the project
Modeling II millennium BCE Polytheism in the Eastern Mediterranean
Modeling II millennium BCE Polytheism in the Eastern Mediterranean
The Godscapes project aims at defining a new scientific perspective in studying religious phenomena, in which material culture can be used to understand how humans entangle with the divine.
At the end of the nineteenth century, William Robertson Smith referred to the Second Millennium BCE as to a period of religious syncretism when different faiths and worships began to react on one another, and produce new and complex forms of religion. More than 120 years later, we are still debating on the impossibility of defining a ‘pure’ religion. Thus, research on how forms of religiosity are produced through the interaction and commingling of local, exogenous and hybrid elements is still of fundamental importance to the development of religious studies. This debate cannot be only limited to the ancient world: it needs to reflect also the role played by the interaction of different forms of religiosity in constructing complex forms of religious hybridity in our history.
