Csaba Szabó - Roman Religion in the Danubian Provinces: Space Sacralisation and Religious Communication During the Principate (1st-3rd Century AD)

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Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-783-0

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-784-7

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022930862

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This book was supported by the Postdoctoral Research Grant PD NKFI-8 no. 127948 by the National Research, Development, and Innovation Office of Hungary (20182021). See also:

www.danubianreligion.com.

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Front cover: Roman Mithraic relief from Dacia (Dragu, Salaj county). Photo in custody of the National History Museum of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (inv. no. 15812).

Contents

List of figures

List of abbreviations

Foreword

During the course of my doctoral studies, I have participated in numerous international conferences, workshops and meetings focusing on Roman religion or the materiality of religion from antiquity. At most of these events, there were few usually two or three participants from Central-Eastern Europe. Very often, these scholars came from a classical archaeological background and had a very poor opinion of scholars of religious studies. Two worlds were meeting in these spaces: the world of classical, often outdated positivist and Kossinna-type archaeology of the provinces, and the highly theoreticised and often too-abstract field of religious studies searching for the obscure notion of material religion. Their theoretical conflict and methodological incompatibility were very provocative and appealing for me: I realised that uniting Roman religious studies with provincial archaeology represents one of the most innovative scientific methods one that can unite Western and Eastern European scholarship and create a lived academic dialogue, perhaps ultimately attracting more young scholars from Central-Eastern Europe to the discipline.

The Danubian provinces have long occupied a well-established position in Roman provincial archaeology. These include the century-old Limesforschung (study of Limes) in this region; the historical link between Central-Eastern European scholarship and the Austrian and German archaeological traditions; the visits and infrequent but impactful connections between Sir Ronald Syme, Sheppard Frere, John Wilkes, Andrew Wilson and others in the Danubian region; and the general contemporary dialogue between archaeologists from this region of Europe. All of these provide a good start for the development of new methodological perspectives.

My previous work, which focused on the sacralised spaces and religious communication in Roman Dacia, was the result of an early attempt to unite these two often conflicting disciplines and to open a dialogue between religious studies and provincial archaeology in Romania and Hungary, where this tradition is still in its infancy. The work was received surprisingly well, although the interest came especially from Western scholars: from the 11 known reviews, just four were published in Central-Eastern Europe. Until recently, this book was one of just a few case studies in which the innovative methodology of lived ancient religion approach of Jrg Rpke and his team from Erfurt was tested against the materiality of religion from the Danubian provinces of the Roman Empire.