Moser Claudia, Feldman Cecelia (eds.). Locating the Sacred: Theoretical Approaches to the Emplacement of Religion

Oxbow Books, 2014. — 144 p.Ritual happens in distinct places – in temples, in caves, along pilgrimage routes – and religious activities there incorporate a diverse set of objects such as holy water, cult statues, and sacred texts. Understanding religious ritual requires viewing it not as a disembodied event, but as emplaced, grounded in both built and natural surroundings, and integrated with its associated material objects. Here authors examine various religious practices in the Greco-Roman world and pilgrimage routes in contemporary Israel. Other contributions focus on the East, on domestic religion in prehistoric Taiwan, and the palimpsest of ritual activity in Buddhist China. One author considers not just ritual’s built and natural setting, but also the landscape of the human mind. By way of conclusion, many of the recurring issues concerning the material and topographic matrix of ritual practice are expanded upon in a final meditation on sacred space. The papers in this volume, with their disciplinary, geographic, and chronological diversity, will serve as a resource for theoretical approaches to the study of ritual practice that may have broad cross-cultural application and provide new insight into the relationship between ritual and place.The volume is based on a conference held at Brown University.Claudia Moser is Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A fellow of the American Academy in Rome, she is the co-director of an archaeological field school at Settecamini, Italy and co-editor of Ritual Matters: Material Remains and Ancient Religion (2017) and autor of The Altars of Republican Rome and Latium: Sacrifice and the Materiality of Roman Religion (2019).
Cecelia Feldman received her Ph.D. from the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University in 2011 and is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This chapter arises from her dissertation, Living Fluidly: Uses and Meanings of Water in Asia Minor (2nd century B.C.E. – 2nd century C.E). Her research interests include urban development, ritual landscapes, and the economic and cultural implications of technological developments, particularly those pertaining to water.