century BC (Anja Slawisch); 5) Vision and the Ordered Invisible: Geometry, Space, and Architecture in the Hellenistic Sanctuary of Athena Nikephoros in Pergamon (John R. Senseney); 6) Cult and Landscape at Pergamon (Soi Agelidis); 7) The Gods of the Latmos: Cults and Rituals at the Holy Mountain from Prehistoric to Byzantine Times (Anneliese Peschlow-Bindokat); 8) From Elyanas to Leto: The Physical Evolution of the Sanctuary of Leto at Xanthos (Jacques des Courtils); 9) Sacred Landscapes and the Colonization of the Sinop Promontory (Owen Doonan); 10) Sacred Boundaries and Protective Borders: Outlying Chapels of Middle Byzantine Settlements in Cappadocia (Veronica Kalas); 11. The Church of Mren and the Architecture of Intersection (Christina Maranci); 12) Sacred Spaces in the Yezidi Religion (Birguel Açikyildiz). About the Author Charles Gates, Jacques Morin, and Thomas Zimmermann