Data Science, Human Science, and Ancient Gods: Conversations in Theory and Method
Synopsis
The studies in this volume share a focus on religion in the ancient Mediterranean world: How ritual, myth, spectatorship, and travel reflect the continual interaction of human beings with the richly fictive beings who defined the boundaries of groups, access to the past, and mobility across land and seascapes. They share as well the methodological exploration of the intersection between human sciences—the integration of numerous disciplines around the study of all aspects of human life from the biological to the cultural—and the study of the past. In so doing, they continue a long dialogue that engages with critical models derived from specializations within history, philology, archaeology, sociology, and anthropology, and addresses, increasingly, the potentialities and pitfalls of quantitative and digital analyses. Many of the threads in this long conversation inform these chapters: the comparative project, human social evolution, disciplinary reflexivity, religion as an embedded, functional, and structural system, and the role for agency, networks, and materiality.
Chapters
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Front Matter
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Introduction. New Sciences and Old GodsA Brief History of the Human Sciences and Ancient Religion
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Ritualizing Relations in Early Iron Age GreeceFeasting in Extraurban Sanctuaries
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Harnessing the GodsBig Gods Theory and Moral Supervision in the Greek World
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Festival Souvenirs from Roman CologneConnectivity, Memory, and Conceptions of Time
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Roman Strategies of Ritualization and the Performance of the Pompa Circensis
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Nearness and Experience in a Network of Roman Amphitheaters
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Reflexivity and Digital PraxisReconstructing Ostia’s Social Networks
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The Landscape of Early Greek ReligionGIS , Big Data, and the Complexity of the Archaeological Record
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Quantifying Thick Descriptions with the Database of Religious History
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The Reign of JanusSigns, Data Science, and Image Worlds in Third- Century BCE Italy
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Agency, Affect, Games, and Gods: Archaeogaming and the Archaeology of Religion
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Epilogue. Ancient Religion and Modern ScienceA Coevolution
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Indexes
