Call for Papers (2020.2) - Religion, Religiosity and Material Culture in Ancient World

The search for contact with what is understood as superhuman or sacred is something that runs throughout human History, manifesting itself in multiple varieties and contexts. In the same way, the “forms” (Guarinello, 2003) in which these religious expressions are described and analyzed by those who seek to understand them also vary. The recent "Material Turn" identified by Sonia Hazard (2012) for the fields of History and Social Sciences is an example of this. From the 1990s onwards, there is a claim to the centrality of objects and material phenomena in studies on religion. This movement opposes itself to the Western conception, inherited mainly from the Protestant Reformation, which understands religion from its discursive forms – such as doctrines, scriptures, philosophies, mythologies, folklore, etc. Thereby, artifacts, practices, spaces, bodies, sensations and affections are highlighted under the justification that “human religiosity is rarely separate from the material environment through which it is expressed, and that to conceive of material culture and religious culture as opposing or mutually exclusive spheres of human experience and activity is to limit our understandings of both fields” (Droogan, 2013).

In the area of Archeology, in turn, the consolidation of Archeology of Religion in the 1990s also broadened the field's boundaries by validating the possibility that “archaeological data can be used to reconstruct rituals and inquiries about underlying ideologies or belief systems to social action” (Raja; Rüpke, 2015). This allowed not only greater access to the material sources of the past, but also for archaeologists to develop important works on the materiality of religion, such as the studies by Timothy Insoll (2004), Miguel Astor-Aguilera (2010), Ian Hodder (2010) and others.

As a result of these movements, the strengthening of interdisciplinary approaches has been witnessed in recent years. They analyze the symbolic values of material religious culture (Appadurai, 1986; Hughes, 2010), their genealogy (Asad, 1993), their phenomenological variables (Morgan, 2012), their aspect of “Lived Religion” (Bell, 1992), the possibility of agency of its objects (Ingold, 2010; Latour 2002), and the development of the so-called “New Materialism” (Bennett, 2010; Latour, 2005). All of these approaches are, to some extent, part of the transdisciplinary research area of "Material Religion", a field that reflects the growing adherence to the "material turn" by researchers of religions and religiosities.

Especially since the founding of the Religion Material Journal in 2005, an international space for debate has opened up. In the same way, the possibility of exploring the numerous variables of the materiality of religion has also been expanded: religious images, devotional and liturgical objects, sacred spaces, art and artifacts, architecture and, likewise, clothing, idols, relics, iconographies, shrines, landscapes, ritualistic instruments, among others. The examples are many, and the possibilities open to scholars of ancient religions are multiple.

Therefore, we invite all researchers in the fields of Classics, History, Archaeology, Social Sciences, Religious Sciences and other related areas who dedicate themselves to the study of the materiality of religions and religiosities in the Ancient World to send their contributions. The Mare Nostrum Journal publishes scientific articles on free themes and linked to thematic dossiers, as well as bibliographic essays and reviews. You can find more information on the submission guidelines by clicking the link:

https://www.revistas.usp.br/marenostrum/about/submissions.

 

Deadline for submission: August 30th.

 

Organization

Ana Paula Scarpa Pinto de Carvalho (Universidade de São Paulo)

Pedro Luís de Toledo Piza (Universidade de São Paulo).